AG Gary King. (Photo by Heath Haussamen)
Attorney General Gary King says his office has no “legal conflicts” that would prevent it from prosecuting the case against former Secretary of State Rebecca Vigil-Giron and three others.
“We don’t think that there are any issues here that would prevent the defendants from getting a fair trial,” King said in an exclusive interview with Albuquerque radio reporter Peter St. Cyr.
On Friday, I reported that one of two assistant attorney generals prosecuting the case was once fired by one of the defendants in the case, former AG employee Elizabeth Kupfer. Kupfer’s attorney, Hank Farrah, confirmed in an interview that Kupfer carried out the firing of Assistant Attorney General Chris Lackmann sometime during the administration of former AG Patricia Madrid, who ordered the firing.
The fact that a prosecutor on the case is charged with trying to secure a conviction against a woman who carried out his firing is one of the main points defense attorneys plan to cite in arguing that King’s office has no business prosecuting the case.
There are other complaints. Miles Hanisee, an attorney for another defendant, media consultant Armando Gutierrez, said Friday that Gutierrez once had a contract with the AG’s office and “worked closely with persons employed at high levels in the AG’s office.”
Hanisee also said the contract between the secretary of state’s office and Gutierrez that’s at the center of the AG’s criminal case was “approved by the AG’s office” and “used a template form that is repeatedly used in the AG’s office.”
In his interview with St. Cyr, King did not speak specifically about any of the allegations, but said his office “always does a careful conflict check when we do our cases.”
“We do not believe that there are any legal conflicts that would prevent us from pursuing this case,” he told St. Cyr. “…if we get good, solid information that says that there is a conflict that I’m not aware of, then I’ll analyze that and we’ll proceed accordingly.”
King also said he’s concerned that “some of the allegations of conflict are not factually based.” Again, he did not go into specifics.
Vigil-Giron, Kupfer, Gutierrez and lobbyist Joseph Kupfer — who is Elizabeth Kupfer’s husband — each face 50 counts including money laundering, fraud, soliciting or receiving kickbacks and tax evasion. They’re accused of bilking taxpayers out of millions of dollars between 2004 and 2006 by falsifying invoices to the secretary of state’s office.
None has yet had a chance to enter a plea in the case.