OAKLAND — Federal prosecutors and a judge are up in arms after an independent news site published confidential legal materials in a two-part series on Antioch’s never-ending police corruption scandal, and now they’re determined to figure out who leaked the documents to the press.
The fallout from the articles should start this week. Senior U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White has ordered every attorney who represented ex-Antioch police officer Devon Wenger to sign sworn declarations addressing concerns by federal prosecutors, who want to know who leaked documents to The Current Report, a Southern California-based news site. A motion by the U.S. Attorney’s office, filed in October, asked White to make the defense lawyers explain who they shared the materials with, whether Wenger had unsupervised access to them, and whether any of them were the leakers, court records show.
The declarations are due by Wednesday and are to be filed under seal. From his indictment in August 2023 to his sentence of 90 months in federal prison this month, Wenger has been represented by four different legal teams. He has also long maintained that the prosecution against him, for steroid distribution and conspiracy to violate civil rights, was retaliatory due to him complaining about misconduct by other Antioch cops, including a higher-up in the department who had a prior relationship with Wenger’s fiancee at the time.
Wenger was one of 14 East Contra Costa officers charged in 2023, 11 of whom would plead guilty or no contest to at least one crime. Wenger and ex-Antioch K9 Officer Morteza Amiri both took their cases to trial, were convicted, and sentenced to prison. Others agreed to testify against Amiri and Wenger in exchange for leniency in their cases.
The Current Report’s series explored “How the FBI and Contra Costa DA Turned a Police Whistleblower into a Federal Target” and provided an in-depth look from Wenger’s perspective of the case. The news site’s “About Us” section says it is “powered by fiercely devoted journalists pursuing the truth in every local, national and global story,” though nearly all its stories are bylined by its editor-in-chief, Cece Woods.
Former Los Angeles County sheriff Alex Villanueva — who railed against media leaks and even criminally investigated them during his controversial tenure — is also a regular columnist. Much of his published content on the site is devoted to criticizing the current sheriff, Robert Luna, who defeated him in the 2022 election. Villanueva is seeking to oust Luna and re-take the office in 2026.
Prosecutors argued in court that the two-part series on Wenger contained “baseless allegations and disparaging accusations about trial witnesses and other third parties, suggesting that the posting originated from Defendant Wenger and/or individual(s) associated with him.” The series published actual copies of documents, some of which contain writing that says “confidential — subject to protective order.”
Just before White sentenced Wenger, he referred to the article as “trash” and addressed the leaks, promising, “I will get to the bottom of that.”
“I do not believe that in any way, shape, or form that (Wenger) was the victim of illegal behavior, as he charges,” White said. Wenger was convicted by two separate juries, one which found him guilty of acquiring steroids and arranging to give them to other law enforcement personnel, and another that convicted him of conspiring with colleagues to violate the civil rights of the people he was supposed to serve.
Wenger’s attorneys have countered that the prosecution motion is “speculative and unsupported and fail to satisfy the threshold for contempt or any remedial action.” The materials in question were bound by a protective order and their dissemination was supposed to be limited to Wenger, his lawyers, and members of his defense team, for the sole purpose of mounting a defense to the charges.
Such protective orders are standard for criminal cases, and leakers generally can’t claim protections under the First Amendment, according to David Loy, the legal director for the First Amendment Coalition, a free speech advocacy group.
“Generally speaking the best practice is if you don’t like what the order says, go to court and ask to modify it rather than disobey it,” Loy said.
It is not an idle threat from White. In 2006, he nearly jailed two San Francisco Chronicle reporters who published information about the Barry Bonds grand jury proceedings, after the reporters refused a court order to reveal who’d leaked the details to them. White ordered the reporters, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, jailed for up to 18 months, but gave them time to appeal the order, postponing their incarceration. During the interim period, the leaker came forward, rendering the issue moot, but White made it clear at the time he was prepared to put them both behind bars.
“The only appropriate sanction is to incarcerate these two individuals,” White said at a 2006 court hearing, adding he hoped the reporters would reconsider their resistance.