A report released by the District Attorney's Office in Las Cruces says a former district attorney and staffers deleted politically sensitive emails before leaving office. But, as Edmundo Resendez reports, the former district attorney is challenging the allegations.
The report released by current District Attorney Mark D'Antonio's office says the emails were found to be missing when the office received a public records request last spring by the state Democratic Party. District Attorney Mark D’Antonio denies the report is politically motivated.
“There are many other emails that were found, you know, hundreds which if I wanted to be political or spiteful or nasty that I could of brought out.” Mark D’Antonio said, “I mean, all sorts of things, I chose particularly no to do. It wasn’t pertinent to the role of the D.A. as it is for the citizens of any county the D.A. represents.”
D’Antonio is a Democrat who beat Republican Amy Orlando in the 2012 election. Orlando says she first heard of the report yesterday afternoon from KRWG and was sickened when she read the allegations.
“To be accused, to have a headline come out that I am being investigated for possible criminal activity, physically made me ill.” Amy Orlando said.
Orlando and her staff are accused in the report of deleting emails, conspiring to undermine the upcoming administration and of destroying computer hard drives. I asked D’Antonio if he considered the destruction of the hard drives a crime.
“Yes, now listen,” D’Antonio responds, “yes, obviously, under the right circumstances the intent of destruction of hard drives, you know, all the factors being equal could possibly constitute a crime.”
Orlando said she was never contacted about missing emails or damaged hard drives and responds to the accusation.
“Why was I never contact by one of his investigators and asked questions?” Orlando said, “Where would the emails be? What did you do with them? How long do you have to keep them? I was never questioned by anybody until you called me for my response.”
Did you or did you instruct anybody to damage the hard drives?
“Absolutely not!” replied Orlando.
D’Antonio says it is up to the attorney general to decide whether or not to prosecute the case.
“If the A.G. (Attorney General), that’s the proper agency right now or government entity, state entity.” D’Antonio adds, “If they feel there is criminal activity, that’s the proper office that would take charge of this. I certainly cannot be involved in investigating my own office. Nor would I want to.”
Do you feel that there should be a criminal investigation?
“When everything is completed, because we still have the 2012 emails to go through. When everything is investigated, I feel that that’s necessary, I will refer the case to the A.G.” D’Antonio responded.
Orlando disagrees with D’Antonio’s assertion that the report is not politically motivated.
“I’ve never heard of an Administrative Report coming out of the District Attorney’s office and the last sentence saying, there’s no criminal activity being looked or criminal activity being alleged. So, to me it seems, I mean, the only thing I can think of is that it’s a senseless waste of taxpayer dollars to come up with a report that basically smears my name and smears the governor’s name who has an election in six weeks.
For KRWG News, I’m Edmundo Resendez