Alleged Beauprez informant awaits fate

A "going to the pokey" update.

Alan Philp not going to the pokey

No charges against the Trailhead Group honcho. (Rocky, CoCo)

Is the wrong guy headed to the pokey?

Today's Rocky Mountain News reports:

The investigation of a man suspected of illegally accessing a federal database to benefit Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez has been referred to the U.S. Attorney for Wyoming.

Cory Voorhis, an agent for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, has been under investigation in the suspected leaking of information on illegal immigrants arrested in Denver. That information was used by Beauprez in a series of TV attack ads against Gov.-elect Bill Ritter.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation conducted a joint investigation of the leak with the FBI. That investigation is largely complete, and the U.S. attorney in Wyoming will decide whether to press charges.

The case was given to Wyoming authorities because Voorhis had worked with the Colorado U.S. attorney on several cases, creating a possible conflict of interest for that office.

What Vooris allegedly did was bad. Criminal, even. But the Bob Beauprez campaign shouldn't be allowed to skate. Apparently someone there did one of two things:

1. Knowingly broadcast illegally gained information over the airwaves, in which case they were participating in a crime.

2. Didn't do any research on whether the information was true or false, which is also a crime.

The relevant statute here is C.S.R. 1-13-109, which states:

(2) (a) No person shall recklessly make, publish, broadcast, or circulate or cause to be made, published, broadcasted, or circulated in any letter, circular, advertisement, or poster or in any other communication any false statement designed to affect the vote on any issue submitted to the electors at any election or relating to any candidate for election to public office Notwithstanding any other provision of law, for purposes of this subsection (2), a person acts "recklessly" when he or she acts in conscious disregard of the truth or falsity of the statement made, published, broadcasted, or circulated.

The emphasis is mine. It seems to me that if the Beauprez campaign put those allegations on the air without researching them, they acted "in conscious disregard of the truth or falsity of the statement made."

Morgan Carroll, among others, is on the warpath for campaign reform. But what's the point if we don't enforce the laws we have?

I don't claim to be a lawyer or have any insider information. But I've followed this story obsessively since it broke. And from my perspective, it appears that there are two criminals out there. Voorhis has been thrown under the bus. And Bob Beauprez has been allowed to walk away.

Cross-posted to Square State, where discussion is underway. Hat-tip to ColoradoPols for the Rocky link. Before the election, I wrote a whole series of posts titled "Both Ways Bob is headed to the pokey." You can read some entries here, here and here.

Bob "I'm Going To The Pokey" Beauprez still getting media favoritism

I've written that the mainstream media seems "determined to get Beauprez back into governor's race" and is "trying to give Beauprez a break." But anointing him the default choice for governor? Shameless. How much more rightwing bias will they throw at the voters between now and election day? And how would they expect Beauprez to govern from behind bars?

More information about "Both Ways Bob headed to the pokey?"

Why did Both Ways Bob Beauprez think he could get away with breaking the law? Perhaps because he thought Ritter, who has a big lead in the polls, wouldn't risk going after him. What Beauprez forgot is that Ritter has spent much of his life enforcing Colorado law. He's not stopping out of political expediency.

Advocacy groups are joining Ritter's call for an investigation. The Post blogs:

A liberal advocacy group urged the FBI on Sunday to investigate whether Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez's campaign violated federal or state laws by accessing the highly restricted National Crime Information Center database. ProgressNowAction sent its request to the FBI on Sunday and plans to send an e-mail titled "Beauprez Gate" today to its more than 50,000 members calling for an FBI probe into the Beauprez campaign.

The Rocky adds:

Michael Huttner, director of ProgressNow, said Sunday he believes it is a conflict of interest for the state to handle the probe... Huttner noted that the CBI is one of the agencies that reports to Joe Morales, head of the Department of Public Safety. Huttner said Morales has contributed $1,000 to Beauprez's campaign.

More reading for "Both Ways Bob headed to the pokey?"

9 News, the Post and the Rocky are covering this story. Folks are discussing it at ColoradoPols, JB Holston and Square State. On the Ritter for Governor site, the story is here. And the Rocky has even ripped into the Post, calling its pro-Beauprez spin a "misleading" example of "gotcha journalism."

More on "Both Ways Bob headed to the pokey?"

From the press release from the Ritter campaign:

Gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter today asked the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to examine whether Congressman Beauprez broke the law by using a criminaljustice database in a television attack ad.

Ritter accused the Congressman of gaining access to a secure national database in violation of state and federal law.

"Your campaign broke the law," Ritter said during a debate taped at Fox 31 News in Denver this afternoon. "It's illegal to have access to that database."

The Congressman said his campaign used an "informant" to gather the information in the ad and would publicly disclose how and from where he obtained the information.

"The Congressman needs to be held accountable for this," Ritter said after the debate. "Breaking the rules for political gain and trying to cover it up might be OK in Washington, but that's not how we do things in Colorado."

Both Ways Bob headed to the pokey?

Thanks to dismaleconomist at Square State for highlighting an article in The Cherry Creek News that claims the Beauprez for Governor campaign may have broken federal and state laws developing baseless attacks on Bill Ritter:

The Beauprez campaign has been using a plea bargains made by Ritter when he was Denver District Attorney to hammer the Democrat as soft on crime. The District Attorney's office says the plea bargain came because of problems with evidence in the case, which involved a man named either Carlos Medina or Walter Ramo.

But did the Beauprez campaign violate the law in obtaining that information?

The lawyer for the Ritter campaign has sent a letter to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, suggesting that the Beauprez campaign may have misused a federal crime database in researching the information, violating state and federal law. The attorney, Trey Rogers, has requested an investigation. The Beauprez campaign has previously told a television reporter that it used an "FBI number," which would mean it had access to the National Crime Information Center (or NCIC) database, to link the crime in Calfornia to the Colorado felon.

Roger's letter says that California is a "closed records" state, meaning the access to the Ramo-Medina records would require official level access to computer systems.

The Beauprez campaign claims to obtain the information through a Freedom of Information Act request. But according to our investigation, such a request would not allow access to a third party's records.

I already knew the ad ad in question was silly and maybe even false. Now it turns out it may land Beauprez in hot water, too.