Today, I am announcing charges against 12 people who intentionally crossed the clear and bright line between dissent and destruction. They have been charged with felony vandalism and conspiracy to trespass, also a felony. We have issued warrants for their self-surrender. Their arraignments will be forthcoming. On June 5, 2024, at approximately 5:30 a.m., a group were seen spray painting graffiti near Memorial Court and the main quad at Stanford University. Soon afterward, dozens of individuals flooded the area and surrounded the adjacent President’s Office, known as Building 10. The building and its offices were locked and closed. A few of the perpetrators then broke a window on the west side of the building and crawled inside. Once inside, they let in the others. All of the perpetrators wore face coverings to conceal their identity.

Once inside, the perpetrators covered the interior surveillance cameras and barricaded doorways using ladders, furniture, and additional equipment. They then began splattering fake blood, trying to break into offices, and recording social media videos that listed a series of demands they wanted before they would end their occupation of Building 10.

Their occupation lasted more than an hour before police were able to break down the barricades and arrest them. Stanford estimated that the perpetrators caused hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage to the building’s interior.

As District Attorney, my job, alongside law enforcement, is to protect the people and property of Santa Clara County, which includes Stanford University.

The rule of law includes all of our colleges and universities because these institutions are not accountability-free zones and are not above or beyond the reach of the California Penal Code.

During this thorough investigation, law enforcement uncovered evidence that the twelve defendants we charged today planned far more than making speeches and video demands. Through their own messages, their own encrypted documents, their actions, the tools they carried inside that building, these twelve defendants were not simply carried away by the passion of their cause.

The conspirators planned to break into Building 10, and they broke in. They then planned to commit vandalism, and they committed hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage. The conspirators even had a handbook to help them: The Do-it-Yourself Occupation Guide, 2024 Edition. It includes organizational flow charts and how to break dead bolts. They generally followed that guide and succeeded in their plans. You will see around you photographs of what they did. You will read in the Statement of Facts we filed, more about how they committed that vandalism. The damage included doors, windows, and floors, and was so extensive that it closed Building 10, the Stanford University’s executive office, for more than two months.

What the defendants chanted as they went about those plans is legally irrelevant. What they said - aside from the planning of the break-in and vandalism - the substance of what they demanded, whatever political views goaded them to do several hundred thousand dollars in damage to Stanford’s Building 10, was not a factor in the criminal charges they face. Pouring invective on to social media is not against the law; pouring fake blood all over someone else’s workplace is.

Protests are constitutionally protected in this country and in this county. As District Attorney, I hold the responsibility to protect speech dearly. Our very freedom flows from the First Amendment.

We have always been allowed to state our opinions and ask our questions. But what worth is a question when it is asked by a masked person who has just broken into your office?

What worth is a question posed by a person determined to punish their perceived target, not with the devastation of their reason or logic, but with a hammer through a window, a crowbar pried through a door?

Speech and your point of view are inherently yours. You own them. But we are here today because these conspirators broke into a building, barricaded themselves inside, and destroyed property that was not theirs.

These perpetrators left behind offices that had been literally trashed: furniture piled up into barricades, property missing, documents thrown around and saturated with fake blood.

There’s one detail that sticks with me. One employee was distraught that her office where she had worked for years had been destroyed. Among her damaged desk and broken printer, the most precious thing to her was a photograph of her recently deceased mother and her children that had been ruined by fake blood splattered by the conspirators. This was not an anonymous space in a nondescript building. It was a working office of people dedicated to students. The rule of law is not just a dry concept taught in civics class. It’s about the safety of you and your family. It’s about the sanctity of where you go to work and your belongings, some of which are precious and irreplaceable. The blood splattered on the photo was fake, but these conspirators’ dangerous and destructive actions affected real people.

Our speech must be protected – true – and so must our schools, our workplaces, and our homes.

We are here today because I will not allow people – hiding behind masks – to commit crimes.

We would not be here today if these defendants stopped at the threshold of Building 10 and simply stated their views.

We would not be here today if the defendants had done what Stanford, and universities all across our country, try to instill in their students – to convince through the power of ideas, not the mayhem of a mob.