“This One Is For The Spank Bank” – The Worsening O.C. Sex Scandal Finally Sticks To Teflon Todd Spitzer
Todd Spitzer, Orange County’s embattled District Attorney, engaged in “abusive conduct” in violation of county policy according to newly revealed findings from an independent county investigation of the still unfolding sexual harassment scandal that has rocked the District Attorney’s Office.
On the heels of the independent investigation–the first unambiguous official recognition that Spitzer engaged in wrongdoing–three more women, all of whom are prosecutors in Spitzer’s office, filed lawsuits naming Spitzer as a defendant and highlighting his role in fostering a hostile workplace.
The scandal revolves around Gary LoGalbo, a man whom Spitzer swiftly promoted to the senior leadership team even though women in the office openly referred to him as “Scary Gary”.
LoGalbo is a long-time personal friend of Todd Spitzer’s. They met at one of LoGalbo’s weddings, which Spitzer attended with his now wife, whose friendship with LoGalbo dates back to middle school. Spitzer told investigators that he and LoGalbo barbequed together, fished together, and hung out together at the lake. They were roommates at one point. Mr. LoGalbo was even the best man in Spitzer’s wedding. That’s why LoGalbo frequently referred to himself in the office as “Todd’s best friend.”
The women who endured Mr. LoGalbo’s harassment say that it was this closeness of the relationship between their abuser and the elected District Attorney that forced them to feel as though they were choosing between their job on the one hand and continuous, degrading sexual harassment on the other.
One of the prosecutors, identified in the lawsuit as Jane Doe 1, recounts how, while she bent over to plug in a phone charger, LoGalbo pointed at her rear-end, snapped a picture with his cell phone, and said out-loud, “This one is for the spank bank. I’ll use it later.”
Jane Doe 2 details how, after the District Attorney’s Office installed a new room for mothers to nurse their children, LoGalbo looked over at her in front of a number of people and said– “Hey, you know what you and I should do? We should go upstairs, lock the door and bang one out in the mommy milk room.” [This seems to be a fetish for LoGalbo, who once said to several women about to be on maternity leave–“You ladies need to duct tape it up.”]
These new revelations about LoGalbo’s conduct add to a voluminous record of harassment.
Another woman in the office filed a lawsuit just weeks ago describing how one evening, as she was walking to her car after work, she saw “a car approaching slowly from behind” and then heard a voice call out--“Hey baby how much do you charge?” When she looked toward the voice, she saw it was LoGalbo who, “blew several kisses to her in an exaggerated fashion and drove away.”
In another incident, LoGalbo stared directly at a female prosecutor’s legs while chastising her over a minor mistake, saying “If you do that again I’ll have to spank you.”
On yet another occasion, LoGalbo asked a female subordinate for a ride, and when she told him her car was messy, LoGalbo said: “Are your panties in the car? Because if they are, I’ll wear them on top of my head like a hat.”
Women also accused LoGalbo of hanging a “sperm” replica in a prosecutor’s office, asking at least one woman to sit on his lap, and joking that he would put a men’s porno magazine on the desk of another male prosecutor, whom he believed to be homosexual.
Despite the unquestionably atrocious behavior of Gary LoGalbo, and the documented closeness of their personal relationship, D.A. Spitzer has distanced himself from LoGalbo’s conduct to such a degree that people around the Orange County courthouse have dubbed him “Teflon Todd.”
That reality appears poised to shift in the coming days and weeks.
The results of the latest independent county investigation are not yet publicly available. However, D.A. Spitzer and lawyers for the women suing him for employment discrimination, both have copies. We expect that the public will be able to see the full findings imminently. Until then, new legal filings with quoted sections from the independent report give a clear sense that the results spell trouble for Todd Spitzer:
Notably, an earlier investigation concluded that Spitzer’s explanation for why he did not engage in illegal retaliation against a female prosecutor accusing Mr. LoGalbo of sexual harassment was “not credible.” Nonetheless, the investigator did not formally find that Spitzer engaged in illegal behavior because the law requires a “formal adverse employment action.” Spitzer told the woman’s supervisor to “write up” a negative evaluation for “lying” about LoGalbo. But the supervisor strenuously disagreed with Spitzer, telling him it would be illegal and filing an HR complaint. Spitzer ultimately relented before any negative evaluation was actually filed. This means that technically no “formal adverse employment action” occurred despite Spitzer’s clearly inappropriate intentions.
But not even Teflon Todd can slip his way out of the mess that’s coming if the findings from the county’s latest independent investigation even remotely resemble the quotations taken from the report that are captured in the legal filings against D.A. Spitzer yesterday.