A man charged in a landmark corruption case that accused top Santa Clara County sheriff commanders of favor-trading concealed-gun permits has pleaded guilty, becoming the first indicted defendant convicted from a scandal that ultimately led to former sheriff Laurie Smith’s ouster under heavy political and legal scrutiny.
Michael Adrian Nichols, 48, a Milpitas-based gunmaker, admitted in court Thursday to one misdemeanor count of conspiracy to solicit a bribe in connection with a 2020 indictment alleging that he — along with a political fundraiser for Smith, a sheriff’s captain and an attorney friend — brokered a deal for a large donation supporting Smith’s 2018 re-election to obtain concealed-gun permits for a security firm’s employees.
The charge was reduced from a felony as part of a negotiated plea with the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, which also entails a one-year sentence in county jail. How that sentence will be served, whether in custody or through an alternative method such as electronic monitoring, remains to be seen.
“Today’s conviction marks another milestone in this office’s steady commitment to holding accountable all of the participants in this pay-for-play government corruption scheme,” District Attorney Jeff Rosen said in a statement. “The community must be assured that government services — especially those involving public safety — are provided according to need, not bribes.”
Nichols’ attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday. His plea comes as the original blockbuster criminal grand jury indictment — which spawned two additional indictments alleging pay-to-play issuing of the coveted concealed-carry weapons permits — has lingered in pretrial stages more than three years after it was issued. But trial proceedings are scheduled to begin Jan. 29.
Nichols was accused by the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office of helping arrange a foundational 2018 meeting involving Martin Nielsen, then a manager for the firm AS Solution, that provided executive protection for high-profile tech companies such as Facebook.
According to the allegations, Nichols knew Nielsen was looking to get concealed-gun permits, so he tapped friend and attorney Harpaul Nahal, who in turn contacted Smith’s sometimes personal attorney and fundraiser Christopher Schumb. That led to a connection to sheriff’s Capt. James Jensen, a trusted Smith adviser. Eventually, prosecutors contend, that led to a promise of a $90,000 donation from Nielsen and his firm to an independent expenditure committee supporting Smith’s re-election.
A $45,000 contribution was initially made, but the second half was never paid after the district attorney’s office caught wind of the deal in 2019 and started investigating Nielsen and others, authorities say. Nielsen, former AS Solution CEO Christian West, and former company manager Jack Stromgren all later pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors.
That contrasts to Nichols’ plea Thursday that has no conditions of continued cooperation or testimony, said John Chase, deputy district attorney in charge of his office’s public integrity unit.
To this point, Nahal and Jensen remain charged in the original indictment. Schumb successfully argued to an appellate court that the district attorney’s office had a conflict of interest in prosecuting him owing to his past friendship with and fundraising for Rosen, and the charges against him were later dismissed.
In a separate but related indictment, Jensen and former undersheriff Rick Sung were charged along with Apple security executive Thomas Moyer with arranging a large iPad donation to the sheriff’s office to speed up the CCW permitting for a group of his security employees. Moyer was initially dropped from the case after convincing a judge that the proposed donation did not meet the legal bar for bribery, but the district attorney’s office appealed, and the charges against him were reinstated earlier this year.
Sung and CCW permit recipient and Smith supporter Harpreet Chadha were also indicted on bribery charges on the accusation that, in 2019, Sung held up Chadha’s permit renewal until he donated use of his San Jose Sharks luxury suite to the sheriff’s office so that it could host a private party celebrating Smith’s re-election to a sixth term. Chadha has insisted that the donation was a routine giveaway to ensure the suite didn’t go unused.
Smith, in the scandal because she was her office’s sole signatory for the concealed-gun permits, was never criminally charged in the wide-ranging corruption probe; she never testified to the original criminal grand jury after invoking her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. She retired last year after a civil grand jury filed corruption accusations against her, which was followed by a civil trial jury finding her guilty of many of the same allegations in the criminal case. The civil outcome formally removed her from office, which was entirely symbolic because she already had signaled her retirement and even resigned mid-trial in an attempt to head off a verdict.
