Former San Diego County Supervisor Nathan Fletcher had no involvement in the firing of a woman who accused him of sexual harassment and assault, an independent investigation has found.
The probe, released Jan. 26 by county’s Metropolitan Transit System (MTS), was prompted by a legal dispute involving Mr. Fletcher, a former MTS board chairman, and Grecia Figueroa, who sued him and the agency last year alleging he groped her and sexually harassed her by pursuing a relationship with her.
MTS officials, however, said the firing was performance-related.
The investigation, conducted by the Bay Area-based Oppenheimer Investigations Group on behalf of MTS, found that agency officials had no knowledge of any relationship between Mr. Fletcher and Ms. Figueroa.
The probe also found “significant evidence that Figueroa had performance issues.”
“As we have known from the beginning, Mr. Fletcher was not Ms. Figueroa’s employer or supervisor, and he played no role in her termination whatsoever. We are pleased that these facts have finally been confirmed and are now publicly available,” Sean McKaveney, one of Mr. Fletcher’s attorneys said in a press release.
Ms. Figueroa’s attorney, Jessica Pride, saw it differently.
“We can’t help but feel unsurprised and disappointed. These purportedly independent results simply spout baseless ‘performance issues’ as a means of avoiding liability when it is clear that Ms. Figueroa was thriving at work before Fletcher announced his run for political office,” she said in a statement.
Ms. Pride added that the investigation was conducted without interviewing or consulting Ms. Figueroa.
Mr. Fletcher, who ended his state Senate campaign after less than two months to seek treatment for post-traumatic stress and alcohol abuse, has acknowledged a relationship with Ms. Figueroa, but says it was consensual.
Ms. Figueroa’s lawsuit was filed in March 2023. Mr. Fletcher stepped down from the MTS board that month and resigned as supervisor in May.
Ms. Figueroa’s suit alleges that in 2021, Mr. Fletcher began “stalking” her social media account, then sought to meet with her privately. On two such meetings, she says he assaulted her.
She additionally says she “felt pressured to reciprocate Fletcher’s advances because she knew he had authority as both a career-politician and as chair of the MTS Board to destroy her career at MTS and to potentially humiliate her publicly if she made him angry.”
Since Ms. Figueroa’s suit, a woman who interned for Mr. Fletcher at UC San Diego has accused him of improper behavior and a professor at the university has sued the county alleging she was retaliated against for reporting the intern’s claims.
