FBI Raids Home of ‘Progressive’ Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao

Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao is shown at a news conference announcing that the 2025 NBA All-St
Jeff Chiu / Associated Press
Joel B. Pollak

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided the private home of “progressive” Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao on Thursday morning — just days after a recall petition against Thao qualified for the November 2024 ballot.

The San Francisco Chronicle reported:

Federal agents raided the home of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao early Thursday morning in a probe that included searches of multiple houses — including two connected to a recycling company owned by a politically influential family.

“The FBI is conducting court authorized law enforcement activity on Maiden Lane” in Oakland, agency spokesperson Cameron Polan said in a statement, adding that the FBI was unable to provide additional information.

Property records link Thao to 80 Maiden Lane, a beige, four-bedroom home with batten siding. She did not immediately respond to phone calls Thursday morning, and her spokesperson Francis Zamora referred inquiries to the FBI.

As Breitbart News reported Wednesday:

It’s official: left-wing Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao will face a recall election in November.

Thao will face the historic poll amid mounting civic fury over her failure to stem the growing crime situation in Oakland.

The Democrat lawmaker is the first mayor in the city’s history to be up for recall, after a campaign to oust her gained more than 40,000 signatures, the Daily Mail reports.

Thao also fired former Oakland Police Department Chief LeRonne Armstrong after he criticized “defund the police,” a slogan an policy goal associated with the Black Lives Matter movement. Armstrong, who is black, is suing the city and recently declared his candidacy for a city council seat.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

COMMENTS

Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.