The government's bribery case against former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao is enormous — thousands of exhibits, dozens of witnesses, years of secret recordings. On Friday a federal judge decided it was too enormous, and started cutting.

Two months before one of the highest-profile public-corruption trials the East Bay has seen in years, prosecutors are being forced to shrink their case to something a jury can absorb. Over a three-hour hearing Friday, federal Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers first ordered the exhibit count down to 300, then relented to 500, tossed out some of the government's most sensational material, and told both sides to negotiate the rest themselves before she rules again. This kind of pretrial triage is not a sideshow: whatever survives these fights becomes the case jurors actually hear.

The defendants are Thao; her partner, Andre Jones; and two Oakland recycling magnates, David Duong and his son Andy, whose firm California Waste Solutions holds city contracts. Prosecutors describe an elaborate scheme in which the Duongs traded payments and campaign muscle for Thao's political favors, including support for a modular-housing venture, Evolutionary Homes (external source, opens in a new tab), that hoped to sell shipping-container shelters to the city at roughly $300,000 apiece. All four have pleaded not guilty.

Volume is the practical obstacle. The government's proof runs to covert cellphone videos, sprawling text threads, and huge computer files — enough that a trial once expected to last five weeks now looks likely to run six, ABC7's Dan Noyes reported from Friday's hearing. Making prosecutors defend a leaner set of exhibits is how a court keeps a trial from buckling under its own weight.

Noyes had interviewed Azevedo before his indictment; asked then whether he'd struck a deal with the Duongs, Azevedo said, "I don't remember nothing, no."

Legal analyst Steven Clark, a former prosecutor, told the station the judge was essentially ordering the government to rebuild — to come back with a tighter, more realistic roster of exhibits and witnesses. The scale of the reduction did not surprise him, he added, because no trial can be allowed to run indefinitely.

What Gonzalez Rogers refused to admit is as telling as the number she settled on. She kept out cellphone videos that referenced reported sexual activity by co-defendants and others during a Duong-sponsored 2023 trade mission to Vietnam — evidence Clark warned could bleed onto defendants with no connection to it. And she let the defense block an allegation that Thao and Jones had padded a rental application for their Oakland Hills home by overstating Jones' job and salary.

That prosecutors held such material at all speaks to how the case was built. Court papers filed in late July claimed that Andy Duong quietly filmed local officials in compromising moments, meaning to hold the footage over them, as The Oaklandside (external source, opens in a new tab) reported when it broke down the prosecution's 72-name witness list and exhibit inventory. Those witnesses stretch from former City Administrator Jestin Johnson and ex-Councilmember Nikki Fortunado Bas to FBI, IRS, and Postal Inspection agents and bank employees — a measure of how far the investigation reached.

Two cooperators who have already pleaded guilty will testify: entrepreneur Mario Juarez and former San Leandro Councilmember Bryan Azevedo, who has admitted taking a $2,000 bribe. Noyes had interviewed Azevedo before his indictment; asked then whether he'd struck a deal with the Duongs, Azevedo said, "I don't remember nothing, no."

The judge has now told all sides to meet, confer, and streamline what remains before she steps back in. The October trial is still on the calendar. But what jurors will ultimately see is being decided right now, in hearings like Friday's — and the government just gave up a large share of the pile it spent two years assembling.