Federal prosecutors this week unsealed a court reporter’s transcript of an eight minute telephone call from January 19, 2024, between recycling executive Andy Duong and an Oakland City Council member whose name is withheld in the exhibit. The recording, filed September 3 as the government fights to keep it in front of a jury, does not name a payoff and does not charge the official on the line.
It does capture a contractor with millions of dollars in city business speaking to an elected official as if political survival and a housing purchase were the same conversation. Duong and his father, David Duong, control California Waste Solutions, Oakland’s longtime curbside recycling contractor. Andy Duong also co founded Evolutionary Homes, a modular housing venture launched with political consultant Mario Juarez.
On January 9, 2025, a federal grand jury indicted former Mayor Sheng Thao, her longtime partner Andre Jones, David Duong, and Andy Duong on conspiracy, bribery, and honest services fraud charges. Andy Duong also faces a count of making false statements to federal agents. All four have pleaded not guilty. Trial is set for October 19 before U.S.
District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. Defendants remain presumed innocent unless a jury finds otherwise. What the new recording actually says The call opens with the council member greeting Duong as “brother.” Duong replies, “More bitches, more bitches, brother.”
The official answers, “More bitches. Bring ’em all here.” Duong then raises a text about “the cruise tomorrow” and says, “If you can roll then we can party up up in the yacht.” After the official declines because of a Sacramento trip, Duong promises another outing: “a private one for us only.”
The official asks whether recall campaigns will go through. Duong answers that “we put a stop to it” after meeting “Nikki,” a reference consistent with then Council President Nikki Fortunato Bas. He talks about confronting the county’s elected prosecutor over the killing of Oakland police officer Tuan Le and about people “hitting us up to fund the recall.” Then the conversation turns to product.
Duong complains that the city still has not bought Evolutionary Homes units displayed at the California Waste Solutions building on Embarcadero. He tells the official he called Thao and said she had to “get your shit together.” If she wanted “another term,” he said, “you better start acting right.” He describes Thao then calling City Administrator Jestin Johnson, who later toured the showroom, as a “win-win” to “save their next election and the recall.”
He also says Councilmember Carroll Fife wanted units placed in West Oakland and invites the official on the call to tour Suite A. Established fact: the transcript exists in a government exhibit, prosecutors say it came from a recording associated with Andy Duong, and the words above appear in that exhibit. Established fact: no current or former Oakland council member has been charged in this case. Duong’s lawyers describe the other speaker as an “uncharged local politician.”
What prosecutors say it means Prosecutors treat the call as evidence of a continuing bargain, not idle gossip. In earlier filings they described Duong telling the official that his family’s help stopping recalls was tied to Thao keeping work moving on a city purchase of Evolutionary Homes units. The indictment alleges Thao promised official acts if elected: commit Oakland to buy those units, extend the recycling contract, and appoint officials the Duongs wanted.
In exchange, prosecutors say, the Duongs funded a $75,000 negative mailer against Thao’s 2022 opponents and paid Jones $95,000 toward a promised $300,000 “no-show” job at the housing company. The January 2024 timing matters on the government’s theory. Johnson’s tour of the units is separately documented around early January 2024. Thao was still mayor.
Recall petitions were live. Voters removed her on November 5, 2024. FBI agents searched the homes of Thao, Jones, and the Duongs, and CWS offices, on June 20, 2024. The recording does not prove a completed housing sale.
Oakland never became a completed customer in the way the alleged deal described. Prosecutors argue the call still shows Duong treating political rescue and a public purchase as linked. What the defense says Andy Duong’s lawyers moved to keep much of the tape out. They argue it mentions “no alleged bribery or payments of any kind” and therefore has “no bearing on the charge that Duong bribed Thao.”
They want the crude opening excluded as unfairly painting him as a “foul-mouthed party boy.” They say talk about recalls and a prosecutor is generic politics, not the charged scheme, and that if the government wanted it as “other acts” evidence it missed a notice deadline. Attorney Winston Chan has said filings contesting admissibility do not concede the government’s characterizations.
Thao’s lawyers have separately argued that older episodes, including a 2019 recorded call in which prosecutors say then Councilmember Thao fed Andy Duong “sensitive internal” council positions on the city’s overcharge lawsuit against CWS, are too remote and too thin to prove later bribery. In that 2019 call, prosecutors quote Thao preferring a “private room” because “we don’t really want to be seen with you guys.” Defense lawyers say discreet meetings with a city contractor during litigation are not a crime.
Follow the money, and the gaps Public records and the indictment describe a pattern of money and access that raises questions even where it does not close them. Fact: CWS has held Oakland’s recycling work for more than two decades through controversy, including a city lawsuit over alleged overcharges that the council settled in 2021 for about $3 million, above what then City Attorney Barbara Parker recommended.
Fact: state campaign finance investigators previously alleged Andy Duong used straw donors for at least 93 contributions totaling tens of thousands of dollars to Oakland candidates, including Thao’s earlier council races. Those state allegations are not the federal indictment’s core charges and have not been adjudicated as part of this trial. Allegation: after the 2022 election, Jones received $95,000 in installments that prosecutors call bribes routed through a fake job.
Allegation: Thao earlier helped create a nonexistent $150,000 role for Jones at a relative’s cannabis consulting firm to secure a home lease. Newer filings say the couple struggled with utility and car loan bills and that alleged payments helped cover rent. Defense lawyers want that lease evidence kept out as a character attack. Allegation: Andy Duong “regularly took surreptitious photos and videos of politicians in compromising positions for potential use against them.”
Agents say they found dozens of such files on his phone. Juarez, identified as Co-Conspirator 1, has pleaded guilty and is expected to testify that the recordings were for political use. Azevedo, a former San Leandro councilmember, has pleaded guilty in a related case and admitted taking a $2,000 bribe tied to Evolutionary Homes work.
Prosecutors also allege a Duong-tied 2023 Vietnam trip, a later $10,000 payment to stop reporting about suspected prostitution and drug use on that trip, and a $9,000 outlay for Thao’s Thailand travel with her son. None of that is a conviction. The wider City Hall circle Council President Kevin Jenkins, a District 6 member since January 2023 and a onetime Thao ally who later served as interim mayor and dismissed remaining Thao staff, has not been charged.
Prosecutors listed him among roughly 70 possible trial witnesses, saying he can testify about council service and dealings with the defendants, Evolutionary Homes, and CWS. After the 2024 FBI raids he was among the council members who voted against a plan to strengthen Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission. That vote is public record. It is not proof he took a bribe.
The unnamed official on the January 2024 tape is a separate problem for public confidence. The government wants jurors to hear a contractor invite an Oakland council member onto a private yacht, boast about stopping a mayoral recall, and describe dressing down the mayor over unsold housing units. The defense wants that same tape treated as locker room politics with no check attached. A jury, not a filing, will decide which description fits.
Until then, the recording is what it is: a city vendor talking to a city lawmaker as if official help were something you collect after the party.
