Case Against Ex-White House Official Survives SLAPP Test

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

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Court of Appeal:

Case Against Ex-White House Official Survives SLAPP Test

Opinion Says Assistant Press Secretary Under President George W. Bush Cannot Deny That He Illegally Taped Calls With His Employer in 2022, 2023, Fail to Reveal Content, Then Assert That He Was ‘Newsgathering’ on Misdeeds

By Kimber Cooley, associate editor

Div. Eight of this district’s Court of Appeal has held that a trial judge properly denied an anti-SLAPP motion filed by a journalist, who was White House assistant press secretary under President George W. Bush, as to claims that in 2022 and 2023, he secretly recorded phone calls with higher-ups at a financial institution for which he worked in violation of California law.

The court declared that the defendant cannot deny taping the chats and then assert that the recordings were protected “newsgathering” on company misdeeds.

Presiding Justice Maria E. Stratton authored Monday’s unpublished opinion, noting that neither side has alleged that the purportedly surreptitiously recorded calls dealt with the illegalities asserted by the defendant, who was fired after reporting the financial institution to federal authorities for purportedly providing false information in the certification process, as the operative complaint only characterizes the conversations as “delicate.”

Under those circumstances, the jurist opined:

“The content of the communications and/or alleged recordings on those dates are not alleged in the [operative complaint] nor is it available to us in any declaration or via any other evidence. All that is pleaded…and evinced via the declarations and exhibits is that [the defendant] and plaintiffs had communications or meetings with one another on those dates. We do not know what those communications or meetings were about….[The defendant] submitted no evidence that demonstrates any recordings he allegedly made were connected to his newsgathering of wrongdoing by [the company] and any investigations purportedly being undertaken against [it].”

Anti-SLAPP Motion

Moving to strike the complaint under California’s anti-SLAPP law was former Assistant White House Press Secretary Adam Levine, 56, who served in that role between January 2002 to December 2003. From 2021 to April 2023, he was the chief of staff at The Change Company LLC (“TCC”), a for-profit mortgage lender operating as a U.S. Department of Treasury-certified Community Development Financial Institution (“CDFI”).

CDFI certification allows companies to offer home loans to low-income borrowers and communities without meeting certain regulatory requirements. In February 2023, Levine says, he discovered false information on TCC’s certification materials and reported those concerns to the government.

After his termination in April, he filed a whistleblower retaliation complaint against the company in June 2023. That summer, TCC received notice that its CDFI certification was terminated. TCC Founder Steven Sugarman and various other officers filed a complaint against Levine in August 2023, asserting causes of action under Penal Code §§632 and 632.7, which prohibit the electronic recording of any confidential communications without consent. Sec. 637.2 authorizes civil action for violations, providing for the recovery of “$5,000” per incident or treble damages.

Allegations in Complaint

The plaintiffs listed multiple dates between October 2022 and Feb. 16, 2023 on which telephonic meetings were purportedly held with Levine on “delicate” topics and contend that he “surreptitiously” recorded the conversations despite having signed a non-disclosure agreement governing some of the calls. They claimed that a TCC employee informed them that Levine has a practice of recording his phone calls and saving them on an online storage system.

They sought damages of “not less than $200,000” as to Sugarman and two other plaintiffs, as well as “preliminary and permanent injunctive relief” enjoining Levine from “from using, distributing, disseminating, sharing, transferring, publishing, uploading, sending, mailing, and/or posting online” any information derived from the recordings.

On Oct. 20, 2023, Levine filed a special motion to strike the complaint under Code of Civil Procedure §425.16, arguing that the “alleged recordings” central to the pleading arise from protected newsgathering activities in connection with TCC’s purported misconduct.

In support of the request, he submitted a declaration, in which he denied recording the plaintiffs without their consent, and attached as exhibits multiple news stories, including ones by The Washington Post and Reuters, reporting on the Securities and Exchange Commission’s investigation into TCC in August 2023 as well as a transcript from a Sept. 15, 2023 hearing in which the trial court said “plaintiffs’ case is…pretty anemic.”

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Timothy P. Dillon denied Levine’s motion in February 2024. Monday’s opinion, joined in by Justice John Shepard Wiley Jr. and Justice Victor Viramontes, affirms the order. To prevail on an anti-SLAPP motion, a defendant must first establish that the challenged causes of action arise from “protected activity” before the burden shifts to the plaintiffs to establish that the claims have “minimal merit.”

Levine argued that the lawsuit triggered the definition found at §425.16(e)(4), which specifies that the activity protected by the law includes “any…conduct in furtherance of the exercise of the constitutional right of petition or the constitutional right of free speech in connection with a public issue or an issue of public interest.”

Stratton said:

“Levine must establish that his conduct of allegedly recording communications…[was] ‘in furtherance of…the constitutional right of . . . free speech’…i.e., newsgathering on the issue of TCC’s potential CDFI violations and securities fraud. To that end, Levine contends he submitted evidence that demonstrated plaintiffs were ‘concerned that [Levine] had allegedly recorded conversations containing statements relating to the fact that TCC was fraudulently providing loans to high wealth recipients and engaging in securities fraud.’ He argues: ‘There is also no question [his] activity is clearly connected to a matter of public interest….’ ”

Nothing to Suggest

Rejecting his characterization, she opined that “the issue” is that “[t]here is nothing to suggest or indicate that the topic of TCC’s misconduct as to its CDFI certification was discussed by plaintiffs or Levine on the dates pleaded,” saying:

“The only information provided about the content of the…alleged recordings include the…allegation that plaintiffs found the recordings ‘highly offensive due to the delicacy of the topics discussed during said conversations’ (italics added). While Levine states in his…declaration that he raised his concerns about TCC’s ‘securities fraud’…prior to his reporting same to the federal authorities[], he does not state that he did so on…any of the…dates alleged—nothing to connect Levine’s conduct of recording to the protected activity of newsgathering and investigating the topic or issue of TCC’s alleged misconduct.” She also pointed out that many of the alleged recordings took place before February 2023, when he reportedly discovered the misconduct, and noted that “Levine alleged he did not ‘illegally’ record plaintiffs” and that any recordings he undertook were made as part of his media relations role and with Sugarman’s consent.

Citing case law supporting the proposition that a defendant who denies engaging in the purportedly protected activity alleged in the complaint will be hard-pressed to show how the plaintiff’s lawsuit has a chilling effect on his constitutional rights, she sided with the plaintiffs, who she said “[made] much of the fact that Levine denied the allegedly illegal recordings ever happened.”

The case is Lindeke v. Levine, B336072.

Acting for the plaintiffs were Eric John Troutman, Brittany Ariana Andres, Puja Amin of the Irvine-based firm Troutman Amin LLP. Levine represented himself.

Threats Alleged

TCC, on its website, says that it placed Levine on leave on March 2, 2023, for such conduct as referring “to Hispanic/Latino workers in the office as ‘monkeys’ ” and “began threatening to go to regulators, the press, and others unless Change paid him over $6 million (the sum he claimed to have been paid by a prior employer for his silence)” then upping “his demands to over $10 million.” The company recotes that a Los Angeles Superior Court judge on April 21, 2023, issued a workplace violence restraining order based on threats of violence to Sugarman and others and that he was arrested on Aug. 24, 2023 for impersonating a police officer.

Last June 6, TCC announced in a press release that Levine’s wholly owned company, Yeti Global Services, had been found liable in a New York state court for over more than $94 million, setting forth:

“The complaint filed by The Change Company alleged that YGS received documents stolen by Mr. Levine from The Change Company and facilitated Mr. Levine’s scheme to extort The Change Company by planting damaging stories about The Change Company.”