By Susan Bassi, Fred Johnson and Faith Strader
Jeff Rosen was fighting for his political life. It was the first real challenge he had faced since his initial election as Santa Clara County District Attorney in 2010. Two opponents — a public defender and a deputy district attorney inside his own office — were hammering him over his record on crime victims, communities of color, and the way power worked inside the county courthouse. Shortly after Rosen survived in the local 2022 primary, he scheduled a meeting with Omar Torres.
Torres, an operator in the South Bay political ecosystem, had just launched his own run for the city council seat representing San Jose’s downtown district. The calendar entry documenting their meeting, obtained by the Vanguard News Group through a public records request, was marked “RE: Public Safety Stuff.”
That was the first lunch.
A year later, Rosen hosted Torres again. This time as an elected official. The calendar record marked “Lunch with SJ Councilmember Omar Torres” shows Torres and his staff enjoyed a 1.5 hour tour of the District Attorney’s Office, and a 1.5 hour luncheon with District Attorney Rosen. Taxpayers picked up the tab for sandwiches and cookies during normal business hours.
Rosen was paid $557, 976 in pay and benefits that same year.
A year after hosting Torres for an office tour and free lunch, Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen prosecuted former San Jose City Councilman Omar Torres, who is now serving an 18-year prison sentence as a convicted child sex abuser.
Jeff Rosen bought a child sex abuser lunch — on the public dime — and called it public safety. The receipt is a public record.
Key figures in the political network that celebrated Omar Torres’ rise, gave him a free lunch, shielded him from scrutiny and fell conspicuously silent when he fell from grace are still in place. Still raising money. Still running campaigns. And in one case, still fighting a court order to pay for what they did.
THE LAWSUIT A POLITICAN BROUGHT AND LOST
Shortly after Torres enjoyed a taxpayer-funded tour and lunch with the District Attorney, his close associate, San Jose City Councilman Peter Ortiz, walked into Santa Clara County Superior Court — without a lawyer — and filed a civil harassment restraining order against a social media journalist, Robert “Bobby” Saenz, who published East Side San Jose Times, an Instagram platform covering community news in East San Jose with more than 66,000 followers.
Ortiz told the court that Saenz’s posts — including a “Brown Puppet” meme and commentary using the phrase “grooming children” — had made him and his partner, Brenda Zendejas, fear for their safety, as previously reported. He also named Omar Torres in his court filings and admitted he had acted in coordination with Zendejas to have Saenz’s social media accounts taken down and demonetized.
The civil harassment lawsuit was filed using Ortiz’s official government office address and, notably, the mailing address of the San Jose City Attorney’s Office.
First Amendment attorney Daniel Watts reviewed the filing for the Vanguard and warned, “Ortiz is exposing himself not only to the business end of an anti-SLAPP motion, but also to a potential suit for malicious prosecution. He’s also exposing the City to liability by using the City Attorney’s mailing address on his pleading forms.” Attorney Daniel Watts told the Vanguard early in Ortiz’s litigation.
California’s anti-SLAPP statute — Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation — is designed to stop powerful people from using the courts to punish critics. When a lawsuit targets speech about a public figure on a matter of public concern, the target can fight back with an anti-SLAPP motion. Win it, and the law requires the person who filed the lawsuit, and lost a anti-SLAPP motion, to pay the attorney fees of the person they sued.
Saenz hired Orange County attorney Patrick Evans, who filed the anti-SLAPP motion against Ortiz’s lawsuit. Ortiz then hired McManis Faulkner — one of the most expensive civil litigation firms in Silicon Valley, with billing rates known to run from $400 to $2,200 per hour—to keep the lawsuit going.
In 2024, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Eric Geffon threw out Ortiz’s lawsuit and ordered him to pay $22,312 in attorney fees and costs: 40 hours of Evans’ time at $550 per hour, plus $312 in filing costs.
Judge Geffon found that Saenz’s posts, however provocative, were protected political speech on a matter of public interest.
Ortiz’s attorneys filed an appeal.
THE APPEAL: WHAT HAPPENED AS IT WOUND THROUGH COURT
While the appeal was pending, the political landscape collapsed beneath it. In October 2024, Omar Torres — the same councilman Ortiz had cited in his lawsuit as someone he was acting “in support of” — was arrested on child sex crimes charges. The social media posts Ortiz had tried to silence were, in retrospect, accurate reporting on a man who had sexually abused at least one child, with allegations of other victims circling in the community.
Two years after Ortiz filed his lawsuit, on January 30, 2026, the court of appeal found Saenz’s posts, “though provocative, inflammatory and challenging,” were protected speech — criticism of a public official’s character and qualifications, and a call for voters to remove him from office.
Ortiz lost at trial. He lost on appeal. He was ordered to pay his critic’s attorney fees.
What is notable about the appellate record is what disappeared from it. Torres was named in Ortiz’s original papers and in Saenz’s defense. However, by the time the appeal was decided, Torres had been arrested, convicted and sent to state prison. Torres’ name never appeared once in the appeal court’s 2026 decision.
The case is now back before Judge Geffon. Evans has filed a motion for additional fees and costs following the successful appeal — the second such fee award Ortiz faces. In their opposition, Ortiz’s attorneys of the McManis Faulkner law firm argue that Evans’ decision to raise his hourly rate to $650 during the appeal was unreasonable.
In response, Evans argues that Ortiz’s attorneys legal effort to reduce Ortiz’s financial obligation for bringing and protracting litigation against a social media journalist, is merely an extension of the same bad-faith litigation strategy that prompted the SLAPP finding in the first place.
THE COST: CHILLING POLITCAL SPEECH
When Ortiz filed the lawsuit in late 2023, a temporary restraining order, (TRO), barred Saenz — a community journalist and East San Jose voter — from speaking publicly about Ortiz. During that same window, Ortiz was appointed to the Santa Clara County Child Abuse Prevention Council (CAPC), as previously reported. For months, Ortiz and Torres could attend public meetings about protecting children. Their loudest critic could not. A court order said so.
That order has since been dissolved. The courts ruled the entire lawsuit was unconstitutional. But the months of enforced silence from the one consistent public voice questioning the Torres-Ortiz political network cannot be undone.
Evans’ reply brief makes the stakes explicit. He attaches the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s own press release announcing Torres’ 18-year sentence for molesting a minor. He writes: “Councilman Ortiz admits he supported the pedophile politician.” He argues that a constituent might reasonably conclude that Ortiz’s restraining order against the journalist raising alarms about children’s safety was an effort to protect Torres — and that this conclusion follows from the public record.
THE MATH NOBODY IS ASKING ABOUT
This is a story about money — who has it, who is spending it and who, in the end, is being asked to pay.
Peter Ortiz represents District 5, an area that ranks among the poorest in San Jose. Like Rosen and Torres, he was elected in 2022. In 2024, when he filed his appeal, and Torres resigned and was arrested, Ortiz made $183,095 in pay and benefits as a San Jose city councilmember, according to Transparent California.
When Ortiz assumed office in 2023, the same year he filed the civil harassment lawsuit, his Form 700 — the public financial disclosure all California elected officials must file — checked “None” on every line. No reportable investments. No outside income. No gifts. No property.
San Jose City Councilman Peter Ortiz’s 700 Form from 2023.
In his last public filing before leaving the council, Torres listed one asset: a piece of real property on Lyndale Avenue in East San Jose, valued between $100,001 and $1,000,000. After Torres was arrested, his domestic partner, Nicholas Aguilar, became the sole owner of the property through a deed transfer. By the time Torres entered prison, his one disclosed asset was in another name. How he funded his private criminal defense was never publicly disclosed since Torres resigned from public office the same day he was arrested.
Two elected officials from the poorer side of San Jose, both with thin public financial disclosures, sit at the center of some of the costliest litigation in recent local political history. It remains unclear how they paid to fund it.
THE LAW FIRM LOSING FIRST AMENDMENT CASES
The attorneys now in Ortiz’s corner at McManis Faulkner have fought this type of battle before — and lost.
In 2018, founding partner James McManis appeared personally in Santa Clara County Superior Court to represent former Judge Aaron Persky — the judge recalled after sentencing Stanford swimmer Brock Turner to just six months in county jail for sexually assaulting an unconscious woman. When Santa Clara County and Stanford law professor Michele Dauber prevailed in recall-related litigation, they sought attorney fees under California Code of Civil Procedure §1021.5. The court awarded $159,984.50 in attorney fees, plus $2,241.68 in expenses and $847.86 in costs — more than $161,000 total. McManis’ client was ordered to pay fees of the opposing side. Dauber told a Palo Alto news publication, the Persky litigation brought by the McManis Faulkner law firm was “frivolous”.
The same firm that lost a fee battle defending a judge whose light sentence in a sexual violence case sparked national outrage is now fighting a fee award imposed after it helped a city councilman try to silence a journalist raising alarms about a child sex abuser.
THE QUESTION: WHO IS PAYING THE ATTORNEYS?
Ortiz started this lawsuit without a lawyer. After Saenz filed the anti-SLAPP motion, he hired the McManis Faulkner law firm. The legal work spanning the anti-SLAPP fight, trial, appeal and two rounds of fee litigation represent, by any conservative estimate, well into six figures in billable work. The firm does not work cheaply.
Ortiz’s disclosed financial picture — a council salary, no reported investments, no reported property — does not explain how his legal bills get paid.
Under California law, a third party may legally pay another person’s legal fees. A union, a political supporter, an organization or a behest arrangement could fund litigation on behalf of an elected official. But those arrangements can carry disclosure obligations. So far, no public record has explained who is funding the legal defense of a councilman representing one of California’s poorest districts — or why.
Santa Clara County Supervisor Susan Ellenberg (left) at Campbell Library on May 27, 2026. Photo by Susan Bassi
THE DONORS, BEHEST PAYMENTS AND THE FUNDRAISING MACHINE
Ortiz has been raising significant money for his 2026 re-election campaign, and the donor list is notable for who appears on it.
Michele Dauber, the Stanford law professor who won more than $161,000 in fees against McManis Faulkner in the Persky case and who built the local #MeToo movement around electing women and holding institutions accountable for sexual violence, is now financially supporting Ortiz’s re-election campaign.
Rolando Bonilla, a former lobbyist and active political consultant with a history of domestic violence and of not paying child support, is supporting Ortiz’s 2026 re-election.
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan — who is raising money for a 2026 gubernatorial bid — made behest payments to causes connected to Ortiz’s political circle. Behest payments, contributions made at the request of an elected official to a third party, must be reported under California law when they exceed $5,000. The bulk of Mahan’s behest payments have been directed to supporting San Jose’s downtown businesses and events. The district Torres represented up until his arrest. An area supported by the San Jose Downtown Association where Ortiz’s campaign manager has worked since he assumed office in 2023.
Brenda Zendejas — Ortiz’s partner and campaign manager, who appears throughout Ortiz’s civil harassment record — works for the San Jose Downtown Association, the same organization Torres held a role in before running for council.
Support and donor overlap between Ortiz and Torres is, according to campaign finance records, substantial. The same names, organizations and community associations appear in both filing histories.
Ortiz’s 2026 supporters also include Santa Clara County Supervisors. Every county supervisor supporting Ortiz’s 2026 campaign, approved his 2024 appointment to the Child Abuse Prevention Council.
Supervisor Susan Ellenberg, who is facing scrutiny over the county’s management of child support agencies, Child Protective Services (CPS), and the foster care system, held a campaign fundraiser for Ortiz over the Memorial Day weekend, just days after an 8-year-old girl died from malnutrition and neglect in Ortiz’s district.
Ellenberg co-hosted Ortiz’s fundraiser in San Jose’s Willow Glen neighborhood with Meri Maben, wife of local divorce attorney Walter Hammon. Maben is also the mother of Brett Hammon and Kevin Hammon, both county government attorneys working under Ellenberg’s management and supervision.
Mailer sent to East San Jose residents in 2026 was funded by the Santa Clara County Government Attorney Association.
In 2026, both Dauber and Ellenberg are supporting the re-election of a councilman whose close political ally is serving 18 years for child sex abuse. Meanwhile, the Santa Clara County Government Attorneys Association — whose membership includes prosecutors, public defenders and county counsel attorneys under Ellenberg’s supervison — has funded hit-piece mailers against at least two of the three female candidates running against Ortiz in the June primary.
THE FREE LUNCH FOR A CHILD SEX MOLESTOR
Ortiz’s civil litigation and Torres’ criminal prosecution cannot be untangled. They run on parallel tracks, and the same people keep appearing at the same intersections.
District Attorney Rosen had lunch with Torres before the 2022 election and again in 2023 — one year before Torres was arrested for sexual violence against a child. Both lunches are documented in public records.
James Gibbons Shapiro, a high-ranking prosecutor in Rosen’s office, served on the Santa Clara County Child Abuse Prevention Council at the same time Torres’ partner Aguilar held a seat on that body. Ortiz was appointed to the same local political body in May 2024, just months before Torres was identified as a subject of a child sex crimes investigation — and after Ortiz had already filed a lawsuit to silence the journalist covering those allegations.
The commissioner who signed Ortiz’s emergency temporary restraining order against Saenz in December 2023 — the order that would have barred Saenz from public meetings where Ortiz was present — was Commissioner Johanna Thai Van Dat, a Child Abuse Prevention Council member since 2015.
In the days before the 2026 primary election, Rosen and his top prosecutors have stepped in front of news cameras to discuss the child sex abuse case brought against Shannon O’Conner, the woman the media dubbed “the Los Gatos Party Mom.” They have said nothing about the lunches Rosen shared with a convicted child sex abuser who briefly served on the San Jose City Council.
The San Jose Mercury News endorsed Torres, Ortiz and Rosen in the 2022 election. The news publication reported on Ortiz’s civil harassment filing, but not on both of his court losses.
THE CHILD SEX ABUSER’S NETWORK
Torres is in prison. Ortiz faces an attorney fee order to be decided three days after the local 2026 primary election. The network that surrounded and, critics argue, protected them both is largely intact.
Zendejas is still employed at the San Jose Downtown Association and still managing Ortiz’s 2026 campaign. The Child Abuse Prevention Council — whose membership has simultaneously included Ortiz and the court commissioner who granted his temporary restraining order, a high-ranking DA prosecutor and Aguilar, Torres’ partner — continues to meet. The donors and supporters who backed Torres’ 2022 campaigns are backing Ortiz’s 2026 race.
THE COST OF SILENCE
California’s anti-SLAPP statute exists to protect people like Robert Saenz: journalists and community members without institutional power who speak critically about those who do have power. The law says: use the courts to punish protected speech, and you pay. That is what the fee awards in the Ortiz case represent.
But the deterrent only works if the person who filed the lawsuit bears the financial consequence. If a third party — a political supporter, a union, a donor network — absorbs the cost, the message becomes: powerful people can hire attorneys to silence critics and pass the bill to their supporters.
That question is not abstract for the working-class residents of East San Jose — the people who make up the majority of Ortiz’s district, the people Torres was elected to represent before he went to prison, the people whose county prosecutor had lunch with a child sex abuser on the public dime and called it public safety.
The hearing before Judge Geffon is set for June 5. The fee award will be made. The amount Ortiz will be ordered to pay attorneys for a journalist he tried to silence will be a matter of public record.
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