Soros-backed LA DA George Gascon's top adviser charged with 11 felonies: report

On Wednesday, the California Attorney General's Office filed 11 felony charges against a top adviser to George Soros-backed Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon.

Assistant District Attorney Diana Teran, who faces the felony counts, oversees high-profile sensitive cases including police misconduct, public corruption, and fraud.

She has been charged with 11 felony counts of illegal use of confidential police records, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Teran has been accused by Democrat AG Rob Bonta of improperly downloading confidential records of police officers while she was working for the LA County Sheriff's Department in 2018.

Bonta said that Teran "impermissibly used that data" after being hired to work for Gascon's office three years later, according to the AG's press release.

A criminal complaint filed in LA Superior Court states that 11 sheriff's deputies are involved in the confidential records. The court document omitted the identities of the deputies, according to the paper.

"No one is above the law," said Bonta in a press release. "Public officials are called to serve the people of the State of California with integrity and honesty. At the California Department of Justice, we will continue to fight for the people of California and hold those who break the law accountable."

Prior to taking on positions involving law enforcement oversight, Teran served as a deputy district attorney for a number of years in LA County. She first worked as a consultant for the Office of Inspector General, which oversees the department, in 2018 after serving as a constitutional policing advisor to the Sheriff's Department. She joined the LA County Public Defender's office in 2019 as a law enforcement accountability advisor.

She then joined Gascon's administration in 2021 as a special adviser and was in charge of running the Justice System Integrity Division (JSID), which is in charge of prosecuting police and attorney misconduct.

Teran was recently promoted by Gascon to the position of assistant district attorney, granting her oversight over the units responsible for prosecuting crimes by law enforcement and attorneys, as well as organized crime, white-collar crime, and corruption.

Sheriff Alex Villanueva said during a livestream on Wednesday, according to the paper, that he alerted the FBI about Teran after he discovered a "massive data breach."

George Gascon's office has not yet released a statement on the allegations.

Gascon, who is a progressive attorney, faced a recall campaign in July 2022 over his lack of prosecuting crimes and his sweeping criminal justice reform laws, which created a revolving door for repeat offenders. While residents garnered enough signatures needed for the recall campaign, the effort was unsuccessful.