WEBVTT - Bob Lee Part 5: Tech vs. San Francisco 0:00:02.720 --> 0:00:07.560 Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News. 0:00:09.320 --> 0:00:12.400 Previously on We don't know exactly what happened yet, but 0:00:12.480 --> 0:00:15.680 I think we suspect and I would bet dollars to 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:18.239 dimes that the story is very similar to a case 0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:20.680 we had in La recently where a young woman was 0:00:20.720 --> 0:00:24.440 basically stabbed for no reason by a psychotic homeless person. 0:00:24.600 --> 0:00:28.520 San Francisco police arrested thirty eight year old Nima Monmeni. 0:00:28.840 --> 0:00:32.400 Suspect is another tech executive who knew lye. 0:00:32.680 --> 0:00:35.199 While we're not going to release any additional facts at 0:00:35.200 --> 0:00:38.800 this time, I must point out that reckless and irresponsible 0:00:38.840 --> 0:00:43.839 statements like those contained in mister Musk's tweet that assumed 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:48.000 incorrect circumstances about mister Lee's death served to mislead the 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:52.320 world in their perceptions of San Francisco and also negatively 0:00:52.360 --> 0:00:55.800 impact the pursuit of justice for victims of crime. 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:59.120 A jury has just found Nimo Momenti guilty of second 0:00:59.160 --> 0:01:02.160 degree murder in killing a cash app founder Bob Lee. 0:01:02.440 --> 0:01:04.480 Didn't turn out to be a first degree murder guilty. 0:01:04.520 --> 0:01:05.800 It is second degree murder. 0:01:08.560 --> 0:01:11.160 When you spend a year reporting out a murder story, 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:13.880 you accidentally learn a thing or two about how to 0:01:13.880 --> 0:01:17.039 commit crimes. For example, if. 0:01:16.880 --> 0:01:19.800 You commit a serious crime in San Francisco, do not 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:24.080 cross a bridge. My god, there's bridge tolls, there's surveillance cameras, 0:01:24.120 --> 0:01:27.160 there's plate readers. If you commit a crime and you 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:29.920 cross a bridge in any direction, you're getting picked up. 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:33.679 This is my source from the police department. He has 0:01:33.800 --> 0:01:36.840 deep knowledge of the Bob Lee murder case, and he 0:01:36.920 --> 0:01:40.479 wants to remain anonymous. We're having a voice actor read 0:01:40.520 --> 0:01:44.920 what he told us, and he said something surprising that 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:47.880 the police figured out that the main suspect was Nima 0:01:47.880 --> 0:01:49.800 mong Many almost immediately. 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:53.080 I believe that his vehicle was picked up on a 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:56.800 building surveillance camera first, and at that point, okay, we 0:01:56.880 --> 0:01:58.840 have a vehicle near a homicide scene. 0:01:59.040 --> 0:02:00.960 Let's see where a vehicle is traveling. 0:02:02.000 --> 0:02:04.960 Once police had a photo of the car, they pulled 0:02:04.960 --> 0:02:09.360 a DMV record, and then they had just about everything else. 0:02:09.760 --> 0:02:12.720 We have a suspect, we run their criminal histories, we 0:02:12.840 --> 0:02:15.880 run their driving history, we run their vehicles that are 0:02:15.880 --> 0:02:18.000 linked to them, and any firearms as well. 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.160 The department had put together a full profile sheet on 0:02:22.240 --> 0:02:26.040 Nimo MOMENTI just over forty eight hours after Bobley was stabbed, 0:02:26.520 --> 0:02:30.000 complete with pictures of Nima smiling into the camera pulled 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:34.920 from his social media profiles. The information was kept tightly 0:02:35.000 --> 0:02:39.440 under wraps. Only a few specialized units within San Francisco 0:02:39.480 --> 0:02:43.959 Police knew his identity. Even many cops themselves weren't sure 0:02:43.960 --> 0:02:44.560 what to believe. 0:02:45.160 --> 0:02:49.280 When there's a lack of information put out through official channels, Cops, 0:02:49.360 --> 0:02:52.000 like anybody else, liked to gossip and try to come 0:02:52.080 --> 0:02:53.239 up with their own answers. 0:02:53.680 --> 0:02:55.639 There was all kinds of speculation. 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:58.720 There are plenty of cops here who jumped on the 0:02:58.720 --> 0:03:01.560 bandwagon of it was a homeless guy that stabbed him, 0:03:01.760 --> 0:03:04.880 because that's what was tweeted out by somebody I know. 0:03:04.960 --> 0:03:07.720 I heard somebody else bring up it was probably a 0:03:07.720 --> 0:03:11.040 B girl thing. That's from the California penal code six 0:03:11.200 --> 0:03:13.160 forty seven B, which is prostitution. 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:17.320 We call them b girls. Rich guy, super late at night. 0:03:17.760 --> 0:03:19.560 It's not like it could have been a robbery. But 0:03:19.760 --> 0:03:21.520 why was he down there in the first place. 0:03:26.680 --> 0:03:31.239 During this time, misinformation was running wild, and city officials 0:03:31.240 --> 0:03:33.480 were getting it from all directions. 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:34.600 It was a tough time. 0:03:34.840 --> 0:03:36.280 It was a tough time for all of us. 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:39.680 That's Brooke Jenkins, the District Attorney of San Francisco. 0:03:40.080 --> 0:03:42.240 There was a lot of pressure on the police who 0:03:43.040 --> 0:03:46.840 not only saw that case, but to investigate it in 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:50.560 a way that made it fool proof. Multiple of us 0:03:50.640 --> 0:03:53.240 were up for reelection very soon. 0:03:53.960 --> 0:03:57.000 The next year, the mayor d A. Jenkins, and many 0:03:57.000 --> 0:04:00.320 other city leaders would all be up for reelection. So 0:04:00.400 --> 0:04:04.240 they wanted to squash this narrative that San Francisco was 0:04:04.240 --> 0:04:07.880 a failed city led by buffoons who were so useless 0:04:08.040 --> 0:04:10.680 and the neft that they allowed this great tech guy 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:13.840 to get killed. But also, this was not the kind 0:04:13.880 --> 0:04:17.400 of case you could lose. You needed a conviction, so 0:04:17.440 --> 0:04:18.640 they needed to be thorough. 0:04:19.200 --> 0:04:22.640 You're trying to collect evidence before it's disposed of, before 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:25.600 somebody knows that you're on their heels. 0:04:26.960 --> 0:04:29.400 What she told me was that some city officials wanted 0:04:29.400 --> 0:04:32.520 to announce, hey, we know who the killer is much 0:04:32.600 --> 0:04:34.840 more quickly, and this became an argument. 0:04:35.640 --> 0:04:39.520 Those were tough conversations, right when you're getting calls from 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:43.760 city hall that want to counter what we believe is 0:04:43.800 --> 0:04:46.440 the right thing to do for the case. It's hard 0:04:46.680 --> 0:04:48.960 because we all, you know, as public officials, have the 0:04:49.000 --> 0:04:52.640 same interest in wanting San Francisco's reputation to be what 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:56.200 it should be right to correct this false narrative, and 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.080 we all knew that during that timeframe, however long it took, 0:04:59.120 --> 0:05:03.240 which ended up being a few days, that this story 0:05:03.240 --> 0:05:06.080 and this narrative was going to continue and we were 0:05:06.120 --> 0:05:09.120 going to be under fire. And so that was a 0:05:09.160 --> 0:05:09.839 tough time. 0:05:12.080 --> 0:05:14.799 When I finally had some distance from Bob Lee's death 0:05:15.040 --> 0:05:18.320 and all the media and arguing surrounding it, it felt 0:05:18.360 --> 0:05:20.839 like I was waking up after a wild night out. 0:05:21.480 --> 0:05:24.880 I kept wondering, Wait, how did things get so out 0:05:24.920 --> 0:05:29.960 of control? Why did Bob's death receive so much scrutiny. 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:33.280 He was beloved and respected among people who knew him, sure, 0:05:33.839 --> 0:05:37.919 but not exactly a household name. So why did this 0:05:38.040 --> 0:05:41.479 blow up the way it did. The two things I 0:05:41.560 --> 0:05:45.000 kept coming back to were time and place. The same 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:46.719 way that people would say that Bob had been in 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:48.800 the wrong place at the wrong time at the end 0:05:48.800 --> 0:05:52.479 of his life, it seemed possible this whole story took 0:05:52.520 --> 0:05:55.919 off at the worst possible time, in the most explosive 0:05:55.960 --> 0:05:59.120 place it could have happened. I'm talking twenty twenty three 0:05:59.839 --> 0:06:03.120 of the tail end of COVID in San Francisco, a 0:06:03.160 --> 0:06:05.560 place people like to think of as the most liberal 0:06:05.600 --> 0:06:09.599 city in America. It seemed tailor made to touch on 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:13.960 America's most sensitive nerves. So that's what we're going to 0:06:14.040 --> 0:06:19.120 look at today. In the final episode of this series, 0:06:19.440 --> 0:06:22.279 We're going to take a step backwards, rub our eyes clear, 0:06:22.760 --> 0:06:25.040 and try to make sense of the time and place 0:06:25.200 --> 0:06:29.640 surrounding Bobley's murder, not thinking about it as an isolated event, 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:33.760 but as part of a continuum, one moment in a 0:06:33.800 --> 0:06:36.440 long string of developments that led us to where we 0:06:36.520 --> 0:06:42.919 are today. I'm sean when this is foundering the killing 0:06:42.960 --> 0:06:55.159 of Bobley. When Bobley died, there was one name that 0:06:55.279 --> 0:06:58.360 kept coming up, a name I hadn't thought about much 0:06:58.400 --> 0:07:00.560 the previous year, Boudin. 0:07:01.240 --> 0:07:05.200 I started getting threats, including death threats, related to his death. 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:09.440 Boudin was the San Franciscodier from January twenty twenty until 0:07:09.520 --> 0:07:13.600 July twenty twenty two. He was ousted nine months before 0:07:13.640 --> 0:07:18.800 Bob's murder in a contentious citywide recall vote. He had 0:07:18.840 --> 0:07:23.320 been elected on a very progressive platform of police reform, decarceration, 0:07:23.640 --> 0:07:27.240 and eliminating cash bail. He came into power during a 0:07:27.280 --> 0:07:30.960 moment when Black Lives Matter was gaining momentum. The phrase 0:07:31.040 --> 0:07:35.640 defund the police was a common rallying cry, and Boudin 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.320 wasn't alone. He was part of a wave of progressive 0:07:38.320 --> 0:07:42.440 prosecutors elected across the country, but he did sort of 0:07:42.480 --> 0:07:46.040 become the representative of the movement. His parents were in 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:50.480 the weather underground and incarcerated for decades for murder. He 0:07:50.600 --> 0:07:54.200 was raised by other notable leftists, and then he became 0:07:54.240 --> 0:07:58.120 a Yale law graduate, a Rhodes scholar, and a judicial clerk. 0:07:58.880 --> 0:08:03.080 His background was so intriguing and his credentials were so fancy. 0:08:03.600 --> 0:08:06.600 He was perfect for idolization or villainization. 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:10.680 I was used to being blamed for everything during my 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.600 time in office. Walgreens clothes, my fault, a coyote kill 0:08:14.680 --> 0:08:18.440 someone's dog in Golden Gate Park, my fault. Jokes on 0:08:18.480 --> 0:08:21.800 Twitter abounded. I mean, I think there were signs literally 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:24.840 put up around San Francisco saying that I had Overdoe 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:29.280 Library books. On Twitter, I think they suggested renaming the 0:08:29.320 --> 0:08:32.200 San Andreas Fault Line chase of Boudin's. 0:08:31.760 --> 0:08:39.080 Fault, something that hadn't occurred to me in the moment, 0:08:39.320 --> 0:08:43.480 but seems clearer now after time was how clearly Chase A. 0:08:43.520 --> 0:08:47.800 Boudin's eventual recall fed directly into the response to Bob 0:08:47.840 --> 0:08:52.960 Lee's murder. Let me explain. Boudin took office in January 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:56.480 twenty twenty, which I think is fair to say was 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.240 a strange time to take over law enforcement in the 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:00.320 major American city. 0:09:00.920 --> 0:09:02.959 I was sworn in just too much before COVID hit, 0:09:03.280 --> 0:09:06.600 and people started to associate me and my administration with 0:09:06.920 --> 0:09:09.160 a lot of the changes that were driven by COVID. 0:09:09.640 --> 0:09:12.280 Like we mentioned earlier in the series, in the first 0:09:12.280 --> 0:09:15.679 couple years of the pandemic, crime in San Francisco was 0:09:15.720 --> 0:09:21.119 trending down overall according to SFPD data, but the exceptions 0:09:21.120 --> 0:09:26.280 that stand out included Carthuff's burglaries and homicides, all of 0:09:26.360 --> 0:09:27.439 which increased a little. 0:09:28.040 --> 0:09:34.240 SFPA protesters gathered in San Francisco's Chinatown hoping District Attorney 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:34.480 Chase A. 0:09:34.520 --> 0:09:36.000 Boudin himself would show up to it. 0:09:36.120 --> 0:09:39.040 And while you can argue over the scope and amount 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:42.560 of coverage and whether it was appropriate, the reality is 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:45.319 that this small uptick in crime did get a lot 0:09:45.360 --> 0:09:45.840 of attention. 0:09:46.520 --> 0:09:49.360 I think that the most important one is his catch 0:09:49.400 --> 0:09:52.640 and release policies is soft on crime that allows the 0:09:52.679 --> 0:09:55.280 criminals to come out and coverment more and more crime. 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:58.000 Around that time, Like a lot of people I knew 0:09:58.200 --> 0:09:59.959 in Silicon Valley were like buying gun. 0:10:00.800 --> 0:10:03.600 This is Max Chafkin, my colleague and a reporter here 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.840 at Bloomberg. He covers the intersection of tech and politics. 0:10:08.160 --> 0:10:11.200 We're so worried about violent crime and so worried about 0:10:11.200 --> 0:10:14.480 their own safety, rightly or wrongly, that they were like 0:10:14.760 --> 0:10:15.640 arming themselves. 0:10:17.720 --> 0:10:20.160 The pandemic was a time when there was just a 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:24.920 lot of fear, obviously fear of disease, but then there 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:28.520 was also fear for personal safety and a broader fear 0:10:28.760 --> 0:10:32.360 among some tech leaders of a meddling left leaning government. 0:10:32.920 --> 0:10:35.240 A lot of the folks in the tech industry had 0:10:35.280 --> 0:10:38.400 come to the conclusion that like the government was out 0:10:38.440 --> 0:10:41.400 to get them, that the government was going to not 0:10:42.040 --> 0:10:43.559 on in the context of like violent crime, but the 0:10:43.640 --> 0:10:45.480 government was trying to like either put them in jail, 0:10:45.559 --> 0:10:47.880 or put them out of business or bankrupt them. 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.840 Which in the case of San Francisco wasn't a totally 0:10:51.920 --> 0:10:56.400 wild conclusion. Chase A. Boudin and the d'ae's office did 0:10:56.480 --> 0:11:00.360 go after tech companies. Six months into office, he sued 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:02.640 door Dash for misclassifying workers. 0:11:03.080 --> 0:11:07.520 When you prosecute tech companies for stealing wages from their employees, 0:11:08.280 --> 0:11:13.199 when you prosecute politicians for corruption, we prospect police or 0:11:13.320 --> 0:11:16.320 tested force, all of which we did. You make our lettomies. 0:11:16.840 --> 0:11:21.080 So a progressive da a city on lockdown with a 0:11:21.240 --> 0:11:25.320 small uptick in some forms of crime. There was almost 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:31.559 this vinegar and baking soda effect. Things felt combustible on edge. 0:11:32.360 --> 0:11:36.640 And there's one more factor at this particular time that 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:39.760 I do think contributed to how Boble's death would play 0:11:39.760 --> 0:11:44.240 out in the media. When the pandemic started, many tech 0:11:44.280 --> 0:11:47.280 workers were locked away at home on their computers all 0:11:47.320 --> 0:11:51.480 the time, and some of these people started new podcasts. 0:11:51.559 --> 0:11:55.439 All right, everybody, welcome to another edition of the All 0:11:55.480 --> 0:11:57.760 In Podcasts. We'll call this episode one. 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:00.400 This is a clip from the first episode of the 0:12:00.440 --> 0:12:05.200 All Limb podcast, launched on March nineteenth, twenty twenty. It's 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:08.640 hosted by four tech executives, the most prominent of which 0:12:08.720 --> 0:12:11.320 is David Sachs, a co founder of PayPal. 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:13.839 So hold on, So, for example, okay, let's take the 0:12:13.960 --> 0:12:16.240 Let's take the drug addict who commits a petty theft. 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:19.040 We all agree that person should go to treatment, not 0:12:19.160 --> 0:12:22.839 to jail or prison, right a nonviolent, of course offender. Okay, 0:12:23.240 --> 0:12:24.800 but how are you going to get that person to 0:12:24.800 --> 0:12:25.439 go to treatment? 0:12:26.360 --> 0:12:30.360 The podcast covers all sorts of things, AI, trade policy, 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:36.280 tech news, and very quickly it became massively popular, particularly 0:12:36.320 --> 0:12:40.000 in wealthy tech circles. In its first few days, more 0:12:40.040 --> 0:12:43.679 than one hundred thousand people had downloaded it, which by 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:48.480 podcast standards is genuinely pretty great. The politics on the 0:12:48.480 --> 0:12:52.640 show leaned right. There's constant frustration with the progressive policies 0:12:52.679 --> 0:12:54.440 in any number of spheres. 0:12:59.679 --> 0:13:02.520 Like these guys were really mad about stuff that had 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:05.040 nothing to do with San Francisco, but San Francisco is 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:09.520 just sitting there as this symbol of everything wrong with 0:13:09.600 --> 0:13:15.160 the United States. The forces of cultural progressivism, like black 0:13:15.160 --> 0:13:19.640 Lives Matter or views on diversity, equity and inclusion become 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:22.800 kind of coded to them as very anti tech. And 0:13:22.880 --> 0:13:25.280 so when you talk about like Chasa or these other 0:13:25.640 --> 0:13:28.080 San Francisco liberals, they could be talking about something that 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.240 sounds like it has absolutely nothing to do with tech, 0:13:30.600 --> 0:13:33.920 but like it's processed as part of this whole society 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:36.160 is trying to slow us down. They're going to make rules, 0:13:36.160 --> 0:13:38.520 They're not gonna let us build, and it becomes part 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:39.720 of this cultural battle. 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:43.760 Within the first six months, the hosts had turned their 0:13:43.800 --> 0:13:46.840 attention to what would become an ongoing target for them, 0:13:47.400 --> 0:13:49.720 Chase a Boudin and crime in San Francisco. 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:53.480 His agenda is decarceration. It's like a fire chief who 0:13:53.520 --> 0:13:56.360 doesn't believe in using water, yes, and. 0:13:57.160 --> 0:13:59.280 He is part of the burn it all down party. 0:14:00.480 --> 0:14:03.280 Within the year, they were challenging him to debates and 0:14:03.400 --> 0:14:07.960 raising money for his recall. One of the hosts, Jason Calacanis, 0:14:08.360 --> 0:14:11.880 even started to gofund me in twenty twenty one. It 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:14.720 raised more than fifty thousand dollars to pay for an 0:14:14.760 --> 0:14:18.599 investigative journalist to write about victims of crime in San Francisco. 0:14:19.480 --> 0:14:23.320 Here's David Sachs speaking to conservative commentator Megan Kelly on 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:26.160 her podcast, which also launched in twenty twenty. 0:14:26.440 --> 0:14:28.800 During COVID, he released forty percent of the jail population. 0:14:29.480 --> 0:14:32.240 And the crazy thing is he wrote an op ed 0:14:32.280 --> 0:14:35.760 in the La Time saying I'm making San Francisco safer 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.320 by emptying out the jails. That was literally the headline 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:42.440 of the piece that he wrote in the La Times. 0:14:42.480 --> 0:14:45.000 So he has this warp view that somehow he's going 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:45.480 to make all. 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:49.720 Us safer by emptying out the jails and not prosecuting anybody. 0:14:51.160 --> 0:14:54.560 The campaign to recall Chase A. Boudin started in twenty 0:14:54.680 --> 0:14:57.360 twenty one, when he had only been in office for 0:14:57.400 --> 0:15:01.160 a year. Many of Boudin's sharp his critics were rich 0:15:01.280 --> 0:15:06.600 tech moguls, including venture capitalists David Sachs, Gary Tan and 0:15:06.720 --> 0:15:11.120 Ron Conway. The recall campaign raised more than double what 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:15.520 Boudin's supporters were able to raise. Now, I want to 0:15:15.560 --> 0:15:18.400 take a moment to say that the people criticizing Boudin 0:15:18.640 --> 0:15:23.440 were not all venture capitalists and keyboard warriors. He also 0:15:23.480 --> 0:15:27.760 faced criticism from victims of crime, and in cases where 0:15:27.800 --> 0:15:31.560 the victims were dead, often their surviving family members cast 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:37.200 blame on him. There are many examples, including cases where 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:43.400 the perpetrators were repeat offenders, and so Boudin's detractors could say, see, 0:15:43.440 --> 0:15:45.560 he wanted to let these criminals out of jail, and 0:15:45.600 --> 0:15:51.960 now this happened. Also, San Francisco's large Chinese population rallied 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:55.560 against Boudin. During this time, there was a string of 0:15:55.560 --> 0:15:59.680 attacks on Asian Americans all over the country actually, but 0:16:00.040 --> 0:16:03.880 also in San Francisco, and this is something I feel 0:16:03.880 --> 0:16:09.680 really sensitive about because I'm Asian American. The stories were 0:16:09.680 --> 0:16:13.760 really gruesome and especially upsetting because many of the victims 0:16:13.800 --> 0:16:17.200 were elderly. An eighty four year old man who was 0:16:17.240 --> 0:16:20.880 pushed to the ground and died, another eighty four year 0:16:20.880 --> 0:16:22.800 old man who was kicked out of his walker at 0:16:22.840 --> 0:16:26.440 a bus stop, two women sixty three and eighty five 0:16:26.760 --> 0:16:30.520 stabbed at a bus stop. There are many more examples. 0:16:31.880 --> 0:16:35.160 Victim data released by the San Francisco Police showed that 0:16:35.240 --> 0:16:39.000 crime against Asian Americans in the city increased five hundred 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:45.360 percent in Boudin's first year in office. This was all 0:16:45.400 --> 0:16:48.240 a few years ago. I think that now that the 0:16:48.280 --> 0:16:51.680 fervor of the recall has passed, we can all acknowledge 0:16:51.720 --> 0:16:54.160 that Chase A. Boudin didn't shove and kill an eighty 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:57.200 four year old man, no more than Brook Jenkins killed 0:16:57.200 --> 0:17:01.960 Bob Lee. But at the time, these were fierce arguments 0:17:02.000 --> 0:17:05.960 that people were having, including very rich, very powerful people. 0:17:10.760 --> 0:17:14.000 Boudin lost the recall, and he left office in July 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:17.800 of twenty twenty two, nine months before Bobble was killed. 0:17:18.560 --> 0:17:21.879 I mean this was especially that recall was a really 0:17:21.920 --> 0:17:26.040 important example of these right wing tech guys setting a 0:17:26.080 --> 0:17:28.880 target and then achieving it, you know, like using their 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:30.600 power for like a political purpose. 0:17:31.040 --> 0:17:34.439 From my colleague Max Chafkin, the Boudin recall opened up 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.720 a new sphere of influence for tech leaders, one that 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:40.240 would become key in how the story of Bobbley would 0:17:40.280 --> 0:17:40.760 play out. 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:44.159 You could get really involved in San Francisco politics. You 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:48.119 could decide that, you know, the San Francisco school board 0:17:48.520 --> 0:17:50.760 was the thing that had to be changed, or like 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:54.960 San Francisco housing policy or San Francisco crime or whatever. 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.840 I think that the recall and then and then the 0:17:58.920 --> 0:18:02.600 murder of Bobb Lee came a gateway for a lot 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:06.680 of these guys who maybe had started to like express 0:18:06.800 --> 0:18:10.159 some of these feelings but hadn't considered the role that 0:18:10.160 --> 0:18:13.080 they could play and maybe even the power that they had. 0:18:13.840 --> 0:18:16.879 And the fervor around crime in San Francisco was still 0:18:16.960 --> 0:18:20.840 so strong. The anti Boudin sentiment was still recent enough 0:18:21.280 --> 0:18:23.919 that almost a year after he had been out of office, 0:18:24.320 --> 0:18:27.520 the former DA still had people tweeting at him things 0:18:27.640 --> 0:18:30.879 like Chase A Boudin and the criminal loving city council 0:18:30.960 --> 0:18:34.240 that enabled him and the lawless SF for years have 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:38.320 Bob's literal blood on their hands. Do you see a 0:18:38.320 --> 0:18:43.920 connection between Sacks and Musk both targeting you and spreading 0:18:44.280 --> 0:18:45.800 misinformation about Bob Lee? 0:18:46.160 --> 0:18:48.439 Of course, it's obvious. I mean, I'm not sure what 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:49.040 the question is. 0:18:49.440 --> 0:18:51.640 I wonder if you could draw a line between those 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:53.000 two for a listener. 0:18:53.359 --> 0:18:57.439 Well, Sax and Musk both spread this information about public 0:18:57.440 --> 0:19:01.080 safety in San Francisco in general, about criminal justice performed 0:19:01.119 --> 0:19:06.800 in general, and pushed a far right narrative about more 0:19:06.840 --> 0:19:10.480 police and longer incarceration being an effective way to promote safety. 0:19:11.119 --> 0:19:16.760 They also share an unshakable belief that they're right even 0:19:16.960 --> 0:19:20.000 when they've been proved wrong, and an unwillingness to admit 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:23.639 error or apologize when they spread misinformation. So all of 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:26.159 that is entirely consistent, both with the way the recall 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:29.639 targeted me and my policies and my supporters, and with 0:19:29.720 --> 0:19:33.159 the way that they handled the messaging around the Bobbly murder. 0:19:33.720 --> 0:19:40.080 This is quintessential cherry picking of facts or of anecdotes, 0:19:40.119 --> 0:19:41.960 not even facts, because in this case, all we knew 0:19:42.000 --> 0:19:47.600 was that he'd been killed, and seizing a situation or development, 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:50.480 and out of whole cloth, inventing facts around it to 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:53.800 fit a narrative, and once the whole cloth starts to 0:19:53.920 --> 0:19:59.119 unravel because it's not based in any reality, they just 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:01.159 move on and find something else that fits their narrative 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.040 and don't make any effort to apologize or to grapple 0:20:04.119 --> 0:20:06.920 with the reality of what happened. And in many ways, 0:20:07.480 --> 0:20:10.080 my recall was sort of a Canarian the coal mine 0:20:10.080 --> 0:20:12.880 for the direction that the tech elite were moving politically 0:20:12.920 --> 0:20:15.400 on a wide range of issues, not just criminal justice, 0:20:15.400 --> 0:20:20.320 but racial justice and gender equality, and party politics, taxes, 0:20:21.800 --> 0:20:26.040 foreign aid, I mean, higher education. The list goes on 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:26.400 and on. 0:20:28.400 --> 0:20:34.560 Musk didn't respond to our interview request. After Bobley's death, 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:39.120 and after the truth of what happened surfaced, very few 0:20:39.119 --> 0:20:43.760 of the folks who spread misinformation recanted publicly. In fact, 0:20:44.240 --> 0:20:47.840 all in host David Sachs became even more involved in 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:52.600 conservative politics. He became a major supporter and fundraiser for 0:20:52.680 --> 0:20:56.439 Donald Trump and later became the White House AI At 0:20:56.480 --> 0:21:00.840 cryptos Are. He's still on the podcast. He continues to 0:21:00.880 --> 0:21:04.639 talk about crime in cities with Democratic leaders and calls 0:21:04.680 --> 0:21:09.880 for expanded police and military presence in those cities. He 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:12.359 and the other all In hosts declined to speak to 0:21:12.440 --> 0:21:18.960 us for this podcast. After the break, we end where 0:21:19.000 --> 0:21:23.880 this all began in San Francisco. Why the city itself 0:21:23.920 --> 0:21:27.199 and its long history with the tech elite primed it 0:21:27.240 --> 0:21:48.680 for the powder kead moment of Bob Lee's murder. When 0:21:48.720 --> 0:21:51.920 Bob Lee moved to San Francisco in two thousand and four, 0:21:52.480 --> 0:21:54.919 both he and the city were in the midst of 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:59.120 massive changes. On the one hand, you have Bob coming 0:21:59.119 --> 0:22:03.040 from Saint Louis, from being a small time programmer, he 0:22:03.040 --> 0:22:07.040 helps develop Google's ad platform, having a direct hand in 0:22:07.080 --> 0:22:09.520 turning it into one of the richest companies in the world. 0:22:10.920 --> 0:22:13.919 On the other hand, you have San Francisco itself. It 0:22:14.000 --> 0:22:16.720 was at the epicenter of the era's most pressing tech 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:22.399 and cultural issues. That year, San Francisco issued the first 0:22:22.480 --> 0:22:26.520 marriage licenses to same sex couples. In the course of 0:22:26.520 --> 0:22:31.879 a month, more than four thousand couples were married. This 0:22:32.080 --> 0:22:35.120 was during the time when then President George W. Bush 0:22:35.320 --> 0:22:38.200 was calling for a federal amendment to define marriage as 0:22:38.240 --> 0:22:42.879 a union between a man and a woman. Then, in 0:22:42.920 --> 0:22:45.399 two thousand and seven, when Bob was a young dad 0:22:45.440 --> 0:22:50.959 and expecting his second child. The iPhone debuted that, along 0:22:50.960 --> 0:22:54.080 with the Android operating system which Bob was helping to build, 0:22:54.720 --> 0:22:57.960 ushered in an entire category of companies that would hire 0:22:58.040 --> 0:23:03.120 many thousands of workers in San Francis, young excited engineers 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:08.480 working at the likes of Uber, Instagram, and Airbnb. I 0:23:08.560 --> 0:23:10.960 bring all of this up to say, in order to 0:23:11.040 --> 0:23:13.960 understand why the story of Bob Lee exploded the way 0:23:14.000 --> 0:23:16.879 it did, we need to reflect on the ways that 0:23:16.960 --> 0:23:20.000 Bob and the city itself were mirrors for each other. 0:23:22.640 --> 0:23:25.760 Keep in mind that Silicon Valley in San Francisco are 0:23:25.760 --> 0:23:26.360 not the same thing. 0:23:26.800 --> 0:23:29.320 Max Chafkin, again, my colleague at Bloomberg. 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:33.639 Silicon Valley originally are these peninsula suburbs south of the 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:37.600 Bay Area, basically halfway between San Francisco and San Jose. 0:23:37.760 --> 0:23:41.080 About an hour south of San Francisco by car. It 0:23:41.119 --> 0:23:43.240 really came into its own as a tech hub in 0:23:43.280 --> 0:23:44.960 the seventies and eighties. 0:23:45.119 --> 0:23:49.640 And the politics of Silicon Valley were kind of the 0:23:49.680 --> 0:23:54.600 politics of conservative, suburban, upper middle class you're kind of 0:23:54.680 --> 0:23:57.720 like typical, like Ronald Reagan voters and so on. San 0:23:57.760 --> 0:24:01.440 Francisco was not as big a part of the tech 0:24:01.480 --> 0:24:03.480 industry know un till more recently. 0:24:04.000 --> 0:24:06.640 Right around the time Bob Lee moved to San Francisco, 0:24:07.720 --> 0:24:11.240 America was living through a wave of urban revival. People 0:24:11.280 --> 0:24:14.560 wanted to live in cities again where there were more restaurants, clubs, 0:24:14.600 --> 0:24:15.320 and museums. 0:24:15.800 --> 0:24:18.920 Suddenly you had all these engineers who wanted to live 0:24:19.040 --> 0:24:23.920