San Mateo County had fired embattled Sheriff Christina Corpus’s alleged romantic partner after she gave him a $246K job, but even now that she may be on the verge of being removed from office, she just went and flat-out rehired him anyway.

You would think that beleaguered San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus would be extra careful about avoiding the appearance of any improprieties or conflicts of interests these days, considering that the county’s voters overwhelmingly gave their supervisors the authority to remove Corpus early last month. But maybe not? The Palo Alto Daily Post reports that at Tuesday’s supervisors meeting, we learned that Corpus’s office had tried to buy ten massage chairs in their budget (the request was denied), after previous curious spending decisions like a $74,000 conference table and $16,000 on soft-serve ice cream machines.    

But that massage chair wrinkle might be nothing compared to yet another fresh news scandal that Corpus has taken on, in what seems like a game of chicken. The Chronicle reports Corpus has rehired her alleged romantic partner Victor Aenlle, even after the supervisors forced him out in November after an explosive report on Corpus’s conduct alleged that he’d been hired without the proper qualifications for a $256,000-a-year position. (That report also alleged she used racist and homophobic slurs in the workplace, and she also fired a whistleblowing sheriff’s deputy the day the report was released.)    

We should note that Aenlle’s new position is an unpaid, volunteer position as a reserve deputy reviewing Concealed Carry permit applications.

“Mr. Aenlle is a fully qualified reserve deputy for over 17 years and has been informed by the County Attorney that he is allowed to be in any County workspace where reserve deputies are allowed,” Corpus said in a statement to the Chronicle. “As Sheriff, I have the authority to assign reserve deputies to work anywhere there is a need.”

Yet rehiring Aenlle may just be an intentional provocation. A separate Palo Alto Daily Post report notes that County Manager Mike Callagy banned Aenlle from non-public areas of county-owned buildings when he was let go in November, though Corpus recently instructed her IT department to give him county computer system access. It is possible that Aenlle would be working from home.

And while the job is unpaid, Aenlle might still not be eligible for it. The Post reminds us that in that aforementioned scathing November report, retired Judge LaDoris Cordell said Aenlle had not completed the requisite volunteer hours to be a reserve deputy, and, “Even worse, it appears that he likely falsified his volunteer hours when he entered them into the database.”

Despite the outcome of the special election that could toss her out, the county's supervisors have not yet initiated the process. And the earliest they could have done it was this past Tuesday’s meeting (where the massage chair controversy came up), though the item was not on their agenda. NBC Bay Area quoted board president David Canepa as saying earlier this month that "This will be a measured and transparent process that will be fair to the Sheriff, who deserves due process.”

But Tuesday’s developments seem to make it more likely that they would remove her.

Related: Voters Overwhelmingly Endorse the Removal of San Mateo County Sheriff Christina Corpus [SFist]

Image: Christina Corpus for San Mateo County Sheriff via Facebook