Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer appeared at a civil trial this week and denied claims he retaliated against a former executive and whistleblower who sought to protect female prosecutors who were sexually harassed in the D.A.’s office.
In a lawsuit filed against the county by former senior assistant Dist. Atty. Tracy Miller, at one point the highest-ranking woman in the prosecutors office, Spitzer and others are accused of retaliation and trying to force Miller out of her job after she questioned Spitzer’s actions as D.A. Those actions included his handling of allegations that a male superior, who was also the best man at Spitzer’s wedding, sexually harassed young female prosecutors.
Spitzer denied the accusations during hours of testimony that became at times tense and emotional. In a San Diego courtroom this week, Spitzer acknowledged deep tensions within the D.A.’s office following his 2018 election victory over former Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas.
Spitzer, who appeared to wipe away tears during his testimony, told jurors he believed he was walking “in the lions’ den” after winning the election and expected opposition from employees who had worked for Rackauckas.
“I knew it was going to be miserable, and it was miserable,” Spitzer said, his voice cracking.
In her lawsuit, Miller alleges that Spitzer and former chief assistant Dist. Atty. Shawn Nelson — who is now an Orange County Superior Court Judge — forced the prosecutor out through “purposeful and intentional retaliation.” The reason for this, Miller alleges, is that she was protecting female subordinates who had reported sexual misconduct by a male superior, Gary LoGalbo, who is now deceased.
“Miller was punished for refusing to allow Spitzer to lionize the predator, gaslight, and further savage the reputation of the victims,” her lawsuit says.
According to the suit, Miller had also raised concerns about Spitzer’s handling of the D.A.’s office, including worries that Spitzer had violated the Racial Justice Act by bringing up questions of race while trying to determine whether or not to seek the death penalty against a Black defendant. She also claimed that Spitzer considered a prosecutor’s race in assignments and that he had possibly undermined a homicide case.
But it was the allegations of sexual harassment against LoGalbo, a former friend and roommate of Spitzer’s, that plaintiff attorneys say most threatened Spitzer’s leadership and prompted him to target Miller.
“[Spitzer] knew that if this was believed, the (district attorney’s) office would suffer one of the worst scandals ever,” said John Barnett, an attorney representing Miller during his opening statement Monday. “He punished (Miller) for protecting one of her young prosecutors.”
Attorneys representing the county, as well as Spitzer and Nelson, argue that the men wanted Miller to stay in the prosecutor’s office and valued her experience, pointing out they promoted four women to top positions due to her recommendations.
Defense Attorney Tracey Kennedy argued during her opening statement Monday that even though LoGalbo had been friends with Spitzer years ago, the relationship had changed by the time the allegations were raised.
“(Spitzer) had no reason to protect Mr. LoGalbo at the expense of the Orange County DA’s office, and the expense of his career,” Kennedy said.
Instead, she said, Spitzer and Nelson had set out to make much needed reforms for the office.
“They had a mission to change the D.A.’s office,” she said.
The county investigation substantiated the sexual harassment allegations against LoGalbo, but an April 2021 report found that allegations of retaliation were unsubstantiated because no actions were taken against the employees.
Much of Spitzer’s time on the witness stand Tuesday centered on his role in the LoGalbo investigation, and what appeared to be differing versions of what occurred. At one point during questioning, Spitzer disclosed that the version of events he gave the county’s investigator during the internal probe — about a highly scrutinized private meeting with a supervisor — had been “inaccurate.”
Chris Duff, a former senior deputy district attorney, had told the county investigator that Spitzer met with him in the law library of a Westminster courthouse in January 2021 and instructed him to write up one of the sexual harassment victims in her upcoming evaluation for being “untruthful.” Duff said he refused to do so, according to a report of the internal investigation.
Spitzer initially denied discussing the evaluation during the meeting and told the investigator, Elisabeth Frater, that he “never said that” to Duff because he didn’t want anything “to be perceived in any way whatsoever that we were retaliating against her.”
But in court this week, Spitzer offered a different version of events.
“What I told Frater was inaccurate,” Spitzer said, adding that he did discuss concerns he had about the female prosecutor’s honesty regarding an email she wrote. “I did talk to Duff about that.”
But Spitzer maintained his concerns were about the prosecutor’s veracity, and not about the claims she had raised against LoGalbo.
After Duff met with Spitzer, Miller sent a note to Spitzer telling the district attorney she was aware of the conversation, and arguing against writing up the female prosecutor.
During his testimony, Spitzer said that he was disappointed with Miller, and that she had not gone directly to him with her concerns about various issues.
At one point, Spitzer said, he had grown to wonder why Miller would take notes during executive meetings.
“You could see anytime a subject came up, Tracy was taking notes about our meetings,” Spitzer said. “There was a point of time where it was very curious to me, why do you seem to be memorializing everything we’re doing?”
When he was first elected in 2018, Spitzer said he believed he was walking “in the lions’ den” and expected opposition from his direct reports. For that reason, he said, he chose Shawn Nelson to be his number two.
“I picked him because I was going into battle, in the lions’ den,” Spitzer said.
Miller’s lawsuit is just the latest in a series of troubles that have recently hit the district attorney’s office, including allegations of retaliation raised by top prosecutors and investigators in the office.
The county is also facing eight sexual harassment lawsuits involving allegations against LoGalbo.
In March, a now-retired investigator of the office also sent letters to the California attorney general, the U.S. Department of Justice, the State Bar of California, and other agencies to investigate Spitzer and other top officials at the prosecutor’s office.
Charlie Kirk’s killing shows that censorship starts in the workplace
Remember when the notion of government censorship in the U.S. seemed like the plot of an Orwellian novel, or something that happened in other places, countries where masked militia kidnap people off the street and disappear them? Our 1st Amendment rights as Americans seemed to guarantee that would never happen here. The state could not take away our free speech.
It turns out we don’t need a state-sponsored crackdown to punish those who express sentiments that offend, because the private sector has stepped in to do the job. An office supply store, a news network and an airline carrier are among companies that recently fired staff who made comments about influencer Charlie Kirk’s death that were interpreted as celebratory, insensitive or blaming the conservative activist’s polarizing viewpoints for his targeted killing.
Now Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah says that she was unfairly fired over thoughts she expressed following the assassination of Kirk last week in Utah. She wrote: “The Post accused my measured Bluesky posts of being ‘unacceptable’, ‘gross misconduct’ and of endangering the physical safety of colleagues — charges without evidence, which I reject completely as false.”
“They rushed to fire me without even a conversation,” Attiah said. “This was not only a hasty overreach, but a violation of the very standards of journalistic fairness and rigor the Post claims to uphold.” She said that in her posts she exercised “restraint even as I condemned hatred and violence.”
Her comments were largely about gun violence and issues of race. Attiah mentioned Kirk directly in just one post, paraphrasing from a comment he made about Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson and former Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, both of whom are Black. “’Black women do not have the brain processing power to be taken seriously. You have to go steal a white person’s slot’ — Charlie Kirk,” she wrote.
Attiah didn’t celebrate the death of Kirk in her posts or make light of his slaying, but she didn’t mourn him either. In the current political environment, that alone could be enough to make her employer nervous, even compared to all the other truly awful stuff out there.
Sadly, the cruel, inhumane and politicized responses that followed Kirk’s tragic killing shouldn’t surprise anyone. Social media behaved as it always does — as a repository for every good, bad and really bad impulse experience following a tragedy or crisis.
The same quotient of 20% civility, 80% ugliness enveloped X, YouTube, TikTok and the like when three months ago Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, were assassinated in their home in a politically motivated attack. Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, were also allegedly shot by the same suspect in their home but survived.
The difference back in June? There wasn’t a mass movement to fire, cancel or silence those who minimized the tragic killings or, worse, turned them into a trolling opportunity. Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah blamed the killings on the left — “This is what happens when Marxists don’t get their way,” he wrote on X — and posted a picture of suspect Vance Boelter with the caption “Nightmare on Waltz Street.” It was a crass reference to Tim Walz, Minnesota’s Democratic governor, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election. Lee (who is now publicly mourning Kirk’s death) was taking his cues from the top.
President Trump’s short condemnation of Hortman’s killing on Truth Social stated that “such horrific violence will not be tolerated.” There was no lengthy eulogy, he did not attend the funeral, and when asked the day after Hortman’s killing if he had called Walz, the president said, “I could be nice and call, but why waste time?”
In response to Kirk’s killing, Trump issued an order to lower American flags to half-staff at the White House, all public buildings, U.S. embassies and military posts. He announced he would posthumously award Kirk the Presidential Medal of Freedom. And during an appearance Friday on “Fox & Friends,” he promised vengeance against the left for Kirk’s killing, though the suspect — let alone his motives — were still unknown at the time.
“I’ll tell you something that’s going to get me in trouble, but I couldn’t care less,” Trump said. “The radicals on the right oftentimes are radical because they don’t want to see crime. They don’t want to see crime. They’re saying, ‘We don’t want these people coming in. We don’t want you burning our shopping centers. We don’t want you shooting our people in the middle of the street.’ The radicals on the left are the problem. And they’re vicious, and they’re horrible, and they’re politically savvy.”
The prospect of retribution from a thin-skinned leader leaves no mystery as to why major media outlets such as the Post, “60 Minutes” and MSNBC appear to be reshaping their newsrooms to be less critical of the current administration. The same now goes for break rooms, shop floors and office cubicles across all sectors of American working life. It’s not the Big Brother scenario envisioned in George Orwell’s cautionary tale about a totalitarian state, “1984,” but it’s a start.
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Blake Lively drops claims of emotional distress against Justin Baldoni
In the latest twist in the legal saga between Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, Lively is dropping two claims against Baldoni of emotional distress.
As if the drama couldn’t get any messier, the accusations continue to fly. Baldoni’s lawyer filed a letter requesting that the judge in the case compel Lively to “identify her medical and mental health care providers” — signing a HIPAA release to open up access to her therapy notes and pertinent medical info, as People reported.
Rather than do so, the letter says, Lively requested to withdraw her claims of emotional distress, but maybe just for now. Baldoni’s attorney Kevin Fritz said the actor wanted to keep the right to re-file those emotional distress claims at a later time — but Lively “can’t have it both ways.”
Lively’s lawyers take another view.
Esra Hudson and Mike Gottlieb accused Baldoni’s legal counsel of a “press stunt,” saying they are simply “preparing our case for trial by streamlining and focusing it,” as per Deadline’s reporting.
U.S. District Court Judge Lewis J. Liman had this to say on Tuesday: The two parties must decide “whether the dismissal is with or without prejudice” before proceeding further — the claims are either to be dismissed forever or possibly pursued again, but there is no in-between.
Representatives of Baldoni and Lively did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment on Tuesday.
The order comes as the latest event in the lawsuit, with a trial set to begin in March 2026. Lively initially filed a sexual harassment and retaliation complaint in September.
She accused Baldoni, along with his team, of orchestrating a smear campaign against her after she reported on-set sexual harassment, as first reported by the New York Times.
Most recently, Lively sought to dismiss a defamation countersuit from Baldoni. The motion, filed in March, cites a California law that prohibits “weaponizing defamation lawsuits” against those who have filed suit or “spoken out about sexual harassment and retaliation.”
Baldoni’s attorney Bryan Freedman later called the motion “one of the most abhorrent examples of abusing our legal system.”
But Lively’s motion only picked up steam as it drew widespread support from advocacy groups. Equal Rights Advocates, a gender equity and workplace protection-oriented nonprofit based in San Francisco, urged a federal judge to support the motion and uphold the aforementioned law.
Jessica Schidlow, legal director at Child USA, a nonprofit that pushes for more legal protection of abuse victims, told The Times in May that if the law were to be struck down, it would “essentially do away with the protections for all survivors.”
“It would be a devastating setback and completely undermine the purpose of the law, which was to make it easier for victims to come forward and to speak their truth without fear of retaliation,” she added.
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Orange County D.A. calls workplace miserable lions’ den, in court
Orange County Dist. Atty. Todd Spitzer appeared at a civil trial this week and denied claims he retaliated against a former executive and whistleblower who sought to protect female prosecutors who were sexually harassed in the D.A.’s office.
In a lawsuit filed against the county by former senior assistant Dist. Atty. Tracy Miller, at one point the highest-ranking woman in the prosecutors office, Spitzer and others are accused of retaliation and trying to force Miller out of her job after she questioned Spitzer’s actions as D.A. Those actions included his handling of allegations that a male superior, who was also the best man at Spitzer’s wedding, sexually harassed young female prosecutors.
Spitzer denied the accusations during hours of testimony that became at times tense and emotional. In a San Diego courtroom this week, Spitzer acknowledged deep tensions within the D.A.’s office following his 2018 election victory over former Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas.
Spitzer, who appeared to wipe away tears during his testimony, told jurors he believed he was walking “in the lions’ den” after winning the election and expected opposition from employees who had worked for Rackauckas.
“I knew it was going to be miserable, and it was miserable,” Spitzer said, his voice cracking.
In her lawsuit, Miller alleges that Spitzer and former chief assistant Dist. Atty. Shawn Nelson — who is now an Orange County Superior Court Judge — forced the prosecutor out through “purposeful and intentional retaliation.” The reason for this, Miller alleges, is that she was protecting female subordinates who had reported sexual misconduct by a male superior, Gary LoGalbo, who is now deceased.
“Miller was punished for refusing to allow Spitzer to lionize the predator, gaslight, and further savage the reputation of the victims,” her lawsuit says.
According to the suit, Miller had also raised concerns about Spitzer’s handling of the D.A.’s office, including worries that Spitzer had violated the Racial Justice Act by bringing up questions of race while trying to determine whether or not to seek the death penalty against a Black defendant. She also claimed that Spitzer considered a prosecutor’s race in assignments and that he had possibly undermined a homicide case.
But it was the allegations of sexual harassment against LoGalbo, a former friend and roommate of Spitzer’s, that plaintiff attorneys say most threatened Spitzer’s leadership and prompted him to target Miller.
“[Spitzer] knew that if this was believed, the (district attorney’s) office would suffer one of the worst scandals ever,” said John Barnett, an attorney representing Miller during his opening statement Monday. “He punished (Miller) for protecting one of her young prosecutors.”
Attorneys representing the county, as well as Spitzer and Nelson, argue that the men wanted Miller to stay in the prosecutor’s office and valued her experience, pointing out they promoted four women to top positions due to her recommendations.
Defense Attorney Tracey Kennedy argued during her opening statement Monday that even though LoGalbo had been friends with Spitzer years ago, the relationship had changed by the time the allegations were raised.
“(Spitzer) had no reason to protect Mr. LoGalbo at the expense of the Orange County DA’s office, and the expense of his career,” Kennedy said.
Instead, she said, Spitzer and Nelson had set out to make much needed reforms for the office.
“They had a mission to change the D.A.’s office,” she said.
The county investigation substantiated the sexual harassment allegations against LoGalbo, but an April 2021 report found that allegations of retaliation were unsubstantiated because no actions were taken against the employees.
Much of Spitzer’s time on the witness stand Tuesday centered on his role in the LoGalbo investigation, and what appeared to be differing versions of what occurred. At one point during questioning, Spitzer disclosed that the version of events he gave the county’s investigator during the internal probe — about a highly scrutinized private meeting with a supervisor — had been “inaccurate.”
Chris Duff, a former senior deputy district attorney, had told the county investigator that Spitzer met with him in the law library of a Westminster courthouse in January 2021 and instructed him to write up one of the sexual harassment victims in her upcoming evaluation for being “untruthful.” Duff said he refused to do so, according to a report of the internal investigation.
Spitzer initially denied discussing the evaluation during the meeting and told the investigator, Elisabeth Frater, that he “never said that” to Duff because he didn’t want anything “to be perceived in any way whatsoever that we were retaliating against her.”
But in court this week, Spitzer offered a different version of events.
“What I told Frater was inaccurate,” Spitzer said, adding that he did discuss concerns he had about the female prosecutor’s honesty regarding an email she wrote. “I did talk to Duff about that.”
But Spitzer maintained his concerns were about the prosecutor’s veracity, and not about the claims she had raised against LoGalbo.
After Duff met with Spitzer, Miller sent a note to Spitzer telling the district attorney she was aware of the conversation, and arguing against writing up the female prosecutor.
During his testimony, Spitzer said that he was disappointed with Miller, and that she had not gone directly to him with her concerns about various issues.
At one point, Spitzer said, he had grown to wonder why Miller would take notes during executive meetings.
“You could see anytime a subject came up, Tracy was taking notes about our meetings,” Spitzer said. “There was a point of time where it was very curious to me, why do you seem to be memorializing everything we’re doing?”
When he was first elected in 2018, Spitzer said he believed he was walking “in the lions’ den” and expected opposition from his direct reports. For that reason, he said, he chose Shawn Nelson to be his number two.
“I picked him because I was going into battle, in the lions’ den,” Spitzer said.
Miller’s lawsuit is just the latest in a series of troubles that have recently hit the district attorney’s office, including allegations of retaliation raised by top prosecutors and investigators in the office.
The county is also facing eight sexual harassment lawsuits involving allegations against LoGalbo.
In March, a now-retired investigator of the office also sent letters to the California attorney general, the U.S. Department of Justice, the State Bar of California, and other agencies to investigate Spitzer and other top officials at the prosecutor’s office.
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