A San Francisco 49ers spokesperson testified at Santa Clara Vice Mayor Anthony Becker’s trial this week that revealing the source of the civil grand jury leak at the time could have negatively impacted the official’s campaign, solidifying testimony her former boss Rahul Chandhok gave just one day prior.
Ellie Caple, the team’s vice president of corporate communications and public affairs, said on Thursday she had no knowledge of who leaked “Unsportsmanlike Conduct” — an electric report released just weeks before Santa Clara’s contentious mayoral election in 2022.
Caple was on her way to a doctor’s appointment on the morning of Oct. 6 when she received a call from Chandhok, the team’s former chief of communications, alerting her about the report.
Chandhok, the prosecution’s star witness — who, like Caple, received immunity for his testimony — vouched earlier this week that Becker had leaked him the report. The Santa Clara vice mayor is on trial in Santa Clara County Superior Court in Morgan Hill for allegedly leaking the confidential report before it was public, as well as felony perjury for lying about it under oath.
Caple said she got the sense from Chandhok’s demeanor that it was “something we wanted to start on right away.”
“I believe he felt that the report was going to be biased in some way, and he asked me to get in touch with Tim Hoekstra to explore whether there might have been bias on part of the jury,” she said. Hoekstra conducted political research for the team.
The 49ers were working to try to get ahead of the story. At the time, the NFL team was spending big on Santa Clara’s mayoral election — shelling out more than $1.4 million in support of Becker, and another roughly $1 million opposing Mayor Lisa Gillmor’s reelection bid.
A text message presented in court showed that Caple texted Hoekstra just after 2 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2022 that they were going to “try to leak it tomorrow to take the wind out of Gillmor’s sails.”
Caple testified that “it was our experience that Mayor Gillmor had often used news like this report to her advantage.”
The team spokesperson had been hired less than two months before the leak in a role she described as helping “to try and win local city elections in Santa Clara that the 49ers were involved in.”
Shavon Henry — an associate at Goodwin Procter and one of Becker’s five attorneys — revisited a line of questioning the defense had pressed on Chandhok just two days prior.
In emails and letters from Chandhok at the time of the leak, the former 49er exec said he received a copy of the report from “multiple press outlets.” Chandhok testified on Tuesday that it wasn’t his intention to mislead anyone, and that several journalists subsequently sent him the report after Becker did. He said it wasn’t in the “best interest of the 49ers” for him to share who the source of the leak was, because it could be “adverse” for both the candidate and the campaign.
“Are you aware of any lies contained in this letter?” Henry asked Caple, referring to a letter Chandhok authored where the first line stated he had received it from the press.
“Not that I’m aware of,” Caple responded.
Jason Malinsky, a Santa Clara County deputy district attorney representing the prosecution, later asked Caple if it “would be a good strategy” for Chandhok to reveal that Becker was the leaker.
Santa Clara County Deputy District Attorney Jason Malinsky talks during Santa Clara Vice Mayor Anthony Becker’s trial at the South County Morgan Hill Courthouse on Friday, Nov. 15, 2024. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)
“I don’t think it would have been good for any campaign or the candidate to be the source of improper information,” Caple said.
