Lawsuits filed on behalf of three more Orange County prosecutors alleging sexual harassment by a former senior DA manager and retaliation by DA Todd Spitzer raise new accusations of racial comments within the office.

A 20-year veteran district attorney – one of three unnamed women prosecutors to file new lawsuits this week against the county – alleges hearing  “racially harassing comments” at the DA’s office, according to a civil complaint filed Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court.

The lawsuit alleges that Gary Logalbo – a former DA supervisor who left the office following reports that he sexually harassed female attorneys under his supervision – once told the unnamed prosecutor that “cases should be assigned based on the race of the defense attorney, prosecutor and defendant.” She also alleges that District Attorney Todd Spitzer once accused her “of being afraid to prosecute a defendant because of the defendant’s race.”

The lawsuit does not specify when or in what context Logalbo and Spitzer are alleged to have made those comments, or what case or cases they were allegedly referring to.

Spitzer is already under scrutiny for racially charged comments the DA made during an internal meeting related to the capital murder case of Jamon Buggs, a Black man accused of killing a White man and woman in Newport Beach.

The newly-filed lawsuits largely focus on the actions of Gary Logalbo, a onetime close friend of Spitzer’s, who an independent county investigation found had sexually harassed four female attorneys under his supervision. Other current and former DA supervisors have alleged that Spitzer retaliated against them after they reported sexual misconduct by Logalbo.

Spitzer has said he investigated the allegations against Logalbo as soon as he was aware of them and has denied retaliating against any of the women.

“The allegations of harassment were sustained against Gary LoGalbo,” DA Spokeswoman Kimberly Edds said Thursday, in reference to the county report. “The allegations that District Attorney Spitzer protected LoGalbo in any way or retaliated against anyone who reported harassment was completely unfounded by the outside investigator. In fact he did everything he could do to not only support the victims of LoGalbo and encourage any and all victims of harassment to come forward.”

All three newly-filed lawsuits allege specific misconduct by Logalbo, who was a former roommate of Spitzer’s and was the best man at the DA’s wedding decades ago.

One of the women alleges that Logalbo shared pornographic videos with her, and joked about making a “Pornhub” website with cameras after the pandemic forced prosecutors to rely on remote court appearances.

A second alleges that Logalbo constantly commented on her clothing, including speculating on the color of her underwear, and at times when he called her at late at night would ask what she was wearing.

The third alleges that Logalbo took a picture of her with his phone and said it was for the “spank bank,” and on another occasion brought her bottles of wine called “Barefoot” and “Manage a Trois,” telling her, “I thought you’d like that.”

One of the women – the 20-year veteran of the office – alleges that Spitzer has “falsely accused” her of “not keeping him informed on her cases in a room full of OCDA managers” as well as publicly accusing her “of being a liar for statements she made in the investigation into Mr. Logalbo.”

Logalbo resigned abruptly in December 2020, shortly after the allegations against him began to surface.

Civil rights groups have already called on the California Attorney General’s Office to investigate the OC DA’s office for systemic bias in light of the comments made by Spitzer while discussing the Buggs double-murder case.

Spitzer during an Oct. 1 meeting about whether to seek the death penalty for Buggs asked about the race of Buggs’ former girlfriends and said he “knows many Black people who enhance their status by only dating ‘White women,’” according to internal memos.

Spitzer has said he was trying to determine the racial overtones of the case, though he has acknowledged having “used an example that was insensitive” and described his own comments as “inartful.”

The internal memos indicate that some at the DA’s office were concerned that Spitzer’s comments in the Buggs meeting could have fallen under the recent Racial Justice Act, which deals with legal remedies in the event a prosecutor exhibits racial bias toward a defendant. An Orange County Superior Court judge is currently going through boxes of internal communications among DAs office leaders to determine whether any should be turned over to Buggs’ defense attorney.

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