{"id":4825,"date":"2009-08-19T12:03:00","date_gmt":"2009-08-19T18:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/08\/vigil-giron-targeted-in-probe-of-voter-education-funds\/"},"modified":"2009-12-10T08:21:22","modified_gmt":"2009-12-10T15:21:22","slug":"vigil-giron-targeted-in-probe-of-voter-education-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/08\/vigil-giron-targeted-in-probe-of-voter-education-funds\/","title":{"rendered":"Vigil-Giron targeted in probe of voter education funds"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Former secretary of state confirms she has received a \u2018target letter\u2019 from grand jury, again says she did nothing wrong<\/span><\/p>\n

Former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron<\/a> confirmed today that she is a target of an investigation into the spending of millions of dollars in federal funds on voter education by her office — an investigation that is now in the hands of a state grand jury.<\/p>\n

Vigil-Giron said in a brief interview that she has received a \u201ctarget letter\u201d from the grand jury — a letter indicating that she\u2019s one of the people the attorney general\u2019s office is targeting for potential indictments in the case.<\/p>\n

Vigil-Giron, a Democrat, provided a lengthy statement<\/a> about receiving the target letter in which she defended her actions as secretary of state and claimed that Attorney General Gary King<\/a>, also a Democrat, and others are out to destroy her reputation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pray every day that my Lord and my God will forgive those individuals who so willingly, callously and wrongfully accuse me of unsubstantiated wrongdoing for the purpose of furthering their own personal and political ambitions,\u201d Vigil-Giron said in her statement. \u201cThis witch-hunt must cease and desist. It has been going on since I left office almost three years ago and no wrong doing on my part has been uncovered.\u201d<\/p>\n

King, who Vigil-Giron said is \u201cconcentrating this attack on me\u2026 keeps claiming that he is not running for Governor and only running for re-election as Attorney General. Why is he intent on destroying the good service that I performed for the State of New Mexico?\u201d<\/p>\n

King\u2019s office does not comment on pending investigations or grand jury proceedings, which are secret. AG spokesman Phil Sisneros reiterated that on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Audit: more than $2 million can\u2019t be accounted for<\/span><\/p>\n

The AG\u2019s investigation comes after a federal audit<\/a> found severe mismanagement of federal Help America Vote Act<\/a> funds by Vigil-Giron\u2019s administration during the 2006 election cycle. Vigil-Giron, who left office at the end of 2006 because of term limits, says the audit is flawed and has repeatedly insisted that no wrongdoing occurred<\/a> on her watch.<\/p>\n

Vigil-Giron used federal funds to pay the Albuquerque firm Gutierrez & Associates $6.3 million for advertising and voter education work leading up to the 2006 election. The federal audit found that the company can\u2019t account for how more than $2 million of that money was spent. Last year, an annual, state audit<\/a> included many of the findings in the federal audit and some new findings.<\/p>\n

Vigil-Giron insisted in today\u2019s statement that she \u201ccan account for every last nickel that was spent\u201d and said all contracts over $200,000 were reviewed by officials in the attorney general\u2019s office. She said she \u201crelied on the Attorney General to always counsel me in the right direction legally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patricia Madrid<\/a>, not King, was AG at the time in question, but Vigil-Giron named at least one official who still work in the AG\u2019s office as an employee who helped her.<\/p>\n

The Albuquerque Journal<\/a> reported today that the grand jury is also investigating Armando Gutierrez, the head of the firm Vigil-Giron hired.<\/p>\n

\n

A prior version of this posting incorrectly states that an audit found that more than $3 million could not be accounted for.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron confirmed today that she is a target of an investigation into the spending of millions of dollars in federal funds on voter education by her office — an investigation that is now in the hands of a state grand jury.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[155],"class_list":["post-4825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-secretary-of-state-scandal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4825\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}