Brian Colón says in a column published today in the Albuquerque Journal that a federal investigation into allegations of pay to play in the Richardson administration is politically motivated. That’s not surprising, given his ties to the governor, but there’s one point in the column that I found quite noteworthy.
In the column, Colón writes about the governor’s office producing documents last fall in response to a subpoena that was issued by the grand jury investigating the allegations.
“On Oct. 1, the Governor’s Office produced all the documents requested by the government’s extensive subpoena and there was no smoking gun,” Colón wrote. “There was no document, tape, e-mail or other evidence supporting a ‘pay for play’ deal.”
Colón, it would seem, has been allowed to review the documents produced in response to the subpoena. How else would he know there was no smoking gun?
The documents Colón has apparently reviewed are the same documents the governor’s office says the media and public don’t have a right to see. The records, the office has said in response to media requests, are exempt from the public records act because of federal rules governing grand juries and “countervailing public policy considerations” including “this office’s effort to cooperate and not unduly interfere with a federal grand jury investigation.”
Colón, though he is an attorney, isn’t Richardson’s attorney. He’s the chairman of the Democratic Party of New Mexico. Why does he get access to such records when the public does not?
A couple of other facts about Colón should be noted. He’s a close friend of the governor and served as treasurer for Richardson’s Moving America Forward Foundation. Whether the foundation is part of the federal investigation isn’t known publicly.
In addition, I’d point out that Colón raises one question in his column that I find intriguing. At the end of 2008, he writes, the prosecutor on the case had a choice between presenting the case to the grand jury, extending the term of the grand jury, or convening a new grand jury. The prosecutor chose the last.
Which essentially meant starting over again. Why? Colón has his own ideas about that, which you can read in the column by clicking here.
The U.S. attorney doesn’t have to answer that or any other question about the probe and has chosen not to do so. So we don’t really know why the case is now in the hands of a new grand jury.