Members of the Trailhead Group, a now-defunct Republican political committee, said Wednesday that the Texas private investigator they hired during the 2006 Colorado gubernatorial campaign was not retained to research an illegal immigrant used in a Bob Beauprez campaign ad.
Jack Stansbery, who helped run the group, said Trailhead hired Kenny Rodgers, a Houston-based investigator, last year to gather court files and other “public data” on another case handled by now-Gov. Bill Ritter while he was Denver’s district attorney. They did not ask him to access a restricted database, the National Crime Information Center, or look up information about an illegal immigrant who had received a plea deal from Ritter’s office.
“We had nothing to do with that,” Stansbery said. “We asked him to work on a different case.”
One of the three founders of Trailhead — oilman Bruce Benson — also said the group had not hired Rodgers to retrieve information on the illegal immigrant.
Rodgers, who was paid $750 by Trailhead, has a different story. He said that he was referred to Trailhead by a Pennsylvania investigator, who was already hired by the group for $2,879. The group wanted information about the illegal immigrant who was allowed to plead down a heroin possession charge to agricultural trespassing, he said.
Rodgers said he asked a friend in the Harris County, Texas, district attorney’s office to find this information, which was difficult because the illegal immigrant had a number of aliases.
The friend has since retired and may be facing a criminal investigation for inappropriately accessing the NCIC database, Rodgers said, which only law enforcement officials can do for specific purposes.
The controversy is the latest in a series of bizarre fallouts from last year’s gubernatorial race.
A federal agent, Cory Voorhis, has been charged with three misdemeanors for allegedly exceeding his authorized access to a government computer. Voorhis used the NCIC database to track some illegal immigrants who had received plea deals with Ritter’s office. Authorities charge he then gave that information to the Beauprez campaign.
Voorhis’ attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case, citing the fact that Rodgers’ friend and the Denver district attorney’s office accessed the same information as Voorhis but have not been charged.
Employees of the Denver DA’s office, which has repeatedly said it did nothing inappropriate or illegal, were questioned Monday regarding their database access by the FBI and Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Karen Crummy: 303-954-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com
