Republican gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez’s campaign said Monday it will fully cooperate with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s probe into allegations he illegally obtained information for an attack ad.
“We are going to cooperate fully and look forward to sitting down with them and telling them everything, all the facts that we are aware of,” campaign manager John Marshall said.
However, Marshall repeated his refusal to publicly release how the campaign obtained key information, citing a confidential source.
Marshall said the CBI contacted the campaign Monday, but he refused to discuss specifics, such as when campaign and agency officials plan to meet.
Last week, Beauprez’s Democratic rival, Bill Ritter, accused the congressman of illegally accessing a restricted crime database to gather nonpublic information for a negative advertisement.
The ad accuses Ritter of plea-bargaining to probation a case against illegal immigrant and accused heroin dealer Carlos Estrada Medina. Medina, the ad says, was later arrested for the sexual abuse of a child.
However, Medina’s name does not show up on court files in Denver or California – where Beauprez’s campaign says he was charged. The campaign contends Medina used aliases in both cases.
During a Friday debate, Beauprez said, “We’ll go through the file. We’ll demonstrate that we got our information legally.”
But Marshall has declined to say how the campaign matched Medina with aliases.
“The linkage between the two came from a propriety source, which I’m not going to reveal,” Marshall said. “As I said, we’re not going to comment further than what we’ve already commented about this until CBI has finished its work.”
Meantime, Marshall issued a new release Monday calling on Ritter to “disclose his record of plea-bargaining with criminal aliens and allowing them to avoid deportation.”
Ritter’s record is public.
Lance Clem, a CBI spokesman, said the bureau has about a half dozen people working on the case, which Republican Gov. Bill Owens asked to be expedited. Investigators should make significant headway by midweek, Clem said.
Investigators will check state and federal criminal databases to see what, if any, relevant information was accessed and how it was used, he said. They will then have to determine who accessed the data and why.
Clem declined to provide any more specifics because it is an ongoing investigation.
Ritter’s spokesman, Evan Dreyer, said, “The congressman has not cooperated with the public, which also has a right to know the source of this information.”
Marshall said Ritter put a drug dealer back on the street who went on to commit child sex-abuse, and “We’re not going to let him change that subject.”
But Dreyer said he has been unable to respond to Beauprez’s attack “because he based his ad upon information that was illegally obtained.”
Chris Frates can be reached at cfrates@denverpost.com or 303-954-1633.
