One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again [subscription] and expecting different results:
Blogs were abuzz Thursday over a supposedly “lost” 13-year-old police report involving Rep. Heather Wilson’s husband and what Wilson did with a file containing that report years ago.
Dailykos.com, rawstory.com and dukecityfix.com carried items on the issue, generating hundreds of blogger responses and a string of anonymous calls to the Journal.
However, the police report in question was never lost: It remains a public file at the Albuquerque Police Department [emphasis added]. The story now being trumpeted in cyberspace was reported in 1996 by then-KOAT Action 7 News reporter Larry Barker and also was reported on by the Journal in 1996 and 1998.
That’s right a ten year old story that was a reported non-story ten years ago is hitting the left wing blogs as if it was breaking news. Actually, I think one blogger actually posted it as “Breaking News.” So, why is this an insane campaign approach?
This is not the first time the Hone issue has come up in 1st District election campaigns.
In 1998, Wilson’s Democratic opponent, Phil Maloof, alleged in a campaign ad that Wilson had abused her authority by moving the file.
Worth reading are the two Journal articles from 1996 and 1998 covering this nonstarter. For example, consider this (subscription):
“I have had suspicious for some time, based on rumors, that someone had attempted to steal information from the department regarding my family,” she said Wednesday in a prepared statement.
On Thursday, Wilson said her fears were that “some unscrupulous individual would troll for trash, excerpt (the records), or take then out of context to discredit our family,” she said.
Wilson said that on June 19 she requested a criminal investigation by the state attorney general “into the release of confidential information about my family.”
Wilson did not disclose the nature of the information, but said it involved information about her family situation.
Wilson said she never asked to see the records, had never been given access to them, had never had them removed from the department nor had she asked that the records “be altered, destroyed or tampered with in any way.”
Kay Roybal, spokeswoman for Attorney General Tom Udall, confirmed that the department is looking into the issue at Wilson’s request.
Hmm, not exactly done under the cover of darkness. Heather asked the Democratic Attorney General Tom Udall, who would go on to become her colleague in Congress, to look into the whole affair.
Then in 1998, District Attorney Bob Schwartz, the guy who would go on to be Governor Bill Richardson’s crime czar, confirmed:
Former District Attorney Bob Schwartz said Tuesday that Republican congressional candidate Heather Wilson did not break the law in 1995 [emphasis added] when she had a confidential file concerning her family moved while she was head of the state’s Children, Youth and Families Department.
Schwartz did criticize Wilson’s actions but said an investigation found the file was intact and hadn’t been tampered with, therefore, nothing illegal had occurred.
Folks, I’m failing to see the story here. Even among those “hundreds of comments,” readers are saying over and over again that the contents of the never-lost-now-recovered police report is not the issue. They’re trying to make a case about the file being moved. A case that former District Attorney Bob Schwartz confirmed EIGHT YEARS AGO could not be made.
Now, I’m glad the Journal provided the links to all of the supporting stories because it gives a much clearer picture. However, what I want to know is how can Jeff Jones cover this, and not cover the Robins/Barbosa/Madrid payoff triangle? That’s a story that has not been thoroughly investigated and reported.