John Swallow News Roundup: Episode LIV

A back-burner update of the latest happenings in the John Swallow Three-ring Circus

Swallow "Swallows"
 Episode LIV

As we trail off into the weekend, we thought today's lull in red-meat news would provide the ideal opportunity to squeeze in a back-burner update of the latest happenings in the John Swallow Three-ring Circus, since we last chimed in on the subject.  So, Gentle Readers... here goes:

1) As a follow-up to our earlier WCF story, wherein we reported that "every single byte of John Swallow's communication from every single electronic device covering every single time period in question has 'mysteriously' disappeared into the ether," The Tribune reports that The Utah Attorney General’s office and lawyers for a House Committee asked a judge Wednesday to sign an order giving investigators access to information needed to try to piece together [the] swath of Attorney General John Swallow’s missing electronic data.  If 3rd District Judge Su Chon agrees to the request, investigators would gain access to copies of hard drives and servers in the office, while preventing the release of private health data that might be stored on the devices":

• Swallow’s office, House panel reach a deal on recovering missing data

Why House investigators would settle for mere "copies,"  rather than the the original hardware itself, is the sodden question which to date remains unanswered however, in your blogmeister's never-humble view.

2) Trib reporter Tom Harvey raises to the question of whether former Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and his chief deputy John Swallow may have "looked the other way" with respect to a Utah-based, Shurtleff/Swallow cronyesque 2009-10 poker money laundering scam: 

Cha-ching! So went the sound of money rolling into St. George’s SunFirst Bank. Lots of it. From across the nation. Tens of millions of dollars coming in, going out.
It lasted from late 2009 for almost a year. But at some point early on, the poker companies shuffling all that cash wanted assurances that processing online player payments in Utah — a state, ironically, dead set against gambling — was indeed legal, even though they already had convinced St. George businessman Jeremy Johnson, his partners and bank officials that it was.
So to whom did they turn? Perhaps even more ironically, to two of the state’s top cops: Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and his chief deputy John Swallow.

 Here's the nitty-gritty :

• When chips were down, poker firms bet on Shurtleff, Swallow

Shurtleff knows nuttin' from nuttin' about the whole grubby deal, of course:

• Shurtleff: Nobody asked me about poker processing

3) Trib heavyweight columnist and reporter Robert Gehrke revealed last Friday that the House investigative committee has significantly expanded the scope its investigation, well beyond the list of alleged Swallow misdeeds which have been reported by the Utah press over the course of the past year:

"House investigators are [now] targeting Utah Attorney General John Swallow’s campaign cash, issuing nine new subpoenas Friday, primarily for documents related to the network of consultants and political action committees that fueled his 2012 run for office. The demands for records are extensive, focusing on campaign consultant Jason Powers, his business Guidant Strategies, and a series of PACs and nonprofit political organizations that he controls," Mr. Gehrke reports:

• House targets Swallow’s money trail in 9 new subpoenas

No more "lost" data,
he hopes

It appears that House investigators are casting an extremely wide net, searching for evidence of influence peddling, or other nefarious misdeeds on the part of the beleguered Mr. Swallow, far beyond that which has already been placed in public view.

We'll assume that Special Counsel Steven Reich, and the rest of the House investigative committee crew will be keeping their fingers crossed that the subjects of this new round of subpoenas haven't suffered the same kind of catastrophic electronic data storage failures experienced by poor ole John Swallow, no?

So who'll be the first to throw in their own 2¢?

Update 11/15/13 12:00 p.m.:  Fine editorial from (who else? the Trib) which we unfortunately "missed" in our above "roundup," until it was brought to our attention by yet another sharp-eyed and alert WCF reader:

• Editorial: Stink over attorney general’s office just gets worse

Comments anyone?  Ferris? Hows the stink in your neighborhood?