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A jury convicted a Santa Clara politician Thursday of perjury after he lied about leaking a classified document to the 49ers.
Anthony Becker, 39, faces up to four years in prison after his verdict in Santa Clara County Superior Court. The jury found Becker leaked a confidential grand jury report about the 49ers’ involvement in local politics to a 49ers executive. He is found guilty of a misdemeanor charge of failing to perform an official duty, and another felony charge for lying about the leak under oath.
The verdict isn’t too surprising after Rahul Chandhok, the 49ers’ former EVP and political strategist, testified last month that he received the document from Becker in October 2022 in the days before it was set to be published. Another city councilmember, Sudhanshu Jain, testified that Becker admitted he gave the document to a reporter during his 2022 mayoral campaign. The report was published in full by 49er-friendly local media outlets before the release date.
Becker and Jain are two of the five members of Santa Clara City Council whose campaign was backed by the football team, dubbed the “49ers Five.” The grand jury report found those five members “put the 49ers’ interests ahead of the city’s interests.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for the team told FOS, “We respect the outcome of the legal process and look forward to continuing to work with Santa Clara to maximize the benefits of Levi’s Stadium for the community.”
He ran for mayor with $2.5 million of support from the 49ers against incumbent Lisa Gillmor, who has been an outspoken critic of the team in a yearslong legal fight over the dollars flowing from the publicly owned stadium. During the campaign, the 49ers paid for attack ads on Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross, who donated to Gillmor because his real-estate development firm owns land across from Levi’s Stadium.
“Anthony Becker’s conviction highlights a deeply troubling and consistent pattern of misconduct and betrayal of public trust in Santa Clara,” Gillmor tells Front Office Sports. “As multiple Grand Jury reports have documented, it’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to undue influence and lack of transparency in the way the City Council and some City staff interact with the 49er organization.”
After Becker lost the election, a criminal grand jury started an investigation. Becker denied sharing the document and accused Gillmor of doing so, and lied to the district attorney’s office, too, the jury found. The investigators gave Chandhok immunity, and he told them that Becker gave him and local media the report. Chandhok has admitted that the team began a PR campaign to discredit the report once they got it in hopes of helping Becker win the election.
Becker ran for his city council seat again this fall without the help of the 49ers, but picked up only 22% of the vote. Another 49ers opponent, Kelly Cox, won in a landslide.
—Dennis Young contributed reporting.
