Question of privilege raised at hearing over Sacramento mayor’s private e-mails
To understand the mood inside Judge Christopher Krueger’s courtroom at the Sacramento County Superior Courthouse on Wednesday, all one needed to do was bear witness to an exchange that took place during a brief recess — away from the eyes and ears of the attorneys, much of the press and the judge himself.
It was during this recess that Cosmo Garvin, a political reporter with the Sacramento News & Review newspaper, introduced himself to Benjamin Sosenko, the press secretary for Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson.
In that moment, if tension was tangible, you could cut it with a knife.
“I’d like to speak with the mayor’s office about — about anything, really,” Garvin said after an awkward handshake between the two.
Sosenko paused, mustered a nervous grin and with a hesitant cadence replied “Yeah, that — that seems unlikely anytime soon.”
“So you’re not going to talk with me ever?” Garvin asked.
“Ever? I didn’t say that,” Sosenko responded. “I never said that.”
The press secretary then turned to a nearby radio reporter and asked, “Did you have a question?”
That there is a strained relationship between the mayor’s office and journalists with the News & Review is hardly a surprise — the alternative newspaper has, after all, published a number of stories accusing Johnson of repeatedly blurring the lines between official city business and his personal interests.
But just how much the mayor has mixed his personal and political lives remains definitely unknown, and that is the source of the latest tension between the mayor and one faction of the local fourth estate.
On Wednesday, private attorneys hired by Johnson to represent him on a personal matter filed a legal challenge against the News and Review over a broad public records request that was submitted to the City of Sacramento earlier this year.
Benjamin Sosenko, the press secretary for Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson, speaks to reporters outside a courtroom on July 2, 2015. (Photo: Matthew Keys / The Desk)
That request, filed earlier in the year by Garvin himself, sought to obtain all e-mail records sent from the personal Google Mail accounts used by city officials — including Johnson — from the last two years.
In a sworn affidavit obtained by The Desk, Garvin says the city has produced around 300 e-mail records out of thousands that the city has identified as being potentially responsive to his request.
Also responsive are e-mail records containing communications between Johnson and a private law firm, Ballard Spahr, that purport to detail an Judge postpones release of Kevin Johnson's attorney e-mails: