{"id":5389,"date":"2009-08-24T14:11:01","date_gmt":"2009-08-24T20:11:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nmpolitics.net\/index\/?p=5389"},"modified":"2009-12-10T08:21:20","modified_gmt":"2009-12-10T15:21:20","slug":"ag-says-his-office-has-no-conflict-in-secretary-of-state-case","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/2009\/08\/ag-says-his-office-has-no-conflict-in-secretary-of-state-case\/","title":{"rendered":"AG King: no conflict in secretary of state case"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"AG

AG Gary King. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)<\/p><\/div>\n

Attorney General Gary King<\/a> says his office has no \u201clegal conflicts\u201d that would prevent it from prosecuting the case against former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron<\/a> and three others.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t think that there are any issues here that would prevent the defendants from getting a fair trial,\u201d King said in an exclusive interview<\/a> with Albuquerque radio reporter Peter St. Cyr.<\/p>\n

On Friday<\/a>, I reported that one of two assistant attorney generals prosecuting the case was once fired by one of the defendants in the case, former AG employee Elizabeth Kupfer<\/a>. Kupfer\u2019s attorney, Hank Farrah, confirmed in an interview that Kupfer carried out the firing of Assistant Attorney General Chris Lackmann sometime during the administration of former AG Patricia Madrid<\/a>, who ordered the firing.<\/p>\n

The fact that a prosecutor on the case is charged with trying to secure a conviction against a woman who carried out his firing is one of the main points defense attorneys plan to cite in arguing that King\u2019s office has no business prosecuting the case.<\/p>\n

There are other complaints. Miles Hanisee, an attorney for another defendant, media consultant Armando Gutierrez, said Friday that Gutierrez once had a contract with the AG\u2019s office and \u201cworked closely with persons employed at high levels in the AG\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanisee also said the contract between the secretary of state\u2019s office and Gutierrez that\u2019s at the center of the AG\u2019s criminal case was \u201capproved by the AG\u2019s office\u201d and \u201cused a template form that is repeatedly used in the AG\u2019s office.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his interview with St. Cyr, King did not speak specifically about any of the allegations, but said his office \u201calways does a careful conflict check when we do our cases.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do not believe that there are any legal conflicts that would prevent us from pursuing this case,\u201d he told St. Cyr. \u201c\u2026if we get good, solid information that says that there is a conflict that I\u2019m not aware of, then I\u2019ll analyze that and we\u2019ll proceed accordingly.\u201d<\/p>\n

King also said he\u2019s concerned that \u201csome of the allegations of conflict are not factually based.\u201d Again, he did not go into specifics.<\/p>\n

Vigil-Giron, Kupfer, Gutierrez and lobbyist Joseph Kupfer<\/a> — who is Elizabeth Kupfer\u2019s husband — each face 50 counts including money laundering, fraud, soliciting or receiving kickbacks and tax evasion. They\u2019re accused of bilking taxpayers out of millions of dollars<\/a> between 2004 and 2006 by falsifying invoices to the secretary of state\u2019s office.<\/p>\n

None has yet had a chance to enter a plea in the case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Attorney General Gary King says his office has no \u201clegal conflicts\u201d that would prevent it from prosecuting the case against former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron and three others.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1],"tags":[114,107,155],"class_list":["post-5389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","category-uncategorized","tag-public-corruption","tag-roundhouse","tag-secretary-of-state-scandal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389","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=5389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nmpolitics.net\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}