Pamela Price’s own spokesperson alleged the District Attorney said her enemies were “the media and the Asians.” That is not a rumor. It is in a sworn lawsuit. Patti Lee, Price’s public information officer and a veteran communications professional, alleged she was fired for two reasons: being Asian American, and refusing to help hide, delete, or alter public records that journalists were legally entitled to see. She said anti-Asian remarks in the office were not rare. They were routine. She alleged Price made the “media and the Asians” comment in front of a witness. She also alleged Price accused her of secretly working with Asian American activists and Carl Chan, the organizer driving the recall. Alameda County later paid Lee $800,000 to settle the case. A second lawsuit from former Chief Inspector Craig Chew said the same culture existed at the top. Chew, a 22-year veteran who ran a unit of more than 60 sworn officers, alleged he was warned by a member of Price’s own campaign team that she “did not trust Asians” and that he would have to earn her trust. His filing alleged Price was driven by an outspoken desire to install African-American loyalists in leadership regardless of merit, and that she viewed Asian Americans through stereotypes of being sneaky and untrustworthy. Then came the political theater. After the Jasper Wu fallout had already shattered her standing with Asian-American families, Price scheduled a press conference at the Oakland Asian Cultural Center to announce she had adopted a “Chinese name” for AAPI Heritage Month. It was widely condemned as pandering. The event was canceled. This is how she treated one of the largest and most politically engaged communities in Alameda County. Not as constituents. As enemies to manage, silence, or pander to after the damage was done.

Pamela Price is accused of demanding $25,000 from a political critic at a police officer’s funeral. Mario Juarez had run a website attacking her. After the funeral of Oakland Police Officer Tuan Le, Price allegedly pulled him aside and offered to “help” him with an old legal matter in exchange for “love and support.” That support, according to court filings and sworn witness statements, meant a $25,000 cash donation to her campaign against the recall. When Juarez refused, she allegedly warned that he would be hearing from her office soon and that “it won’t be pretty.” Exactly two weeks later, her office revived a dormant 2022 check fraud case. They removed a prosecutor who had already found insufficient evidence to proceed and charged Juarez with a felony. His defense filed for dismissal citing vindictive prosecution and outrageous government conduct. A formal State Bar complaint followed alleging ethical violations and criminal extortion. This was not an isolated episode. Price also targeted her own former prosecutor, Amilcar “Butch” Ford. After Ford resigned and publicly accused her of trying to “hide your transgressions like a thief in the night,” she filed a rare misdemeanor criminal complaint against him. A Superior Court judge recused her entire office from the case, finding her comments far outside the bounds of normal criminal proceedings. The California Attorney General’s office then took over and dismissed all charges, citing insufficiency of the evidence and the interest of justice. This is the pattern. A District Attorney accused of soliciting campaign cash from a critic at a slain officer’s funeral, then using the power of her office to retaliate when refused. A District Attorney who charged a whistleblower prosecutor only to watch the state Attorney General throw the case out. Alameda County voters saw it. They recalled her by 63 percent. This is the permanent record.

Pamela Price’s own prosecutors quit because they said they could no longer ethically do their jobs. Charly Weissenbach, a veteran trial attorney, wrote that she no longer felt capable of fulfilling her legal and ethical duties under this administration. Jill Nerone resigned and said she could not adequately and ethically protect the rights of victims. Stacie Pettigrew walked out after Price forced through a soft plea deal for a serial killer. These were not ordinary departures. Experienced prosecutors who had spent years putting violent offenders away concluded they could not remain without violating their professional obligations. Price then compounded the damage. She fired the Chief Inspector, a highly decorated 22-year veteran who managed more than 60 sworn officers, and replaced him with Marcus Eric Lewis. Court filings show Lewis had not been Livescanned, had not undergone a background investigation, and had not passed the required POST medical or psychological exams when he was given the position. He had previously been forced out of the Oakland Police Department after an outside investigator formally found him untruthful under oath. Price removed a 22-year unblemished veteran and installed a man with a documented finding of dishonesty who had not even cleared basic hiring requirements. That is not reform. That is the calculated replacement of competence with loyalty. This is the record that led to her recall by 63 percent of voters.

Pamela Price put her boyfriend on the county payroll at $115,502 — after the FBI investigated him for extortion. Antwon Cloird was hired as a “senior program specialist” shortly after she took office. The job was never publicly posted. He was placed in an East Oakland office with the authority to identify prisoners for early release. A civilian with a direct romantic relationship to the District Attorney was presenting lists of inmates he wanted back on the street. That alone is pure corruption. But Cloird’s background made it indefensible. In 2015, while operating in Richmond, he was the subject of a federal investigation for shaking down local businesses. Richmond’s mayor, city manager, and police chief all suspected him of demanding “fees” ranging from $5,000 to $20,000. One sworn affidavit quoted him telling business owners, “you gots to pay to play.” He allegedly demanded $5,000 to expedite permits for a meat company and $20,000 from a restaurant owner seeking a liquor license. This is the man Pamela Price installed inside the District Attorney’s office and gave influence over who walks free. When the scandal broke, she refused to apologize. She accused critics of racism. She claimed her predecessor had also hired relatives. And she publicly described Cloird as a “symbol of hope” who had “overcome adversity.” This was not a lapse in judgment. It was a deliberate choice. She used her power to enrich her partner, ignored an FBI extortion probe, and handed him a role no ethical prosecutor would ever allow. Alameda County voters saw it. They recalled her by 63%. This is the permanent record of how she operated.

Pamela Price didn’t just fail victims — she chose killers over them. The murder of 23-month-old Jasper Wu exposed everything. The toddler was killed by a stray bullet while sleeping in his car seat during a rolling gang shootout on an Oakland freeway. The previous DA had charged the suspects with special circumstances that could have meant life without parole. Price removed those enhancements the moment she took office. Then an internal email leaked. Price was exploring “non-carceral forms of accountability” for the men who killed the child — meaning she was actively looking for ways to keep them out of prison. When the Wu family and the Asian-American community demanded answers and asked to meet with her, she refused. Her office issued a cold, defensive statement claiming it was impossible for a DA to meet with every victim. While a mother grieved the murder of her baby, Price was more concerned with shielding the killers from real consequences. This wasn’t an isolated failure. It was the pattern. In the Delonzo Logwood case, Logwood was accused of three separate murders in 2008 — a murder-for-hire, a carjacking homicide, and the targeted killing of a witness. Price’s office offered him a plea deal for just 15 years on a single voluntary manslaughter charge. Alameda County Superior Court Judge Mark McCannon rejected it from the bench in open court, stating he could not accept a deal that trivialized the loss of three lives. Price’s response was to launch a public campaign to disqualify the judge from hearing any cases her office prosecuted. She even barred her own lead prosecutor from attending the eventual sentencing. Logwood walked away with 12 years. Lorie Mohs, whose 26-year-old son Blake was shot and killed while working loss prevention at a Pleasanton Home Depot, became one of Price’s most outspoken critics. She said plainly that the District Attorney “doesn’t do anything for victims except revictimize them.” The family had to fight Price’s office just to get appropriate charges. They eventually accepted a plea because it couldn’t be appealed — they simply wanted closure. Price’s office gave them silence and obstruction instead. The most egregious case was Dijon Holifield. He was charged with four murders in a six-week crime spree in Oakland in 2008. The case against him was overwhelming — DNA, ballistics, and the testimony of 26 witnesses. Price still forced through a plea deal so lenient that lead prosecutor Stacie Pettigrew resigned on the spot. Pettigrew publicly condemned her, stating Price “gave them the deal of a lifetime and he’ll be out next year,” leaving the mothers of the victims “shattered and confused.” This is who Pamela Price was as District Attorney. She didn’t merely deprioritize victims. She repeatedly overrode her own prosecutors, attacked judges who pushed back, refused to meet grieving families, and negotiated deals that put violent offenders back on the street while mothers buried their children. The empathy deficit wasn’t a bug in her administration — it was the operating system. Alameda County voters saw it clearly. They recalled her by 63%. This is the record.

Ryan LaLonde helped install Pamela Price as Alameda County District Attorney. Then he ran from her the second things got messy. In 2021, LaLonde was one of the key operatives digging up dirt on the previous DA, filing aggressive public records requests that triggered an FPPC complaint and a Grand Jury investigation. When Price won in 2022, he was rewarded with the top communications job in her administration. He lasted barely two months. He publicly resigned after Price hired her romantic partner — a man previously investigated by the FBI for extortion — into a six-figure county position. LaLonde went on the record whining that he “begged not for it to happen” and questioned how he could defend an administration that hired a significant other while claiming to clean up past improprieties. Then he hit the podcast circuit to trash the very administration he helped build. This is the quality of operator who surrounded Pamela Price. Now LaLonde is President of the Alameda Unified School District Board, and he’s pulling the same moves at a larger scale. In early 2026, he personally brokered a teacher contract that handed the union a 6% immediate raise, ongoing 3% increases, and full healthcare coverage. While doing it, he openly admitted the district was “spending down a portion of the cushion we maintain to protect against a sudden or long-term economic downturn” and “pre-committing any additional one-time money coming in the next few years.” He didn’t just make a tough call. He deliberately burned through reserves and locked in future costs to buy labor peace and political credit. That’s not leadership. That’s fiscal recklessness dressed up as compassion. LaLonde’s entire brand is built on weaponizing his identity as a gay man raised in a same-sex household to push aggressive equity policies and cultural mandates while positioning himself as the ethical adult in the room. He helped create the Price disaster, bailed when it threatened his image, and now lectures everyone else about values while raiding school district reserves. This is what happens when you elevate people whose primary skill is managing optics and navigating progressive networks rather than delivering results. LaLonde helped put Pamela Price in power. Then he proved he’ll abandon anyone the moment it stops being convenient for him.

Two months into her job as District Attorney, Pamela Price decided the best way to improve the criminal justice system was to disarm her own prosecutors. Through Special Directive 23-01, she made probation or the lowest possible prison sentence the default offer for nearly every crime in Alameda County. She banned her deputies from pursuing sentencing enhancements for guns, gangs, and bail violations without her personal approval. She also ordered them to drop prior strikes at the charging stage, effectively killing California’s Three Strikes law for repeat violent offenders. The policy even applied retroactively. The logic was simple and disastrous. Without the threat of real consequences, defense attorneys had zero reason to cut deals. Why plead guilty when the worst-case scenario was already capped at the lightest possible sentence? What was once a fast-moving system built on plea negotiations turned into a clogged backlog of cases heading toward trial. Her solution to this self-created chaos was to add more bureaucracy. Any deviation from the ultra-lenient default required approval from multiple supervisors, including Price herself. California law gives prosecutors 48 hours to file charges on someone in custody. Her office couldn’t meet that deadline because her own policy had turned routine decisions into multi-layered approval nightmares. The result was not reform. It was failure on a massive scale. Over 1,000 misdemeanor cases, including domestic violence cases, were dismissed because the statute of limitations expired while her office was too paralyzed to act. Victims who came forward expecting justice were ultimately told, through pure negligence, that their cases no longer mattered. Under the previous administration, prosecutors used enhancements and prior strikes as leverage to secure guilty pleas and protect the public. Under Price, those tools were stripped away, repeat violent offenders received sentences nearly identical to first-time offenders, and the system broke under the weight of her own policy. This wasn’t an unfortunate side effect. It was the direct and predictable consequence of a directive she chose to implement.

George and Alex Soros helped install recalled Pamela Price as Alameda County District Attorney. What followed was a complete breakdown of the office and a betrayal of the victims she was supposed to protect. Soros-linked networks spent over $190,000 backing her through national progressive prosecutor groups. That money was used to put someone in power who would carry out a specific ideological agenda, not someone chosen by local residents based on their actual record or priorities. Once in office, the consequences became impossible to ignore. Her administration allowed the statute of limitations to expire on over 1,000 misdemeanor cases, including domestic violence cases, because the office was too dysfunctional to process them. She hired her boyfriend, a man who had previously been under FBI investigation for extortion, and gave him influence over early prisoner releases. She also overrode her own prosecutors to push through lenient deals for violent offenders, even when the evidence against them was overwhelming. In the Dijon Holifield case, 4 people were murdered in a 6 week period. The case against him was exceptionally strong, yet Price forced through a plea deal so favorable that the lead prosecutor resigned in protest. In the Jasper Wu case, she removed special circumstances from the men responsible for killing a TODDLER and explored options that would have allowed them to avoid significant prison time. When the family sought to meet with her, she refused. This level of failure and disregard for victims was not an accident. It was the direct result of placing someone in the District Attorney’s office whose political rise was funded and supported by George and Alex Soros’s national operation. The same network that has spent hundreds of millions reshaping prosecutor offices across the country helped put Price in power in Alameda County, and the damage to public safety and victims followed. Alameda County voters eventually recalled her by a historic margin. But the fact that she was elevated in the first place shows what happens when outside ideological funding overrides local accountability.

Pamela Price spent decades building a career and a political brand as a civil rights attorney who fought hostile work environments, retaliation, and the abuse of power. She sued employers for creating toxic workplaces. She represented victims of wrongful termination. She took a landmark case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that patterns of harassment and discrimination should be taken seriously — even when individual acts fell outside the normal filing window. She also made her personal story central to her political identity. She repeatedly told voters she was a survivor of domestic violence and the juvenile justice system. She used that narrative to position herself as someone who uniquely understood both the accused and victims of abuse. Then she became District Attorney. And she did the exact opposite of everything she once claimed to stand for. Under Price, multiple senior staff members filed lawsuits alleging they were subjected to retaliation, a hostile work environment, and wrongful termination inside her own office. The same woman who once made a living holding powerful institutions accountable for creating toxic workplaces was now the defendant in lawsuits accusing her of doing the same thing. Even more damning was what happened to actual victims of domestic violence. During her 2022 campaign, domestic violence advocates protested outside courthouses because they feared she would stop prosecuting misdemeanor domestic violence cases. They were right to be worried. Her administration allowed the statute of limitations to expire on over 1,000 misdemeanor cases, including domestic violence cases. Not because of some deliberate policy to reduce incarceration. Because her office was so dysfunctional and mismanaged that cases simply died. Victims who came forward were ultimately told — through inaction — that their cases no longer mattered. The woman who weaponized her own story as a domestic violence survivor to win power then presided over a system that systematically denied justice to hundreds of other domestic violence victims. This is not a story of good intentions that fell short. This is the story of someone who built an entire public persona around fighting exactly the kind of abuses she later enabled and participated in. She didn’t fail to live up to her own standards. She actively became the thing she once claimed to fight against.