Bob Beauprez’s campaign should tell voters how it obtained the information it’s using in attack ads on Bill Ritter. Voters deserve transparency on an issue Beauprez has been trumpeting in his effort to criticize Ritter’s record as Denver district attorney.
Hiding his source only leads to speculation and, worse yet for the Beauprez gubernatorial effort, a high-profile investigation.
The Colorado Bureau of Investigation has launched a probe into whether Beauprez’s campaign illegally accessed a federal criminal database for information it has used in its attack ads. Improperly accessing the FBI database could be prosecuted as a felony.
Beauprez and his staff say they’ve done nothing wrong.
The ad in question accuses Ritter of giving accused heroin dealer Carlos Estrada Medina a plea bargain down to probation. Medina, according to the ad, was an illegal immigrant later arrested for sexual abuse of a child. His name, however, doesn’t show up in court files in Denver or California, where Beauprez’s campaign says he was charged. The campaign says Medina used aliases.
Ritter believes the Beauprez camp made the link between the aliases by improperly accessing a law enforcement database and matching up identifier numbers. “Your campaign broke the law or someone connected to that campaign broke the law by getting information off of a federal criminal database,” Ritter charged last week.
Beauprez, however, said his campaign’s informant “followed the rules,” and he promised, “We’ll go through the file. We’ll demonstrate that we got our information legally.”
Yet not long after, his campaign manager, John Marshall, said he would not publicly provide information because it would compromise a confidential source. He would only say a California document on Medina had an FBI number in the file.
CBI director Robert Cantwell is overseeing the investigation, and plans to be quick about it. We hope so. Voters deserve to know which end is up before casting their ballots.
ProgressNow has called for an FBI investigation, since the CBI reports to Department of Public Safety chief Jose Morales – a donor to the Beauprez campaign. The liberal group contends that any judgment by the CBI would raise questions because of Morales’ political allegiance.
Beauprez can avoid all that by doing what he said he’d do and tell voters how his campaign obtained its information.
