Progressive L.A. Prosecutor George Gascón Accused of Forcing Deputy to Hide Evidence Against Sex Predator

A Los Angeles prosecutor is accusing progressive district attorney George Gascón of retaliating against him for pushing back on Gascón’s soft-on-crime approach, beginning with the Gascón administration’s efforts to protect a convicted male sex offender who attempted to get himself housed in a women’s facility by pretending to be transgender.

L.A. County deputy district attorney Shea Sanna filed a whistleblower lawsuit Monday against Gascón and the county in Los Angeles Superior Court. According to the lawsuit, Gascón began a series of retaliatory actions after he issued a directive that forced Sanna to unlawfully hide evidence against a convicted child sex predator, James Tubbs, who now goes by the name Hannah Tubbs.

The lawsuit says that “in early 2022, Sanna’s once promising career trajectory was derailed when he publicly revealed how Gascón’s policies had led to a miscarriage of justice in the Tubbs case, nearly resulting in the release of a highly dangerous and violent sexual predator. Sanna also exposed how the Gascón Administration had suppressed evidence and directed Sanna not to oppose defense counsel’s arguments in order to secure Tubbs’s release.”

The L.A. district attorney’s office declined to comment.

In November 2021, Tubbs was convicted of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl in a Denny’s restroom seven years earlier, according to the lawsuit. Tubbs was 17 at the time of the attack. He is also suspected of sexually assaulting two 4-year-old girls in public restrooms.

Sanna began working on the Tubbs case in 2021, around the time Tubbs hatched a plan to pretend to be transgender so he could be held at a women’s facility, the lawsuit says. After Tubbs’s conviction, Sanna was prevented from introducing evidence during the sentencing process because of a policy directive from Gascón instructing prosecutors to go soft on juvenile criminals.

Gascón instituted the policy, Special Directive 20-09, in December 2020, soon after he was elected on the heels of the nationwide Black Lives Matter riots and the left-wing opposition to law enforcement. Gascón’s campaign received support from left-wing groups financed by billionaire George Soros’s political network.

The special directive requires prosecutors to file the lowest criminal code charge per incident, only seek one count, and it prevents prosecutors from attempting to transfer juvenile defendants into adult prison systems, the lawsuit states.

Sanna’s colleagues pressured him into remaining silent during a hearing for Tubbs’s sentencing and preventing him from introducing jailhouse recordings exposing Tubbs’s scheme to pretend to be transgender and his sexual perversion, Sanna’s lawsuit alleges.

Later, Sanna sent the recordings to personnel on Tubbs’s rehabilitation team. He was removed from the Tubbs case for doing so, according to the lawsuit.

“Gascón’s policies and his enforcement of them required Sanna and other prosecutors to unlawfully hide the truth from the court by withholding relevant evidence, such as Tubbs’s jail call recordings, and prevented the filing of all ‘truthful charges,'” the lawsuit says.

The Tubbs case became a scandal for Gascón when portions of the jail recordings were leaked to the media. Sanna’s lawsuit accuses Gascón of trying to make an example out of him for other rank-and-file prosecutors who disagreed with Gascón’s soft-on-crime approach.

One of the many alleged acts of retaliation was a complaint filed against Sanna for “misgendering” Tubbs, even though Tubbs’s claims of being a transgender woman were a ruse to manipulate the criminal justice system into granting him housing with young women, according to the lawsuit.

Tubbs eventually pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in a separate case and received a 15-year prison sentence in a men’s facility, in part due to Sanna’s efforts.

Sanna’s lawsuit details additional allegations of retaliatory harassment by Gascón and his administration, and allegations that animosty toward Sanna created a hostile work environment and limited his ability to perform his duties. Following frivolous complaints, investigations, and disputes over cases, Gascón demoted Sanna to a lesser position with a lower salary.

Sanna was relegated to working misdemeanor cases, despite his prosecutorial experience and performance history. His lawsuit against Gascón is being handled by Dhillon Law Group, a national law firm headed by well-known conservative attorney Harmeet Dhillon.

“In the Tubbs case, Deputy District Attorney Shea Sanna did nothing but seek to uphold his ethical and legal duties to present all relevant evidence to the court. Yet because this evidence conflicted with D.A. Gascón’s recently enacted policies and public statements, Gascón sought to suppress it,” Dhillon Law Group attorney Anthony Fusaro said in a statement. “When Mr. Sanna informed his supervisors and the public of Gascón’s suppression efforts, Gascón responded with a relentless retaliation campaign against Mr. Sanna that persists to this day.”

Sanna is asking for an injunction to protect him from further retaliation by Gascón and his administration. He is also seeking damages for emotional distress, economic harm, and professional loss.

The scandal-plagued Gascón is running for re-election in November against former federal prosecutor Nathan Hochman, who is vowing to restore public safety and effectively prosecute criminals.