I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Former New Mexico Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron’s attorney asked a judge Friday to dismiss charges against his client, saying the state Attorney General’s Office isn’t an impartial prosecutor. He added that he would call AG Gary King as a witness if the case went to trial.
You can read that and much more in the motion and letters attorney Robert Gorence filed. The documents were obtained by KKOB’s Peter St. Cyr. To read the motion, click here. Click here and here for the two letters.
Vigil-Giron and three others — Armando Gutierrez, and Joe and Elizabeth Kupfer — were indicted two weeks ago on 50 counts each in what the Attorney General’s Office says was an embezzlement and money-laundering scheme.
Gutierrez, hired by Vigil-Giron as a media consultant, helped the Secretary of State’s Office produce tens of thousands of TV and radio advertisements that ran in English, Spanish and Navajo and starred Vigil-Giron in the months leading up to the 2004 general and 2006 primary and general elections.
According to a Federal Election Assisstance Commision report issued in May of last year Gutierrez was unable to account for more than $2 million of the nearly $6.3 million in federal funds he had been paid by Vigil-Giron’s office.
Gutierrez’s attorney has criticized both the indictments and last year’s federal audit.
The Attorney General Office has basically accused the foursome of misusing federal voter education funds; the criminal counts against each individual range from embezzlement and money-laundering to taking and receiving a kickback.
Gorence, in a letter sent to the Attorney General’s Office in January, disputed that Vigil-Giron ever received a kickback.
“As you are aware, kickback or bribery cases are usually substantiated by proof that a public official received money, or some tangible thing of personal value, in exchange for the discharge of public responsibilities,” the attorney wrote.
Gorence goes on to say that “there was not a single penny or any other benefit that flowed from Mr. Gutierrez to Ms. Vigil Giron.”
He then accuses the Attorney General’s Office of treating Vigil-Giron’s appearances on the thousands of voter education ads that appeared on radio and TV as a form of kickback.
Gorence dismisses this approach as “some novel theory regarding the value of federally required advertising as constituting some form of bribe or kickback. I am confident that this absurd theory will fail both factually and legally.”
