A major trial over an Orange County homeless services center was suddenly derailed this month when O.C. Supervisor Andrew Do, who was testifying as a witness, failed to disclose he’s married to a high-ranking judge at the court, according to court records filed this week and reviewed by LAist.
It’s the second high-profile instance to emerge this month of Do not disclosing a relevant family relationship during official proceedings. Last week, an LAist investigation reported that Do voted to direct $3.1 million in subcontracts to a mental health center led by his daughter Rhiannon Do — without disclosing his family connection.
His latest failure to disclose resulted in a mistrial Nov. 16 in an Orange County Superior Court lawsuit the city of Santa Ana originally filed in early 2020 against the nonprofit Mental Health Association of Orange County. The suit seeks to shut down the association’s homeless services drop-in center in the city, which is funded by the county.
The city contends the center violates zoning laws and is causing a nuisance and public safety harms to surrounding communities. The nonprofit operator disputes that, saying the center is not a nuisance and has not caused a major burden on city emergency services. It also says it’s a mental health treatment center that state law protects from discrimination by city zoning laws.
County staff say the center offers valuable services for unhoused people. The county is not a party in the case, though Do testified as a witness. At least one other county official was on the witness list, but hadn't yet been called to testify when the mistrial was declared.
On the morning of Nov. 16, Do took the witness stand. It was 14 days into the trial, which had stretched across five months this year. Do testified until the lunch break as a witness called by the defense, according to court records.
When court resumed, O.C. Superior Court Judge John C. Gastelum said he learned over the break that Do is married to another judge at the court, Cheri Pham.
“And she’s not only a colleague, she’s our current Assistant Presiding Judge,” Gastelum said.
That makes Pham a voting member of the court’s governing panel — known as the executive committee. In that role, she steps in to supervise the court when the presiding judge is unavailable, according to the court's rules.
Gastelum declared a mistrial after reviewing ethical rules and concluding, “I cannot be fair and impartial.” That means a whole new trial will have to start from scratch under a different judge, unless an appeals court decides otherwise. Gastelum said in court that he wished Do had disclosed his family connection.
I want to stress I didn’t know about [any] of this information until today. Certainly, Mr. Do didn’t say anything when he took the stand, which under better circumstances, I would have hoped he might have.
“I want to stress I didn’t know about [any] of this information until today. Certainly, Mr. Do didn’t say anything when he took the stand, which under better circumstances, I would have hoped he might have,” Gastelum said, according to a transcript in an appeals court filing.
“But after consideration of all the circumstances and the applicable ethical rules, I have concluded that I cannot be fair and impartial. I’m going to recuse myself from this case and declare a mistrial,” he said.
The mistrial came one week after LAist first contacted Do for comment regarding why he had not disclosed that his daughter led a mental health center he voted to approve millions for.
Gastelum’s mistrial decision sets back the trial for months, with the next court date scheduled for February. That hearing will be followed at some point by a start date for a new trial.
The litigation has already been costly. As of July, Santa Ana city officials had approved up to $1 million in contracts for its attorneys on the case, according to a city spokesperson.
Re-doing the trial would be “a staggering waste of the court’s and the parties’ time and resources,” the Mental Health Association of O.C. wrote in a petition to a state appeals court.
The 48-page request Monday asks the appeals court to overturn the mistrial ruling as improper. The nonprofit attached over 500 pages of exhibits as evidence.
As Gastelum discussed next steps in court on Nov. 16, he said he was frustrated.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he told an attorney for the defendant just after declaring the mistrial, according to the transcript. “You can’t be any more or any less frustrated than I am.”
“I wasn’t looking at you, Your Honor,” replied Isaiah Weedn, a defense attorney for the Mental Health Association of O.C. “I’m just frustrated with the circumstances. I’m not blaming you, Your Honor.”
The mistrial came up at Tuesday’s O.C. Board of Supervisors meeting, which was dominated by debate over whether to keep the homeless services center operating after its current contract ends at the end of December.
Supervisor Vicente Sarmiento — who formerly was mayor of Santa Ana — asked the county’s top lawyer, Leon Page, to summarize what happened with the mistrial.
“That’s my understanding as well, that Judge Gastelum, who was presiding over the trial, after 14 days of testimony did abruptly recuse himself from the case, claiming that he could no longer be impartial,” Page said.
Do did not comment about the mistrial at the meeting. He also didn’t respond to LAist’s request for comment Tuesday or efforts to speak with him in person during two breaks in the meeting. [Note: He’d also previously declined to comment on LAist’s reporting on Do not disclosing his daughter’s leadership of a nonprofit receiving a multimillion dollar subcontract with Orange County.]
Earlier in the meeting, Sarmiento noted that he too has a family connection to the homeless services center case — his wife works for the disability rights law firm that represents unhoused people who joined the case in support of the Mental Health Association of O.C. Sarmiento said he disclosed that connection to the Santa Ana city attorney when he was mayor — as well as to the county’s top lawyer after he became a supervisor — and that both have said he can participate in votes about the association.
Ultimately, supervisors voted 3 to 2 to approve another one-year contract for the homeless service center while the legal battle continues.
Orange County supervisors had been scheduled to vote Tuesday on whether to update the county’s ethics rules around contracting, as part of a new contract policy manual for county officials for 2024.
O.C. supervisors oversee billions in annual taxpayer spending on contracts and subcontracts. And they’ve been preparing in recent weeks to vote on the yearly update to the county’s rules around how they award contracts. Those rules include what kinds of conflicts of interest are required to be disclosed and which conflicts are banned.
In the wake of LAist’s investigation, Sarmiento and O.C. Supervisor Katrina Foley said they want to see requirements added to disclose officials’ known family relationships with contractors.
“In the interest of disclosure so that everybody knows what’s happening, and isn’t caught off guard, I think it’s important,” Foley said.
But the agenda item on the contract policy was deleted late Monday before the meeting.
The county official who requested the deletion, CEO Frank Kim, has not returned messages asking why it was deleted and who asked him to pull the item from the agenda.
Currently, the county’s conflict of interest rules adhere to the state’s legal definition of “immediate family,” which restricts officials from being involved in steering taxpayer money to their own children who are under 18.
The state law doesn’t apply when children of elected officials are adults.
Do and Supervisor Doug Chaffee oversaw the drafting of the contract policy updates, as ad-hoc committee members.
The proposed changes Do and Chaffee put forward keep the current definition of “immediate family” that doesn’t include officials’ adult children.
Any supervisor can propose changes to the manual, if the item comes back at a future meeting.
Do and his 22-year-old daughter who runs the mental health center, Rhiannon Do, have not returned LAist’s messages for comment over the past two and a half weeks. Nor has Dr. Clayton Chau, who led the county Health Care Agency that officially recommended the funding for the center, which was approved by Do and other O.C. supervisors.
Rhiannon Do is also a law student at U.C. Irvine. She graduated from U.C. Davis in December 2021.
In a statement reacting to LAist’s investigation, two immigrant advocacy groups called the findings “troubling” and urging an independent investigation.
“We strongly condemn the alleged corruption and egregious misuse of public funds by Supervisor Andrew Do and former O.C. Health Care Agency Director Dr. Clayton Chau,” wrote VietRISE and the Harbor Institute for Immigrant & Economic Justice.
The groups called for “an independent investigation and audit by the appropriate authorities into Supervisor Do and all contracts involving Dr. Chau during his term as O.C. Health Care Agency Director.”
Chau previously was fined by state authorities for failing to disclose $12,000 in drug company speaking fees that he received when he directed mental health and addiction programs at CalOptima, the county’s public health insurance plan for low-income residents, according to Voice of OC.
During Tuesday’s board of supervisors meeting, Cypress City Councilmember Frances Marquez spoke during public comment, after waiting for over five hours to speak.
Marquez referenced LAist’s investigation and Do’s failure to disclose his daughter’s connection to the mental health center before voting to award millions in subcontracts. Marquez is running for Do’s seat on the board of supervisors in next year’s election — Do is termed out and has endorsed one of his chiefs of staff, Van Tran, in the election.
Supervisor Do had a duty at minimum to disclose the conflict of interest and recuse himself from voting on this specific instance. He owed it to the public to be transparent and honest.
Marquez said the supervisors need to do more to secure the public’s trust.
“It is a betrayal of the public trust,” Marquez said. “Supervisor Do had a duty at minimum to disclose the conflict of interest and recuse himself from voting on this specific instance. He owed it to the public to be transparent and honest.”
In the days since publication, the LAist investigation has been the focus of at least four lengthy videos by Vietnamese language TV programs and YouTubers.
LAist previously reported that Connie Chung Joe, the CEO of Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, said she contacted the FBI about the subcontracts to the mental health center led by Do’s daughter. Joe said she reached out to the FBI after community nonprofit leaders raised significant concerns about it.
When asked about this, FBI spokesperson Laura Eimiller told LAist her agency doesn’t confirm or deny the existence of investigations.
Aside from its contracting policies, the county has a separate code of ethics that broadly bans giving special advantages to anyone. And it bans favoritism toward any official’s family member when it comes to being appointed into county service.
The county’s spokespeople have not answered questions from LAist about Do’s role in selecting his daughter’s mental health center and whether the county ethics code was followed.
Last year, Do paid the largest conflict of interest fine in California since 2019, according to state records.
Much of the fine was for Do not disclosing his role in fundraising that ultimately paid for work by Peter Pham, who later co-founded Do’s daughter’s mental health center.
Read our original investigation: Top OC Official Helped Direct Millions To His Daughter’s Center Without Disclosing Family Connection
