First appeared on FOX: A Los Angeles assistant district attorney has sued her boss for an alleged “massive retaliation campaign” that ruined her career, led to her being suspended without pay and further punished for “misgendering” a convicted child molester and murderer, the latest in a string of nearly two dozen whistleblower lawsuits.
“For the past two years, Mr. Gascón has tried to silence me,” prosecutor Shea Sanna told Fox News Digital. “He has suspended me without pay, threatened my livelihood, attacked my credibility, disparaged my reputation, demoted me, investigated me, and harassed me — all so that I would have to obey him, so that I would be silent, so that I would not speak up for those most affected by his misguided political policies.”
According to court documents obtained by Fox News Digital, Sanna accuses Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, the county and other officials of retaliating against the whistleblower and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
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Assistant District Attorney Shea Sanna attends the Hannah Tubbs hearing on January 27, 2022, in Antelope Valley Juvenile Court in California. (Dave Buchan)
At one point, Gascón’s office tried to investigate him for “insubordination” while he was away on an approved leave of absence, the lawsuit alleges.
But much of the conflict stems from Gascón’s treatment of James “Hannah” Tubbs, a convicted child molester who smashed a friend’s skull in with a rock in Kern County.
“Since publicly speaking out against the improper handling of the Tubbs case, Mr. Gascón has targeted Mr. Sanna, inventing every conceivable reason to show he was disloyal and ultimately have him fired,” Mr. Sanna’s lawyers at the Dillon Law Firm said in a statement.
Tubbs was scheduled to be paroled from an adult men’s prison in 2021 on an assault charge, but Los Angeles prosecutors sought a transfer of custody so Tubbs could stand trial in connection with a 2014 attack on a 10-year-old girl.
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Hannah Tubbs appeared in a Bakersfield, California courtroom for her sentence on November 7, 2023. Tubbs pleaded guilty to the 2019 murder of Michael Clark and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. (Splash News from Fox News Digital)
According to the complaint, Gascón removed Sanna from the case, prevented him from presenting evidence, and then targeted him in a “sham investigation” after he alleged policy and ethics violations.
Sanna faced further retaliation when he raised other ethical issues, including potential violations of Marsy’s Law, which protects victims’ rights, according to the lawsuit. He was then ordered to drive 70 miles from his office in the Antelope Valley to meet with Gascón top adviser Joseph Iniguez and was suspended for “misrepresenting” Tubbs’ gender. He was ordered to make the same drive at least two more times, in what the lawsuit says was an “intentionally abusive and malicious manner.”
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“In early 2022, Mr. Sanna’s once promising career trajectory was derailed when Mr. Sanna publicly exposed how the Gascón Administration’s policies in the Tubbs case led to the wrongful conviction and nearly the release of an extremely dangerous and violent sex offender,” the lawsuit reads. “Mr. Sanna also exposed how the Gascón Administration had instructed Mr. Sanna to withhold evidence and not oppose the defense’s arguments in order to ensure Mr. Tubbs’ release.”
The Tubbs case attracted national attention because the perpetrator was only 17 years old at the time of the crimes and was charged as a minor under the Gascón Act in Los Angeles, even though he was in his 20s.
Hannah Tubbs began identifying as a woman after her arrest in 2014 in connection with a child sexual abuse case in Los Angeles County. (Los Angeles County)
Prison phone conversations obtained by Fox News in 2022 recorded Tubbs and his father making plans for him to identify as a woman and be placed in a women’s facility or simply be released. After the phone conversations were made public, the lawsuit alleges that Sanna was told the Gascón administration was “coming to get him.”
Tubbs has a history of being convicted of violent crimes. Drug crimes He has been accused of sexually abusing girls in California, Washington and Idaho, and is accused of assaulting at least two other girls in addition to the Los Angeles incident. Plans for him to serve a light sentence in juvenile detention to avoid being placed on the state’s sex offender registry were thwarted when Kern County prosecutors extradited him to face manslaughter charges.
Tubbs, who is now 28 and uses the name Hannah, is being held at a California prison for men, a decision that was left to state officials, according to prison records.
Joseph Iniguez (left) and George Gascón (right) attend the Los Angeles Prison Reform Summit + Day Party: Mental Health Issues on November 9, 2019 in Pasadena, California. (Jesse Grant/Getty Images, courtesy of Patrice Cullors)
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“In the Tubbs case, Deputy District Attorney Thea Sanna was simply fulfilling her ethical and legal obligation to present all relevant evidence to the court,” Tubbs’ attorney, Anthony Fusaro, told Fox News Digital. “However, this evidence was inconsistent with District Attorney Gascón’s recently instituted policies and public statements, and so Mr. Gascón attempted to suppress the evidence. When Mr. Sanna informed his superiors and the public of Mr. Gascón’s attempts to suppress the evidence, Mr. Gascón responded with a relentless campaign of retaliation against Mr. Sanna that continues to this day.”
Other high-profile cases prosecuted by Sana include that of a teenager who drove the wrong way and struck a mother and her baby in a stroller on Venice Beach in 2021.
Though the case is not part of the retaliation lawsuit, he again blew the whistle on the light punishment given to a teenage suspect, Christopher Baca, who was released just a few months later, only to be killed in a drive-by shooting just before his 18th birthday.
Gascón faces roughly 20 retaliation lawsuits from prosecutors in his office.
Gascón is up for re-election in November and is facing a challenge from independent Nathan Hochman. Gascón’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
