DENVER—FBI agents investigating the alleged misuse of a restricted criminal database during Colorado’s gubernatorial campaign have interviewed employees of the Denver district attorney, an office once held by Democratic Gov. Bill Ritter.
Federal immigration agent Cory Voorhis has already been charged with illegally using the database to provide information that turned up in an ad for Ritter’s Republican opponent. The ad featured an illegal immigrant to whom Ritter granted a plea bargain while Ritter was DA, a fact former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez seized upon during the gubernatorial race to attack Ritter for being soft on crime and illegal immigration.
The FBI questioned DA employees after Voorhis’ lawyers suggested Ritter’s campaign also got access to the database, perhaps through the district attorney’s office. Voorhis’ lawyers also allege an investigator with the Harris County, Texas, district attorney’s office accessed the database at the request of a private investigator under contract with the Colorado Republican Party.
The FBI and Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents met with DA staff Nov. 19 as part of the FBI’s effort to refute Voorhis’ claims, Denver FBI Special Agent Rene VonderHaar said Tuesday.
DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough said the office cooperated with the FBI and CBI investigators, and has never been the target of a probe. She said the district attorney’s office had a legitimate reason to look up the illegal immigrant’s name Oct. 12 to answer questions surrounding the ad and did not provide confidential information to the media or to Ritter’s campaign.
Kimbrough initially said she more than likely spoke to the campaign on that day, while Ritter spokesman Evan Dreyer has said he could not remember. Kimbrough on Tuesday said she did not speak to the campaign that day.
Dreyer did not immediately return phone messages Tuesday.
“I don’t know, but there are sure a lot of questions,” said Dick Wadhams, GOP state chairman. “At 3:47 p.m. the district attorney’s office accesses the database and just a short time later, about an hour and a half, the Ritter campaign was putting out a press release demanding an investigation. The timing is suspect.”
The federal database, called the National Crime Information Center, is to be used solely for law enforcement purposes. Ritter was questioned by FBI and CBI agents in October 2006. He said the only way Beauprez’s campaign could have known the illegal immigrant, who used several aliases, was the same person who committed a sex crime in California after the Denver plea bargain was by using the database, according to Voorhis’ motion to dismiss.
Public statements made by Beauprez’s campaign referred to federal criminal databases indicating the two men had the same FBI numbers. An investigation led to Voorhis being charged with three counts of intentionally exceeding authorized access to a computer and obtaining information from an agency of the United States.
Meanwhile, Voorhis attorneys said that as of late October investigators had not followed up on the allegations in Texas. Voorhis attorney Bill Taylor declined to elaborate on those allegations.
Wadhams, who took over the GOP’s leadership in March, said he could not find an expenditure for a private investigator who would have requested a name be looked up in the database.
