Christine Pelosi feared for her mother’s life and wants the SF Giants to take a stand about that

Christine Pelosi, a big deal in California politics and daughter of the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is poised to quit the board of the San Francisco Giants Community fund after revelations that principal owner Charles Johnson and his wife Ann are financial contributors to a Republican legislator accused of endangering the life of Pelosi’s mother.

The Johnsons each gave $2,800 to Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Colorado Republican, who was live tweeting the movements of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a violent mob ransacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6.

Boebert’s sharing on Twitter that Nancy Pelosi was in the House chambers, and then tweeting again when she left the chambers, drew intense criticism from legislators. They accused Boebert of trying to aid rioters looking for the House speaker after the disrupted congressional ratification of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory over President Donald Trump.

News of Johnson’s financial support of Boebert broke on Thursday. Christine Pelosi, a 12-year member of the board, said she wanted to wait to hear from the Giants before she criticized the team or said anything negative.

Then the Giants issued a muddled statement in which the team “condemned” the violence at the U.S. Capitol and reiterated its policy of prohibiting contributions to federal elections by the organization. But, the Giants said, political contributions by “employees and investors are considered personal in nature.”

Opinion

That was the breaking point for Christine Pelosi.

“This is pathetic,” Pelosi told me by phone late Friday. “This is about felony murder and it’s about someone who tweeted the whereabouts of a person that was target of an assassination.”

The speaker’s daughter is referring to a Capitol police officer who was killed during the insurrection, and to Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr. He had driven from Colorado to Washington, D.C., to take part in the riot and was arrested with 2,500 rounds of ammunition and had threatened to kill Nancy Pelosi.

Rioters grabbed an SF Giants bat

Christine Pelosi said that Giants officials had tried to explain to her that despite Johnson’s funding of Boebert, the Giants didn’t share his political views and that the organization valued her and her mother. During that conversation, Pelosi said a Giants official reminded her team representatives had once visited the office of the speaker out of respect, roughly a decade ago, and gave her baseball bats and other memorabilia.

One of those bats was brandished by the rioters after they entered the speaker’s office and it may have been used to shatter a mirror, Christine Pelosi said.

“As (the speaker’s staff) was hiding in the dark the sound of that shattered mirror terrorized them,” Christine Pelosi said. “They could hear (rioters) screaming ‘where is Nancy Pelosi? We know she works here.’ “

Christine Pelosi is the chair of the Women’s Caucus for the California Democratic party and the counsel for #WeSaidEnough, a Sacramento non-profit that fights the harassment of women at the state Capitol. She said her extended family has received threats since Jan. 6, as well.

She described her mother wondering during the attacks whether she would survive the violent insurrection incited by Trump and supporters, such as Boebert. These are supporters who continue to tell the lie that Biden stole the presidency from Trump through widespread election fraud.

Ranking Republicans continue to tell these lies and helped create the mortal danger at the Capitol. Now that danger hangs over communities such as Sacramento, bracing for more violence in the days leading up to Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration.

These anti-democratic actions by Republican legislators, and their continued refusal to drop assertions that Trump had the election stolen from him, is why Christine Pelosi rebukes the Giants and others who dismiss Johnson’s actions as free speech.

She said she doesn’t have time for people who “refuse to see what is directly in front of them. They claim to be powerless. They say it’s one lone owner. OK, buy him out.”

Charles Johnson has not apologized

As I was speaking to Pelosi, Johnson’s latest statement went public: “It is often difficult to predict the future behavior of candidates and I would never have imagined that any legitimate candidate would participate in undermining the core values of our great country.”

Johnson also expressed faith in a democratic system that values “vigorous debate in the halls of government.”

But what happened on Jan. 6 was not vigorous debate. It was an armed attack by a mob seeking to invalidate a democratic process. Some rioters are accused of wanting to kill duly elected officials carrying out their constitutional duties.

Even before she was elected, Boebert was infamous for spreading false conspiracy theories and being linked to QAnon, a far-right splinter group which The Bee’s Lara Korte reported believes in “a powerful cabal of Democrats, celebrities and billionaires who are Satan-worshiping pedophiles involved in a global human trafficking ring. According to Q conspiracies, President Donald Trump was elected to take them down. “

Boebert is not normal. These views are not normal. And Christine Pelosi and others – including me – are dismayed that the Giants are not forcefully repudiating Johnson for his contribution to Boebert. We are dismayed that the Giants aren’t telling us that Johnson is going to ask for his contribution to be returned and that he hasn’t apologized for giving the maximum contribution to someone as anti-democratic as Boebert.

“His statement made no mention of the dead,” Pelosi said. “Not good enough.”

That’s part of what Pelosi wants from him and the Giants, condolences for those who lost their lives and an acknowledgment that the owner empowered someone who helped spur the insurrection and endangered the lives of so many others. She wants him and the team to recognize these actions threatened her mother and her security detail, and for him to invest in justice initiatives with the team.

And Pelosi wants Johnson to demand the return of the money.

He’s asked for a refund before. This is not Johnson’s first controversial rodeo in political campaigns. In 2018, Johnson and the Giants received national criticism for his financial support of Mississippi U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, an avowed fan of the Confederacy who once expressed her fondness for a rancher by saying, “If he invited me to a public hanging, I’d be there in the front row.”

Johnson apologized and got his money back. But this time, at least for now, he has not.

Renel Brooks-Moon, the Giants public address announcer and a leader in San Francisco’s Black community, texted me on Friday night.

“I stand 100% with my sister Christine,” it said.

“I had the first of many conversations with (Giants CEO) Larry Baer earlier (Friday) .... “ she said. “I shared with him that the fan base, local politicians and activist groups have been voicing their outrage to me and I assured them I would take those grievances right to him.”

Pelosi said if the Giants and Johnson do not apologize, and if the Giants largest shareholder does not take back his contributions to Boebert by Monday – the day honoring Martin Luther King Jr’s birthday – she would quit the Giants board.

“Disappointed doesn’t begin to express how I feel,” Pelosi said. “ The Giants recently laid off 10% of their workforce. But Johnson could find the money to contribute to someone who was aiding and abetting people (trying to harm) someone who happens to be my mother...The people the Giants laid off are a lot like the custodial staff at the U.S. Capitol who had to clean up blood, feces, shattered glass and shell casings.”

Brooks-Moon said: “This is not the first battle I’ve had to act on. I know it may jeopardize my career, job and reputation, but my job is bigger than me. I will always speak out when I need to. I could not live with myself if I didn’t.”

The Giants better make this right because Pelosi, Brooks-Moon and their many employees and fans who agree with them are more important than Charles Johnson. Friends have asked me how I can stick with the Giants considering the team’s backward principal owner.

Right now, I don’t have an answer to that question.