The State Bar of California suspended former county Supervisor Andrew Do‘s law license effective this week, meaning he can no longer practice law, possibly paving the way toward complete disbarment.
“This attorney has been charged with a felony,” a consumer alert on Do’s state bar profile reads. “The State Bar has placed this attorney on involuntary inactive status. As a result, the attorney is ineligible to practice law in California.”
When an attorney is charged or convicted of a crime, the attorney, the district attorney and the court are required by law to notify the State Bar.
If the attorney is convicted of a felony, they are suspended and required to attend a disciplinary hearing in State Bar Court. That hearing has not been scheduled.
Do could be disbarred if the State Bar Court finds that his crime involved “moral turpitude,” meaning it violates moral standards, or the intent to make a false statement, “deceive, defraud, steal.”
Do pleaded guilty in federal court to taking more than $550,000 in bribes to direct $10 million in pandemic funds to the nonprofit Viet America Society, which later employed Do’s daughter as a condition.
The federal pandemic relief funds were intended to be used to feed older adults and people with disabilities during the COVID-19 emergency, and $1 million was supposed to go toward a Vietnam War memorial at Mile Square Park, but federal and local investigators allege only about $1.4 million was spent on the meals. The war memorial was never completed.
Part of the money his daughter, Rhiannon Do, received was used to buy a house in Tustin, Andrew Do’s plea agreement said. Another daughter received $100,000, he admitted.
Do resigned from his elected position as the First District supervisor in October. He faces a maximum of five years in prison and is scheduled to be sentenced in March.
Do did not respond to requests for comment; his attorney Paul Meyer said, “It is inappropriate to comment.”
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