EXCLUSIVE: Hannah Tubbs, formerly known as James Tubbs, discussed a shift in gender identity as part of a jailhouse phone call regarding the defense lawyer’s strategy on how the convicted child molester was being “housed” prior to a guilty plea in Los Angeles, according to law enforcement sources with knowledge of the call.
Tubbs is also an accused murderer who allegedly began identifying as female only after being arrested in a cold case child sex assault investigation, in order to get placed with juvenile girls while awaiting trial.
Tubbs, 17 at the time of the attack, has criminal records in California, Idaho and Washington and pleaded guilty in the case last year. It involved an assault on a 10-year-old girl in a Denny’s bathroom on New Year’s Day in 2014.
Under lenient policies imposed by Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon he received a softball sentence of two years in a juvenile facility at the age of 26.
Hannah Tubbs began identifying as female after being arrested in connection with a 2014 child molestation case, according to prosecutors. (Robyn Beck / AFP | Los Angeles County)
But now Shea Sanna, the Los Angeles prosecutor who led the Denny’s attack case, has been suspended for five days without pay for allegedly “misgendering” and “deadnaming” Tubbs by raising concerns that the repeat offender may have just been pretending to identify as female to have an easier situation in lockup.
As Fox News Digital reported Friday, Sanna has argued in the past that jailhouse phone calls show Tubbs, now 27, was attempting to use gender identity to game the justice system – an argument that sources say made others in Gascon’s office uncomfortable and led to the suspension.
Deputy District Attorney Shea Sanna at the Hannah Tubbs hearing in Antelope Valley Juvenile Court, California on Jan. 27, 2022. (Dave Buchan)
However, a previously undisclosed Jan. 5, 2021, jailhouse phone call recording captured the first conversation between the newly minted Hannah Tubbs and her father, according to law enforcement sources.
“Hey, uh, uh…Hannah,” the father says at the start of the call, according to the sources.
CALIFORNIA TRANS CHILD MOLESTER HANNAH TUBBS GLOATS OVER LIGHT SENTENCE IN JAILHOUSE PHONE CALLS
“Huh?” Tubbs replies.
“Hannah,” the father repeats. Tubbs replies with a confused yes, according to the sources, and then the father explains he had spoken to the defense attorney, who called him and said she represents Hannah.
Hannah Tubbs began identifying as female after being arrested in connection with a 2014 child molestation case in Los Angeles County, according to prosecutors. Tubbs later pleaded not guilty to an April 2019 murder in nearby Kern County. (Los Angeles County)
“I was like, who?” he replies again, with a laugh.
Tubbs explains the name is spelled the same way forwards and backwards, and the father says he would have picked “Jamie.”
The call came shortly after another conversation between the two in which Tubbs, still identifying as James, said his lawyer was working on a solution to his “housing problem” in jail, the sources said.
WATCH: Deputy DA says morale is down because of Gascon’s soft-on-crime policies
“It wasn’t like I was going around being transphobic or malicious — I brought it to their attention that they have a convicted child rapist trying to get himself into a juvenile facility as a woman, and he rapes little girls,” Sanna told Fox News Digital Friday, in response to his suspension. “Does anybody see a problem with that?”
“When you come to court, make sure you address me as her.”
The complaint against Sanna was filed on March 1 – just days after Sanna slammed two close Gascon allies on Twitter – and more than a month after the day of a meeting in the complaint where he is accused of making transgressions in Tubbs’ case.
LA District Attorney George Gascon. Gascon issued a new directive concerning how crimes are prosecuted against suspects who are not U.S. citizens. (Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Sanna, who previously had no disciplinary record and only positive performance reviews, says the timing suggests retaliation – and that he doesn’t even remember speaking on the controversial conference call.
“I have no recollection of saying anything,” he told Fox News Digital. “I didn’t, but even if I did, it’s putting them on notice that they’re being played.”
On the Friday at the end of February 2022, he retweeted a post from the DA’s official account advertising a panel on some of Gascon’s policy initiatives featuring two close advisers, Tiffiny Blacknell and Alisa Blair.
“Will they be discussing your administration’s policy of sabotaging cases and covering it up?” Sanna, an outspoken critic of Gascon’s policies, tweeted at the time. “If so, I’m aware of some emails and recordings they could use in their presentation.”
He was being critical of the Gascon allies’ role in the release of Andrew Cachu, a convicted killer who served just six years of a 50-year prison sentence. Cachu was released in November after Blair declined to present evidence at a hearing to determine whether he should remain in custody after aging out of the juvenile detention facility when he turned 25, Fox News Digital reported at the time.
Andrew Cachu, who was convicted of shooting a man in the back as gang members held him down, was allegedly found asleep with his gun in a car blocking traffic after his early release from prison, according to authorities. (Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department)
As Cachu neared his release, FOX Los Angeles obtained jailhouse recordings between the killer and his mother, who appeared to sound “overjoyed” about Blair’s involvement in the case in the leadup to his release.
Blair told Fox News Digital at the time she had not requested Cachu’s immediate release, although the judge ordered it.
She left Gascon’s office to work for the Community Based Public Safety Collective think tank, but, according to law enforcement sources, in March 2022 filed one of the complaints in the internal investigation that ultimately led to Sanna’s suspension.
WATCH: Los Angeles DA Gascon denies knowledge of jailhouse recordings in Hannah Tubbs case
She told Fox News Digital that she did not believe the suspension had anything to do with his tweet, however.
“Several different stakeholders reached out to me during my time in the office about concerns regarding Sanna that had nothing to do with me or any criticisms of me, but I don’t know the reason for his current suspension,” she said.
Deputy District Attorney Shea Sanna at the Hannah Tubbs hearing in Antelope Valley Juvenile Court, California on Jan. 27, 2022. (Dave Buchan)
Last year, Fox News Digital obtained explicit jailhouse recordings of Tubbs admitting it was wrong to attack a little girl but gloating over the light punishment.
The suspect boasted that nothing would happen after the guilty plea, due to Gascon’s lenient policies for juvenile defendants and laughed about not having to go back to prison or register as a sex offender. Tubbs also made explicit remarks about the victim that are unfit to print.
In one of the calls, Tubbs tells her dad to start using female pronouns.
Alisa Blair, left, with fellow special advisers Shelan Joseph and Tiffiny Blacknell and DA George Gascon. (Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office)
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“So now they’re going to put me with other trannies that have seen their cases like mine or with one tranny like me that has a case like mine,” Tubbs says. “So when you come to court, make sure you address me as her.”
Fox News Digital also learned last year that Tubbs was accused of sexually molesting a 4-year-old girl at a California library in August 2013 while her mother was browsing books “just a few aisles over.” And Tubbs faced similar accusations in Seattle.
Tubbs, now 27, is currently sitting in a Kern County jail cell, awaiting trial on unrelated murder charges in connection with the death of a friend who was beaten with a rock in the woods in 2019.
