|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
A 408-page report released this week by San Mateo County supervisors Noelia Corzo and Ray Mueller calls for the immediate resignation of Sheriff Christina Corpus and the immediate firing of her then-Chief of Staff Victor Aenlle due to what Judge LaDoris H. Cordell describes as the “lies, secrecy, intimidation, retaliation and abuses of power,” that Cordell says are the “hallmarks” of the Corpus’ administration.
The report, unveiled during a press conference on Nov. 12, details a multi-year affair between Corpus and Aenlle that allegedly involved Aenlle gifting Corpus thousands of dollars worth of jewelry and accompanying her on a trip to Hawaii, all while Corpus fast-tracked pay increases for Aenlle.
The release of the report has intensified calls from the public and local political leaders for Corpus to step down and for systemic steps to keep the sheriff’s office accountable, such as installing an inspector general.
At a special meeting on Nov. 13, the board of supervisors formally called for her resignation and unanimously voted to abolish Aenlle’s chief of staff position. In a surprise appearance, Corpus announced that effective immediately, she would promote Aenlle to assistant sheriff, which would, in essence, preempt the board’s removal of the chief of staff position.
“Aenlle and Sheriff Corpus’ dishonesty about their personal relationship, their incompetent management of the Sheriff’s Office, and Sheriff Corpus’ shocking willingness to relinquish control of the office to a real-estate-broker-turned-reserve-deputy, who failed to complete the Field Officer Training Program, have combined to leave the Sheriff’s Office in utter disarray,” wrote Cordell in the conclusion of her report.
Many of the report’s findings concerned Aenlle, particularly his relationship with the sheriff and his seemingly outsized influence over her administration.
Findings in the report demonstrated Aenlle’s various transgressions, including that he had not met the Sheriff’s Office’s basic volunteer duty requirements for a Level 1 reserve deputy (which he claimed to be), that he improperly possessed a suppressed (silenced) rifle, that he illegally and improperly wore a badge that resembled the badges of sworn law enforcement officers, that he had unapproved outside employment that lead to conflicts of interest, and that he abused his power, intimidated employees and retaliated against them for perceived disloyalty.
An ‘inappropriate personal relationship’
Cordell’s investigation concluded that Aenlle and Corpus have been engaged in a “personal relationship,” in violation of county policies, since 2021 and that this relationship has led Corpus to “relinquish control” of the Sheriff’s Office to Aenlle.
County policies do not require that a sexual relationship exist to create a conflict of interest; it can be “any intimate relationship beyond mere friendship.”
According to the report, Aenlle started as a consultant on Corpus’ campaign to become the first female sheriff in San Mateo County. After her election, but before she took office, Corpus sought and received the approval of County Executive Mike Callagy to fund a transition team that included Aenlle as well as five other sworn and civilian members, despite such a team being “unprecedented.”
Callagy signed off on Aenlle’s transition team contract but soon terminated his contract in October 2022 after learning that Corpus and Aenlle had gone on a trip to Hawaii together — without Corpus’ then-husband. In response, Corpus claimed that the two of them were just “good friends” and that he had gone with her to Hawaii to help with her kids.
“You didn’t tell me Victor was a good friend. I wouldn’t have approved his contract,” said Callagy at the time, according to the report. “It’s the perception that I hired a contractor who went to Hawaii with the Sheriff-elect.”
When interviewed by Cordell, Aenlle denied the affair, saying they were “good friends.” He also said that “it was a coincidence” that he was in Hawaii at the same time as Corpus and on the same flight as her because he was there doing “covert” security detail for a “high-net worth individual,” and they “barely even saw each other.”
As soon as Corpus was sworn into office in January 2023, she hired him as an independent contractor tasked with “translating the Sheriff’s vision into concrete policies and initiatives,” at a pay rate of $92.44 per hour ($192,275 per year).
In March 2023, she created a salaried extra help position with the same job description as Aenlle’s contract. Aenlle was hired into this position.
In June 2023, Corpus worked with the county’s Human Resources department to create a job description for a new executive director of administration position that would be paid approximately $246,979. According to the report, there was no announcement of this job opening, and no applicants other than Aenlle. This was Aenlle’s most recent position, before being surreptitiously promoted to assistant sheriff.
Corpus then repeatedly asked for pay raises for Aenlle, including at one point ordering her then-Undersheriff Chris Hsiung to send the request under his name instead of hers. These raises were eventually granted.
The report states that Aenlle bought Corpus several large-ticket gifts, including $11,000 Tiffany diamond earrings and $1,000 Christian Louboutin boots.
Several employees also attested to seeing the pair show public displays of affection, such as pecks on the cheek.
The report also details Aenlle’s apparently aggressive responses to Corpus’ then-spouse. One interviewee said that after Corpus and her then-spouse had an argument, Aenlle was heard saying, “I’ll put a bullet in (spouse’s) head.”
At the end of the report, Cordell concluded that as the two “clearly” have a close personal relationship, Corpus had violated county and Sheriff’s Office policies by hiring him, having him report directly to her and repeatedly recommending pay increases for him.
Cordell maintained that throughout the investigation, Aenlle made “false statements” and was found to be “not credible.”
Conflicts of interest and an improperly possessed gun
Due to conflicts of interest caused by Aenlle and Corpus’ personal relationship, the investigation led to the discovery of Aenlle’s unapproved employment outside the Sheriff’s Office. It also found that he improperly possessed a silenced gun and illegally and improperly wore a badge resembling that of a sworn law enforcement officer.
The county and Sheriff’s Office policies require employees to apply to their department head when engaged in outside employment in order to avoid actual or perceived conflicts of interest; Aenlle’s department head is Corpus.
Based on Aenlle’s LinkedIn profile, his job application was submitted to the Sheriff’s Office in 2023 and recounted conversations with civilian employees where Aenlle said that he “was out showing houses,” Cordell found that Aenlle was still employed as a real estate broker with Coldwell Banker Commercial. Cordell also called the Coldwell Banker Half Moon Bay Office, which confirmed that Aenlle “doesn’t work there as much as he used to, but that yes, he is still here.”
Aenlle’s employment with Coldwell Banker led to a conflict of interest when he negotiated the lease for the Sheriff’s Office’s proposed child care center and substation at a property on Broadway in Redwood City. Coldwell Banker Real Estate brokered the lease on the Broadway property.
The lease is a “triple-net” lease, which obligates the county to pay the property’s property taxes and property insurance in addition to monthly rent. According to an anonymous employee interviewed for the investigation, who works in the county’s Real Estate Properties department, this type of lease added $9,000 to the monthly rent and “greatly favors the landlord to the detriment of the lessee (the county).”
Aenlle said in an interview with Cordell that his involvement in the real estate transaction was part of his job description as chief of staff and that he engaged in these transactions at the sheriff’s behest. He also explicitly denied knowing that the broker for the lease was Coldwell Banker, despite the initials “CBRE” appearing prominently at the top of the letterhead of the letter of intent that was emailed to him for the property, and at the top of the lease flyer for the building.
“I mean, why not use the talent that you have and the expertise to make sure that everything looks good,” said Aenlle in the interview with Cordell. “You can see that my recommendations on the lease or things that I brought forth had a lot of value.”
The report also found that Aenlle does not follow the county’s procurement policies, and did not follow protocol for selection of a construction contractor for the Broadway property.
Additionally, Cordell found that Aenlle had access to suppressed (silenced) rifles, as he was confirmed to have the code to the safe in which they were stored. According to California Penal Code, “any person, firm, or corporation who within this state possesses a silencer is guilty of a felony and upon conviction thereof shall be punished by imprisonment,” unless they are “regular, salaried, full-time peace officers,” who have been certified and trained to hold such weapons.
Aenlle’s position with the Sheriff’s Office is civilian in nature, meaning that he is not a regular, salaried, full-time peace officer. Even if Aenlle’s status as a reserve deputy were not in question, reserve deputies are not regular, salaried, full-time peace officers by definition.
Additionally, the investigation found that Aenlle improperly wore a gold badge that resembles that of a sworn peace officer. According to Cordell, this may be a crime.
“Aenlle is a full-time, salaried civilian employee, not a full-time, salaried sworn peace officer,” wrote Cordell in the report. “By wearing a gold badge, he has likely committed a misdemeanor for willfully wearing a facsimile badge that could deceive a civilian into believing he is a sworn officer with full police powers. Sheriff Corpus, by issuing the gold badge to Aenlle, may have committed a misdemeanor as well.”
Retaliation
Dozens of pages in the report are dedicated to detailing numerous accounts of retaliation and abuse of employees at the Sheriff’s Office, primarily by Aenlle and his proxies. Cordell found that the “interviewees’ allegations of retaliation and intimidation are credible, and that many, if not most of Aenlle’s responses to these allegations are not credible.”
She found specifically that Aenlle and/or Corpus engaged in retaliation against former Undersheriff Chris Hsiung, former Assistant Sheriff Ryan Monaghan, a sheriff captain, five additional sworn employees and four civilian employees during her investigation.
Aenlle and Corpus are apparently “obsessed with loyalty,” and Aenlle was overheard saying, “there’s a rat in this office, I’m going to find out who it is,” multiple times.
Corpus fired former Assistant Sheriff Monaghan in September, immediately after Monaghan spoke to Cordell about the investigation. Monaghan told Aenlle and Undersheriff Perea that he had spoken with Cordell on Sept. 17 and was fired just three days later, on Sept. 20.
Cordell wrote in the report that the events that transpired in those three days, along with the timing of his firing, “lead to the inescapable conclusion that … Sheriff Corpus’ (termination of) Monaghan’s employment was retaliation.”
The report included several instances of Sheriff’s Office employees being removed from prestigious positions or assignments or omitted from Sheriff’s Office social media posts after criticizing the sheriff. It was also reported that she locked employees out of their offices and did not let them say goodbye once they resigned.
In one instance, an employee authored and circulated an email opposing Corpus’ proposed budget cuts in December 2023. Shortly after, she received a call from her supervisor who told her that Corpus had ordered her to be transferred from her special assignment that required special FBI security clearance. She was later left off of a social media post celebrating the female employees in the Sheriff’s Office.
In another instance, two captains attended a press conference hosted by the two sheriffs’ unions after requesting vacation time and wearing a “cover coat” over their badges as they were not on duty. According to the report, one of the captains later learned that an internal affairs investigation was initiated into the two unnamed captains the day after the press conference. He and the other captain were the only two captains in attendance at the press conference.
Cordell concludes by saying that these instances are “the behaviors of individuals who cannot abide being criticized and who have no compunctions about confronting those critical of them … no matter how inappropriate. The only reasonable explanation for this kind of conduct is intimidation and retaliation.”
Homophobic and racist slurs
The report also found that Corpus uttered homophobic and racist slurs in the course of her duty.
One civilian interviewee in the course of the investigation said that in January or February 2022, when Corpus was still a captain, she uttered an anti-Black racial slur directed at then-Sheriff Carlos Bolanos. The interviewee said that Corpus, who at the time was serving as a captain in the Sheriff’s Office’s Millbrae substation, walked into the interviewee’s office, stood behind her, looked at the screen where she was listening to a Zoom call by then-Sheriff Bolanos, and uttered the anti-Black slur near the interviewee’s ear twice — directed at Bolanos.
“The civilian employee’s adult son is biracial and identifies as African American. Corpus knows her son,” the report stated
The report also includes screenshots of text messages where Corpus called an unnamed city official a homophobic slur directed at lesbians multiple times.
Corpus calls investigation a ‘hatchet job’
The investigation into Corpus’ office was initiated by the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors after the county received an “unprecedented number of complaints” from both sworn and civilian staff at the Sheriff’s Office, according to supervisor Ray Mueller.
At a press conference held in response to the release of the report, Corpus forcefully denied all allegations made in the report, calling its contents “outright slander,” and the investigation a politically motivated “hatchet job” that was made with “a predetermined outcome in mind.”
She vehemently and explicitly denied engaging in an affair with Aenlle and said that the accusations of an inappropriate personal relationship were rooted in misogyny.
“I am a woman of color that has gone up the ranks in a male dominated field. This is nothing new to me. I’ve addressed this,” she said at her Tuesday evening press conference. “Victor Aenlle and I are friends. Would you ask a male sheriff this question?”
“Anyone who knows me knows that I would not use racist words,” she went on to say. “Racism is disgusting and vile. As a woman of color, this disturbs me deeply. … I do not use homophobic slurs. … These are lies.”
Corpus stated that she believes that the whole report is biased and a “witch hunt” by people who are “out to get (her).” She even claimed that some of the evidence presented in the report was fabricated.
“I do not recognize those text messages; it looks very fabricated to me,” she said, referencing screenshots of text messages included in the report, where she called an unnamed city official a homophobic slur. “These are coming from someone who is vindictive and upset.”
In the report, Cordell states that Corpus refused to be interviewed during the investigation. However, Corpus said that she wasn’t given the chance to speak. The report includes screenshots of emails in which Cordell offered Corpus three slots where she was available to speak; Corpus never responded with a time in those slots that worked for her or offered alternative times, according to the report.
View the full report here:
West Menlo Park schools end lockdown, authorities say suspect died of self-inflicted gunshot woundDecember 16, 2025 1:31 pm
Great story, Ms. Raab. Really well done.
Wow great summary for the public’s benefit. Sheriff Corpus seemed to have so much going for her, but the facts presented from this report are too incredibly damning to be passed off as a witch hunt. I hope she and Mr Aenlle will do the right thing and step down quickly.
I just finished reading Judge Cordell’s report. It is incredible. A police officer that had attained significant rank prior to becoming the Sheriff is being run by her boyfriend, Aenlle. Based on what was in the report Aenlle should be looking at criminal charges. And Corpus needs to step down. I voted for her hoping to replace a corrupt sheriff with new blood. All we voters did is trade one corrupt official for another. Worse in some ways.