By Miki Mullor
Special Coverage

Jan. 29, 2024: Former Sammamish Deputy Mayor/City Council member Ramiro Valderrama wanted $10 million, plus attorneys’ fees, to settle his lawsuit filed in March last year alleging the city failed to turn over public records.

Valderram alleged violations of the Public Records Act by council members he politically opposed, specifically targeting former Mayor Christie Malchow, former council member Ken Gamblin and then-and current council member Kent Treen. 

Records from the litigation show Valderama’s attorney demanded in September $10 million to settle the case, along with a public statement by the city, to be approved by Valderrama, acknowledging city council members violated the Public Records Act.  

Last month, a judge dismissed the lawsuit, finding the city and council members followed the law. The judge issued a summary judgment (meaning, no jury or bench trial) on the city’s motion to dismiss. Valderrama this month filed a notice with the King County court that the decision will be appealed to the state appellate court. He has about three months from the January 11 notice to file his case with the higher court.

The city provided the Sammamish Comment documents through Public Records Requests (PRRs) showing the legal bill for the city’s defense is now up to $340,000, not including the city clerk’s staff time.   Earlier in the litigation, a month after filing, and before incurring its legal fees, the city offered Valderrama $75,000 to settle the case, which he refused.  

Transcripts of depositions taken in this case were made public through a PRR and reveal a political connection between Valderama’s case, the investigation of former city manager David Rudat, Stephanie Rudat’s connection to both these issues and an apparent political revenge as a motive. Stephanie is the daughter of David. Malchow was one of the council members who voted to initiate the Rudat investigation.

Dismissed by the judge: “hearsay and / or speculation”

As we reported, the lawsuit Valderrama initiated in March 2023 has been summarily dismissed by Judge Paul Crisalli of King County’s Superior Court in December 2023, after several months of depositions by Valderrama. 

Documents recently obtained by the Comment through a public records request reveal correspondence out of court between attorneys for Valaderrama and the city, documenting settlement discussions between August and October 2023. 

In a letter dated August 9, 2023, Valderrama’s attorney, Patrick Schneider of Foster Garvey, a Seattle law firm, suggested “it is in the best interest of the City to settle this matter now.”  

In his letter, Schneider reviews his arguments on alleged conduct by Malchow, Gamblin and Treen which he alleged violated the Public Records Act.  Schneider based his argument on testimony given by Stephanie Rudat and Michael Scoles. 

Stephanie Rudat is a political activist and an administrator of two large Sammamish-centric Facebook groups. Scoles is a local activist who led a Political Action Committee (PAC) that was involved in Sammamish elections. 

“The evidence of lack of good faith on the part of Councilmember Treen and former Councilmembers Malchow, Gamblin (and others) is overwhelming, yet the City continues to rely on their bad faith affidavits and declarations,”  Schneider claimed in his letter. 

The issues outlined in the letter were later presented to the court in a partial summary judgment motion, in which Valderrama asked the court to rule in his favor. The motion was denied.

The judge declined to rely on these testimonies which he characterized as “hearsay and/or speculation.”  

“The undisputed facts show that the City conducted an adequate search…. The declarations and exhibits show extensive work by the [city clerk] and attorneys…to work with current and former council members to use different methods of searching for responsive documents…. [T]he current and former council-members also provided responsive records to the City, which the City in turn produced Valderrama,” wrote the judge. 

Demand of $10 million

But back in August, Schneider was certain the city’s position was “indefensible:” “It is unfortunate that the City has to be compelled by litigation to comply with the PRA [Public Records Act], and current City leadership needs to acknowledge what has happened and attempt to make amends instead of defending the indefensible in this litigation.”  

Then, in a September 13 letter he sent to the city, Schneider made a specific offer to settle the case for “an enormous penalty:” “Mr. Valderrama is willing to settle this litigation for less than a court is likely to award, but only so long as the amount is big enough to demonstrate the City’s recognition of the enormity of what has happened.” 

The letter then demands $10 million which Valderrama would donate to “one or more non-profits or charitable institutions of his choosings,”  leaving the possibility that such a non-profit may be controlled by Valderrama himself or associates of his. The letter also demanded that the city pay Valderrama’s $170,000 legal fees, as of September.  

“The need for deterrence is heightened by the City’s conduct in this litigation, which is to defend the indefensible rather than take responsibility for what has happened,” warned Schneider, who made the point that the City of Sammamish had a $44 million reserves in its general fund and has the highest median household income of any city in the country. 

The city replied that “we do not believe the Court is likely to make any penalty award.”

Months before that, a month after Valderrama filed his lawsuit, and before the expensive stage of depositions started, the city offered Valderrama $75,000 and his legal costs to settle the case. The city did so likely to avoid the certain expense of participating in the depositions of nine witnesses Valderrama subpoenaed.  Had Valderrama accepted the offer, it would have been the highest settlement the city has ever made in a Public Records Act case.

Valderrama rejected the offer and pushed forward with depositions. 

The court’s order completely rejected Schneider’s arguments and dismissed the case in a summary judgment.  Valderrama and his attorney, and some of his supporters on social media, seemed to think that the mere use of a personal device with an application that uses encryption, such as WhatsApp, to discuss anything related to the city of Sammamish, is for itself a violation of the Public Records Act.

But the judge rejected this argument and held that according to Washington’s Supreme Court, personal communications that are work related are not automatically subject to the PRA.  “Communications are considered public records only when an official makes them in their official capacity,” explained the judge. 

• Superior Court Order  

A review of Schneider’s biography on Foster Garvey’s website, reveals he has been a land use and real estate attorney for over 40 years, but there is no mention of any experience in the area of public records. While the firm has other attorneys who specialize in public records law, Schneider is not listed as one of them.

The connection to the Rudat investigation 

In April 2021, this author submitted a complaint to the city council members over the privy of Stephanie Rudat to confidential city information through her father, then-city manager David Rudat.  

The city council ordered an investigation by an external investigator.  The final report was withheld from the public until the council majority changed and voted to release it.  Ironically, the swing vote on the previous council against releasing the report was then-mayor Malchow, who later became a target of the Valderrama lawsuit. 

Ms. Rudat petitioned the district court in Bellevue for an anti-harassment order against this author to block the publication of the report, which the judge denied.   

The investigator found that “Ms. Rudat was privy to certain attorney-client communications between Mr. Rudat, the City’s attorney and, in some cases, other City staff. Ms. Rudat acknowledged that she ‘listened in’ on her father’s business conversations; the evidence indicates that this “eavesdropping” included communications that Ms. Rudat knew (or reasonably should have known) to be protected by the attorney-client and work product privileges.” 

As documented in the city investigator report, Stephanie Rudat’s core defense to her behavior was to blame council members for it. “When asked whether she could see a potential problem with her listening to her father’s and Council members’ conversations without the Council members’ knowledge, Ms. Rudat responded, “Fuck you, Council.” Ms. Rudat emphasized that she has received “way more” information from the Council than from listening in on her father’s conversations with them, and that if Council members thought that her listening to their conversations was bad, they were being “mighty hypocritical.”  (On page 18 of the report.) 

• REPORT OF INVESTIGATION

Smear campaign leading to a lawsuit 

The Rudat investigator concluded that “It is undisputed that Ms. Rudat has listened to various conversations between Mr. Rudat and Council members while Mr. Rudat lived with Ms. Rudat and/or was otherwise in her presence. Ms. Rudat sees nothing wrong with this based on her assessment that Council members have voluntarily provided her information over the years.” 

Indeed, shortly after the investigation started, allies of Ms. Rudat started spreading a rumor that Malchow had given this author confidential information from city council executive sessions. 

In June 2021, Scoles sent this author an email, copying several council members, accusing Malchow of giving Mullor confidential information:  “I have seen the emails where Christie shares she sent you information from executive session,” he wrote. Scoles repeated his claims during city council meetings. 

The Scoles email was also published on the “Vote Sammamish” Facebook group by Rudat through a fake Facebook profile called “Dave Benedet” as “proof” of wrongdoing by Malchow.   

However, during his deposition in the Valderrama case, Scoles changed his version and claimed he was told Malchow had said “things” to this author and he was “sure” those were confidential.  Scoles was never able to show the “email” or confidential information he claimed he saw, nor provide any details whatsoever to support his claims.

Likewise, when questioned under oath, Stephanie Rudat couldn’t provide a single evidence, or detail, of getting any confidential information from council members. 

The Comment discovered that metadata embedded in the documents the Facebook profile “Benedet” shared on Facebook revealed it was Stephanie Rudat that created those documents.  This information was shared with the city council.  Shortly after, “Benedet” disappeared and today it’s an inactive account.

• Complaint to City Council regarding Facebook Profile Benedet and Stephanie Rudat

“Malchowgate”

Deposition transcripts reveal that shortly after the smear campaign started, in December 2021, Stephanie Rudat approached Valderrama with claims that the information about her father’s investigation was “incomplete.” 

Rudat admitted in depositions that she gave Valderrama her private communications with Malchow over Whatsapp. “I had sent him..pretty homogenized content,” testified Rudat, “Yes, here’s proof she’s [Malchow] on WhatsApp.  We have a call log. I was just trying to validate that there was this existence and that, aside from an existence there, was city business involved.” 

Following that, and during 2022 Valderrama made 14 public comments during city council meetings and sent nine written comments accusing Malchow of mishandling confidential information, based on the Scoles email and Stephanie Rudat’s disclosures to him, and coined it “Malchowgate.” 

Rudat and Valderrama mistakenly assumed Rudat’s communications with Malchow was a “city business” public record according to the PRA, and that the use of WhatsApp shows bad intent–assumptions later on rejected by the judge. 

Armed with WhatsApp transcripts from Rudat and faulty legal assumptions, Valderrama initiated his legal action.

In last month’s ruling, the judge rebuked Valderrama and Rudat’s assumption, ruling that: “Valderrama points to communications between Stephanie Rudat and Malchow. First, it is unclear how these communications qualify as public records, particularly where they do not further a business interest for Malchow. But even if they did, there is no testimony that Malchow unreasonably withheld the public records. The record shows that she produced what was within her control. Further, most of these records were voluntarily provided by Malchow after she was no longer on City Council.”

Lawsuit as a revenge for the Rudat investigation?

In January 2022 Valderrama submitted several public records requests to the City of Sammamish for, initially, communications city council members had with this author, and later expanded it to communications council members had with any Sammamish citizen, using text applications, like WhatsApp.  These requests were the prerequisite to bring a lawsuit against the city for violation of the Public Records Act.  

Then, in March 2023 Valderrama filed his lawsuit, with Malchow being its primary target. 

Deposition transcripts show Valderrama met Stephanie Rudat at least three times before her deposition. The transcripts also show Valderrama met with Scoles and former Mayor Karen Moran before their depositions. Stephanie Rudat testified Scoles and Moran are her friends.

The depositions confirmed the meetings were to discuss the lawsuit, and revealed its potential political motive: “I did not know [this lawsuit] was about a PRR request until today,” testified Scoles, “I thought it was about Ramiro suing the City for how Dave [Rudat] got fired.”

In December, the lawsuit was dismissed, with complete exoneration of Malchow’s and the other council members’ conduct. After conducting nine depositions and months of document exchanges, Valderrama was never able to show that council members shared confidential information with Rudat.

Taxpayers on the hook for the legal fees

The Public Records Act provides a successful litigant its attorney fees to be paid by the city, but not the other way around. Therefore, even though the judge handed the city attorney a resounding win, the city is left with very few options, if at all, to recoup the $340,000 legal costs it incurred defending Valderrama’s $10 million legal gambit.