Concealed guns probe: Records confirm big donor to Santa Clara County sheriff’s campaign was issued rare concealed weapons permit

SAN JOSE — A manager at an executive security firm received a concealed-weapon permit in Santa Clara County a few months after making by far the biggest single donation supporting Sheriff Laurie Smith’s 2018 re-election, newly released records show, a contribution that is a now a focal point of a corruption probe aimed at her office.

The $45,000 donation by Martin Nielsen, who is listed as the executive protection operations and executive projects manager for Seattle-based AS Solution, was made in October 2018 to the Santa Clara County Public Safety Alliance, an independent-expenditure committee that backed Smith’s bid for a sixth term. He was issued a concealed-weapon permit on March 26.

Also according to Santa Clara County concealed-carry weapons permit records, released to this news organization on Thursday in response to a public-records request, a woman who recently worked as an executive protection agent for AS Solution was issued a permit the same day as Nielsen.

There are no related donation records linked to that agent, whose LinkedIn page states that she began working at Facebook this month as an “Advance Security Manager.” AS Solution counts Facebook among its security clients.

Nielsen’s donation dwarfs most of the contributions made either to the committee or directly to Smith’s re-election campaign. The DA investigation first surfaced publicly after a search warrant was served Aug. 2 at the Sheriff’s Office headquarters in North San Jose. This news organization has since confirmed with sources familiar with the investigation that at least one other warrant was served on a high-ranking supervisor in Smith’s office.

The CCW permit issue has long been a source of criticism for the Sheriff’s Office, and it has dogged Smith every time she has run for re-election in the last decade. Residents over the years have complained about the permitting process and said that the permits appeared to be reserved for high-profile people and VIP types.

The records released Thursday show that at least 100 permits are active in the county, many of which are renewed permits held by judges, prosecutors and reserve police officers.

Of the civilian permits currently active — they have a two-year life span before requiring a renewal evaluation — seven recipients who had permits either issued or renewed in 2019 donated to Smith’s campaign or an independent committee supporting her. In 2018, eight recipients fit that description.

Between 2014 and 2019, 150 individuals had permits renewed or issued by the department, 37 of those people who appear to have donated directly to Smith’s campaign.

The donations ranged from $100 to $1,000, and some of the civilian permits date back decades, some even before Smith was elected sheriff.

Two other individuals who have held concealed weapons permits in recent years also donated to support Smith both directly to her campaign and the independent committee: Santa Clara Valley Water board director and match.com founder Gary Kremen and Nvidia executive Chris Malachowsky.

Kremen and Malachowsky each gave the independent expenditure committee $5,000 in October 2018, according to campaign finance records. Malachowsky also gave $1,000 directly to Smith’s campaign in 2018.

Nielsen, who records show had made no known previous donations to Smith re-election efforts, did not respond to an email seeking comment as of Friday afternoon. AS Solution, which has been contracted to protect prominent executives in the Silicon Valley tech world, has pledged its full cooperation with the District Attorney’s Office and said an internal investigation was launched.

“AS Solution employees are required to obey the laws, rules and regulations of all countries where we conduct business, and any allegations of improper conduct by employees are treated very seriously,” reads a statement from AS Solution that has been issued in response to past inquiries. “We will take appropriate action based on the outcome of our investigation.”

James Campagna, treasurer for the Public Safety Alliance, said the committee has been supporting “pro-public safety” candidates since 2005.

“Any contributor who believes their support would result in some quid pro quo would be extremely misguided. I’ve known Sheriff Smith for over 20 years, she would never condone anyone in her support to do anything unethical or contrary to the law,” Campagna said in a statement Thursday.

But sources have confirmed investigators are indeed exploring a possible “quid pro quo” linking political support and the issuing of permits by Smith’s office, which has been relatively stingy about granting the privilege compared to most neighboring counties.

The District Attorney’s Office has refrained from commenting in detail on the investigation aside from acknowledging the August search warrant. The probe is being led by the DA’s Public Integrity Unit, which on its website states that it “supervises the investigation of cases involving corruption of public officials and employees in their official capacities or in the performance of their duties and initiates criminal charges when appropriate.”

The number of permits annually approved by the department varied over the last six years, ranging from 33 in 2014 to 72 in 2015.

The sources also said that the probe had been in the works for some time and that some of Smith’s trusted advisers in the agency are being scrutinized.

The Sheriff’s Office responded to a request for comment on the records release by referring to a brief statement it issued in August, in which officials said they are cooperating with investigators and asserted their “extensive efforts to increase transparency and trust with the communities we serve and will continue these efforts going forward.”

Critics continue to harangue those transparency efforts, particularly with how the Sheriff’s Office determines which applicants pass muster. Reasons given by civilian permit holders include their statuses as former politicians and law-enforcement officers, working in a high-profile executive job, past threats to their life, a need to protect remote ranch property, and in at least one instance, the dangers of being a professional athlete.

Rejected applicants who have presented similar rationales for permits are miffed by what they have called an opaque process. Retired sheriff’s deputy Timothy Schreiner sued the Sheriff’s Office this summer over his denial, though his attorney said the timing was coincidental with the DA investigation and that they had not been contacted when they filed suit.

In 2011, another former deputy, Tom Scocca, sued Smith’s office in federal court after he was denied, and in 2016, the parties agreed to Scocca receiving a fresh permit evaluation. Records show that he has not been granted a permit in the ensuing years.

Chris Long, an unsuccessful multi-time applicant, said in an August interview that he and others like him felt as if their requests were buried almost as soon as they were received. He spent the first half of this year essentially browbeating the Sheriff’s Office into giving him an answer. His six-month wait for a “no” doubled the state law requiring that such applications be evaluated within 90 days, a situation that the Sheriff’s Office has broadly blamed on a backlog.

And since the agency has not yet fulfilled a request for records or figures for how many applications it has received and denied, it remains unclear just how selective Smith’s office is in issuing the permits or just how big that backlog is. The applications for most of the active permit holders also have not been disclosed despite historically being publicly available. Deputy Michael Low wrote in an email Thursday that “additional records are being prepared for release and will be provided on a rolling basis.”

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