A top Apple security executive charged in a Santa Clara County corruption probe is seeking his case’s dismissal on the grounds that prosecutors have no clear evidence his proposed donation of iPads to the sheriff’s office was a bribe to hasten concealed-gun permits for his employees.
In a motion filed Thursday in the county Superior Court, attorneys for Thomas Moyer argue that the district attorney’s office not only failed to prove Moyer was trying to bribe anyone, but gave grand jurors bad instructions for determining who had to benefit from the donation for it to qualify as a bribe.
“The Santa Clara District Attorney has ignored facts and evidence proving Mr. Moyer’s innocence, and they have distorted the law to be able to drag him into this case,” attorney Mary McNamara said in a statement.
Moyer was indicted in November alongside county Undersheriff Rick Sung and sheriff’s Capt. James Jensen on allegations that they brokered the donation of 200 iPads to the sheriff’s office to free up the release of concealed-carry weapons permits for four Apple executive protection agents.
The indictment is part of a larger corruption probe conducted by the district attorney’s office highlighted by serial bribery allegations where campaign funds for Sheriff Laurie Smith’s re-election, a hockey luxury suite and the iPads were traded for access to the CCW permits, rarely issued by Smith’s office.
In the Moyer indictment, prosecutors and grand-jury testimony stated that in 2018, Apple security managers arranged for four of the tech titan’s executive protection agents to apply for the gun permits, in part to bolster their protection of Apple CEO Tim Cook. The applications were submitted to the sheriff’s office seemingly with the agency’s blessing.
According to the testimony, the processing of those permits stalled, followed by Moyer and one of his top lieutenants donating $1,000 apiece to Smith’s re-election campaign. Both men testified that the donations were a goodwill gesture given that the sheriff’s office operates as police for Apple’s home city of Cupertino.
The accounts diverge around a February 2019 visit by Sung and Jensen to Moyer at Apple Park, when the idea of a large iPad donation to the sheriff’s office materialized. That was later followed by an email reportedly sent by Moyer to Jensen stating, “Curious if you need iPads at your new facility,” referencing an undefined training project mentioned in the earlier meeting.
Three weeks later, the Apple security agents were alerted to pick up their permits. Records show they had been approved two months earlier.
In the dismissal motion filed for Moyer, his attorneys seize on the timing elements, arguing that the fact the permit processing was complete defies any logical bribery motive for the iPad donation offer.
Prosecutors “failed to grapple with the fact that there was zero urgency to obtaining the CCWs for security personnel in light of other security developments at Apple Park,” the motion filing reads. “And nothing explained the sheer improbability of Mr. Moyer, Apple’s Head of Global Security, abandoning decades of principled business conduct, to ‘bribe’ two Sheriff’s deputies.”
The district attorney’s office declined comment on the defense motion. But their allegations do reconcile some of the inconsistencies asserted by Moyer’s counsel, in that Sung is accused of holding up approved permits to extract expensive favors from well-heeled recipients.
But the iPad donation never happened, after the DA’s office in the fall of 2019 served search warrants on Jensen and Sung in connection with a separate but related bribery investigation.
Moyer’s attorneys also based their dismissal motion on a technical argument asserting that grand jurors were errantly instructed to conclude that bribery exists when someone seeks to influence one party — in this case Sung and Jensen — by enriching a third party, the sheriff’s office.
“The instruction disregards the plain language of the statute, which requires that the executive officer allegedly influenced must also be the person receiving the benefit of the bribe,” the motion reads. “It has no precedent in 150 years of California bribery caselaw.”
If a court were to agree with that contention, it could spell trouble for the earlier August indictment. That revolves around charges that Jensen and three other Smith supporters brokered a $90,000 donation backing Smith’s successful 2018 re-election in exchange for CCW permits being illegally issued to contract security agents tasked with protecting Facebook executives.
The case stemming from the political-donation case has been halted since October while Sixth District Court of Appeals evaluates a conflict-of-interest petition to oust the district attorney’s office from the case, filed by defendant who was a friend of and political fundraiser for District Attorney Jeff Rosen.
To date, Sung and Jensen have been indicted on multiple bribery charges. Two executive security managers in a related indictment reached plea deals with prosecutors in exchange for their cooperation with investigators. Smith, who is the sole signatory for the gun permits, has not been charged, and invoked her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination in refusing to testify to an earlier grand jury.
