Questions raised by Obama nominee's FBI chat

[Bronx33]

This is an absolutley amazing story about corruption and abuse of power right here in colorado with our govenor to futher others careers it's going to be interesting to see what happens cause it's obvious Cory Voorhis got screwed the **** over and props to the karen crummy for some great reporting ( this is real reporting) well atleast in the olden days it was.

http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_13622928

President Barack Obama's nominee as Colorado's next U.S. attorney told the FBI two years ago that she never spoke to anyone in the Denver District Attorney's Office about an illegal immigrant who became a controversial figure in the 2006 gubernatorial race.

FBI interview summaries describe Stephanie Villafuerte as saying she had "no conversations" with anyone at the DA's office about the illegal immigrant, Carlos Estrada-Medina.

But the FBI apparently never asked Villafuerte, the former chief deputy DA who was then working for Bill Ritter's campaign, why she left a phone message for DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough that Kimbrough noted was about Estrada-Medina. The FBI also apparently never asked her about the nature of a series of phone calls she exchanged over the next two days with Kimbrough and First Assistant DA Chuck Lepley. Those calls came both before and after an order by Lepley to a subordinate to run a criminal history check of Estrada-Medina in a restricted federal database.

It can be a crime to access the National Crime Information Center computer for a non-law-enforcement purpose.

In 2006 and 2007, the FBI was investigating who ran a check on Estrada-Medina's name through the database after Bob Beauprez's gubernatorial campaign ran a television ad confirming that Estrada-Medina, a suspected heroin dealer and illegal immigrant, had once received a plea deal under the name Walter Ramo while Ritter was Denver's district attorney.

Eventually, a federal immigration agent named Cory Voorhis was charged with running an NCIC check on Estrada-Medina and providing the result to the Beauprez campaign. He was later acquitted at trial.

But the 10-year veteran, who maintained he accessed the NCIC with his supervisor's permission because Voorhis was upset over plea deals made by Ritter's office with deportable immigrants, lost his job and is now fighting through an administrative proceeding to get it back.

Law enforcement authorities were aware that the Denver DA's office and a Texas investigator had also run Estrada-Medina's name through the NCIC. No one in those offices was charged with a crime.

Villafuerte refuses to explain

Despite requests from The Denver Post over two years, Villafuerte has refused to say why she asked Kimbrough about Estrada-Medina, or to describe the nature of the phone conversations she had with Kimbrough and Lepley over the two days that followed.

She also declined to answer questions this week about whether she provided the FBI with a complete accounting of any contacts she had with the DA's office about Estrada-Medina. A message and detailed e-mail left by The Post for Villafuerte were returned instead by Evan Dreyer, spokesman for Ritter. He said Villa fuerte, now Ritter's deputy chief of staff, would not comment until possibly after she is confirmed by the U.S. Senate as Colorado's top federal law enforcement official.

"When it's over, she may be more able to talk," Dreyer said.

It can be a crime to make false statements to the FBI in the course of an investigation.

The FBI interview summaries, recently obtained by The Post, contain accounts of interviews by an FBI agent of Lepley, Kimbrough and others about how and why the DA's office accessed the NCIC seeking the same information Voorhis received.

The FBI also spoke with Villafuerte and Ritter, among others in the Ritter campaign, who said, according to the summaries, that they were eager to know how Beauprez's campaign could have possibly confirmed that Estrada-Medina and Ramo were the same person without using the federal database.

The statements, as described by the agent in the summaries, do not always comport with available records, and the summaries portray the witnesses offering conflicting explanations on some key points.

Lepley did not return calls for comment. Kimbrough said that too much time had gone by for her to recall specifics of her contacts with Villafuerte and others in the Ritter campaign.

What DA records show

After the FBI completed its interviews in late 2007, a 2008 report in The Post based on records from the DA's office showed that Kimbrough had been asked by Villafuerte about Estrada-Medina.

It also showed that a number of calls were exchanged between DA officials and the Ritter campaign in the days leading up to Ritter's declaration that the only way Beauprez could have connected Ramo and Estrada-Medina was by accessing the NCIC.

With the exception of some records of phone calls made from Kimbrough's office phone on Oct. 12, 2006, The Post was unable to obtain other office phone records because the DA's office said it would take months to recover dialed numbers from the computer system. Instead, most of the available records were only of calls made to or from cell phones issued by the DA's office.

Following the Post report, the FBI apparently never requested phone records or other documents from the DA's office. It also never re-interviewed anyone, including Villafuerte, to clear up inconsistencies between what they said in FBI interviews and the account of phone records published by the newspaper.

"Agents and investigators conduct interviews and gather facts and evidence as the case dictates," FBI spokeswoman Kathleen Wright said this week.

On Oct. 10, 2006, the Beauprez campaign ran a television ad criticizing Ritter's office for letting Ramo, an accused Denver heroin dealer, plea bargain to an agricultural trespass charge when Ritter was district attorney. The ad claimed that Ramo, an illegal immigrant, was also known as Carlos Estrada-Medina and was arrested under that name for sexually assaulting a child in San Francisco after leaving Denver.

On Oct. 10, Villafuerte left Kimbrough a message, which Kimbrough wrote down as regarding "Estrada Medina."

FBI Agent John Elvig would later write that Villafuerte told the FBI that she did not have "regular" contact with Kimbrough during the campaign, perhaps speaking to her only "once or twice," and they never discussed Ramo/Estrada-Medina. The agent said Kimbrough told the FBI about the phone message from Villafuerte but described Kimbrough saying she did not call Villafuerte back regarding the request.

Over the next 48 hours, Kimbrough called Villafuerte four times, according to phone records, but today says she can't remember why.

The agent said Villafuerte told him that on Oct. 11, she started to get the idea that someone accessed NCIC for the Beauprez campaign's ad.

That night, she saw a story on 9News' website about the ad, quoting the Beauprez campaign manager as saying Estrada-Medina's and Ramo's FBI code numbers were the same. That confirmed Villafuerte's suspicion, Agent Elvig said she told him.

At 8:53 a.m. the following morning, Oct. 12, Villafuerte called Lepley. The call log registered 14 minutes. In the next 40 minutes, Lepley called Villafuerte two more times. At 3:46 p.m., Lepley asked a DA employee to run Ramo through the NCIC database. He shared the results with District Attorney Mitch Morrissey and "probably" Kimbrough, the FBI summary states. Morrissey told the FBI that he never discussed the NCIC result with the Ritter campaign and that the NCIC check was made to answer media questions, according to the agent's report.

At the time, the DA's office did not confirm for The Post whether Ramo and Estrada-Medina were the same person.

During a 2008 court hearing in the Voorhis case (a few days after the Post story about the October 2006 phone calls between Villafuerte and Lepley), Lepley said the calls between him and Villafuerte were likely related to a threat aimed at Ritter and his family. When asked whether any of the phone calls were in regard to Estrada-Medina, he said. "I don't believe they were."

In the summary of Lepley's interview with the FBI, conducted two months before his court testimony, there is no mention of him discussing a threat against the candidate with Villafuerte.

Talks just "in general"

Villafuerte told the FBI that she never discussed Ramo/Estrada-Medina with Lepley, who visited the Ritter campaign headquarters on occasion, and only spoke to him "in general" about the DA's office and matters such as medical benefits or her leave of absence. The summary of her FBI interview also mentions no discussion with Lepley of a threat against Ritter.

On Nov. 7, 2007, the fact that the DA's office accessed the NCIC database became public. Kimbrough told The Post that day that she she may or may not have told the Ritter campaign that the DA's office had confirmed that Estrada-Medina and Ramo were the same person.

In an interview with the FBI 12 days later, however, Kimbrough said she did not share information from the NCIC check with Villafuerte or any other member of the Ritter campaign, according to Elvig's summary of the interview.

Fourteen days after her FBI interview, on Dec. 3, Kimbrough told The Post that there was a "high probability" she spoke to Ritter's campaign the same afternoon the database was accessed — Oct. 12, 2006 — and told them about Estrada-Medina's alias and the NCIC check.

During the FBI's interview with Ritter, conducted in 2006 soon after he requested an investigation of the Beauprez campaign's access of the NCIC, and just days after investigators learned that the DA's office sought the same information, he was never asked whether he or his campaign obtained information from the DA's office.

Villafuerte and attorney Trey Rogers, who was also a potential witness in the case, were allowed to sit in on the FBI interview with Ritter, more than a year before they submitted to their own interviews with the agent.

Ritter told the FBI that Villafuerte figured out that Beauprez's campaign must have received information from the NCIC. Agent Elvig appears to have never asked what led Villafuerte to that conclusion.

Earlier this week, FBI spokeswoman Wright said that the agency's interview of Ritter was in his role as a complainant. In the case later brought against Voorhis, Ritter was listed as the victim.

"This was an initial interview to determine what the complaint was and what their concerns were about," she said.

That was the only interview the FBI conducted with Ritter.



Heres the story about cory voorhis saga

[peacepipe]

Where were you during the Bush yrs.

[Bronx33]

good god move on will ya.

[Bronx33]

bump this one is going to get good pretty soon folks and iam absolutley amazed the bush haters are not on this since it did happen on his watch but sadly for obama Stephanie Villafuerte is his choice for Colorado’s next U.S. Attorney.

[Smiling Assassin27]

Same ol' same ol'. Insufficient vetting on the part of Obama and his admin or out and out arrogance in believing his nominees are above reproach no matter what their record shows. This guy just isn't ready for prime time.

[Bronx33]

I just sucks what ritter, bennett and Villafuerte did to Cory Voorhis he has no healthcare no job and 500k in legal expenses just because he was simply doing his job to fight illegal immigration and everybody that sold him down the road got promotions.

[Bronx33]

Well well well the plot thickens and it's amazing the media fails to put up this huge story ( par for the course i guess anymore)

http://m.denverpost.com/denverpost/d...ps=5&full=true

Villafuerte abandons bid to become Colorado U.S. attorney

Faced with persistent questions from a leading Republican senator, Stephanie Villafuerte on Monday withdrew her name from consideration to become Colorado's next U.S. attorney.

In a letter to President Barack Obama, who nominated her for the post, and Attorney General Eric Holder, Villafuerte said she was confident she would have "served well in this important position" but was withdrawing because of "political attacks" surrounding her role in the 2006 Colorado gubernatorial campaign.

"Unfortunately, a needless and extraneous political fight has emerged in Colorado and that fight, in my judgment has completely overshadowed the deliberative and independent assessment of my qualifications for this important office," wrote Villafuerte, who will remain in her job as Gov. Bill Ritter's deputy chief of staff. "I continue to stand by my statements and maintain that my involvement was appropriate at all times."

The move comes two days after Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, asked that consideration of her nomination be delayed because her record is "incomplete."

Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo., said he was disappointed by Villafuerte's "very personal" decision.

"I had a positive conversation with Senator Jeff Sessions . . . on Saturday morning in which we both agreed that the confirmation process for this office could, and should, be framed to resolve any remaining questions he or other Members of the Judiciary Committee might want to put to the U.S. Attorney nominee," Udall said in a statement released by his office.

"Despite these assurances from Senator Sessions and despite Stephanie's willingness to answer questions by the Judiciary Committee, it's clear to me that a further delay in the confirmation is not good for Colorado or the office of U.S. Attorney," he said. "Stephanie has made a decision in the best interests of the office she hoped to serve, and I respect her for it."

Other candidates on list

Udall said he hoped Obama would move quickly to nominate a new candidate from the list of names he and former Sen. Ken Salazar submitted in January. Pueblo District Attorney Bill Thiebaut Jr. and Denver attorney John Walsh III remain on that list.

Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet said he appreciated Villafuerte's nearly 20 years of public service and he hoped the next nominee would "receive a timely, thorough and fair confirmation that is based on the facts."

Villafuerte's withdrawal follows almost two years of questions about her role, as well as that of the DA's office and the Ritter campaign, in accessing a restricted federal database during Democrat Ritter's campaign for governor.

The controversy has its roots in a 2002 plea deal extended by the office of then-Denver District Attorney Ritter.

Walter Noel Ramo, a small- time heroin dealer and illegal immigrant with multiple aliases, was permitted to plead guilty to the manufactured charge of agricultural trespass, rather than a drug charge, and receive probation. He stayed in the country, changed his name to Carlos Estrada-Medina and sexually assaulted a child in California.

As an ad about the case from Ritter's opponent in the 2006 gubernatorial campaign went on the air, Villafuerte, who was on leave from her job at the DA's office to work on the Ritter campaign, called a colleague there to seek information about Ramo. A short time later, someone at the DA's office accessed a restricted database and confirmed that Ramo and Estrada-Medina were one and the same.

Controversy's fallout

Ritter declared in a debate that the campaign of Republican Bob Beauprez had broken the law by accessing the restricted National Crime Information Center computer to learn Ramo had changed his name and committed a crime in California. His campaign asked for an investigation that led to charges against an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Cory Voorhis, who provided information to the Beauprez campaign.

The agent's trial revealed that others had accessed the same information the agent had, including the Denver DA's office. A phone message showed that Villafuerte had called the DA's office about Ramo/Estrada-Medina, and she had exchanged calls with DA staff before they accessed the NCIC to confirm the names belonged to one man.

FBI interview summaries from the ICE agent's case, obtained this year by The Denver Post, describe Villafuerte as telling the FBI she had "no conversations" with anyone at the DA's office about the illegal immigrant. The FBI did not ask her about the phone message or the calls exchanged with DA staff.

Villafuerte repeatedly denied she asked anyone at the DA's office to use the NCIC to confirm Ramo and Estrada-Medina were the same person. The DA's office has offered multiple explanations for why the NCIC was accessed, including that the information was used to answer media questions, but denied it was used to provide help to the Ritter campaign.

Ritter released a statement saying he too was disappointed that Villafuerte had withdrawn.

"Stephanie is incredibly well- qualified and would have made a terrific U.S. attorney," Ritter said. "It's unfortunate that the nominating process became politicized to the point where she felt it would have compromised her ability to serve."

Karen Crummy: 303-954-1594 or kcrummy@denverpost.com



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Timeline
Significant events leading up to Stephanie Villafuerte's withdrawal from nomination for U.S. attorney

Oct. 10, 2006:

Bob Beauprez's gubernatorial campaign airs an ad showing that Walter Noel Ramo, an illegal immigrant who received a plea deal from the Denver District Attorney's Office under Bill Ritter, went on to molest a child in California using a different name, Carlos Estrada-Medina. It is later learned that an Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent, Cory Voorhis, accessed a restricted federal database and helped the Beauprez campaign with matching up the immigrant's aliases.

Oct. 10-13 2006:

Stephanie Villafuerte exchanges phone calls and messages with DA staffers, including one noted as being specifically about Estrada-Medina. The DA's office then accesses the same restricted database the ICE agent had used to establish Ramo and Estrada-Medina were the same man. Ritter accuses the Beauprez campaign of breaking the law to learn that information, and his campaign asks for a criminal investigation.

Oct. 25, 2007:

Voorhis is charged with unlawfully accessing the National Crime Information Center computer. He faces up to a year in prison if convicted.

Jan. 31, 2008:

The Denver Post reports that a phone log at the DA's office showed that Villafuerte had called for information about Estrada-Medina two days before that office accessed the NCIC for information. The Post also reports that phone records show numerous calls between Villafuerte's cellphone and the cellphones of staff at the DA's office during that period.

Feb. 2, 2008:

Denver DA staff testifies during a hearing in the Voorhis case that they accessed the database to answer media questions and that phone calls between them and Villafuerte were likely to discuss a threat made against Ritter.

April 9, 2008:

Voorhis is acquitted by a federal jury.

Feb. 13, 2009:

Voorhis is officially fired from his job.

Sept. 30:

President Barack Obama nominates Villafuerte for Colorado's U.S. attorney.

Oct. 23:

The Post reports that FBI interview summaries had described Villafuerte as saying she had "no conversations" with anyone at the DA's office about Estrada-Medina. The FBI did not ask her about the phone message or calls.

Nov. 11:

Villafuerte sends a letter to Sen. Mark Udall denying any involvement in the access of a restricted federal database.

Dec. 2:

Three weeks after saying there was no documentation of a threat against Ritter during the 2006 gubernatorial race, the Denver Police Department produces a letter that recounts "veiled threats" were made at Ritter's campaign headquarters. No police report was generated.

Dec. 9-10:

Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the Judiciary Committee, asks that consideration of Villafuerte's nomination as Colorado U.S. attorney be delayed because her record is "incomplete."

Dec. 14:

Villafuerte withdraws her name from consideration.

[ZONA]

Originally Posted by Smiling Assassin27

Same ol' same ol'. Insufficient vetting on the part of Obama and his admin or out and out arrogance in believing his nominees are above reproach no matter what their record shows. This guy just isn't ready for prime time.

Yeah, and McCain spent alot of time vetting Miss Rogue, hahahahha

[Dukes]

Still waiting to see Cory Voorhis get reinstated.

[Bronx33]

Originally Posted by Dukes

Still waiting to see Cory Voorhis get reinstated.

And gets his legal fees paid by the scum that screwed him over also people seem to forget about the little girl in california that got molested by the scum ritter let walk when he needed to be deported, this also points out corruption within ICE i think the case is now reopened.

[Bronx33]

This scandle also exposes Govener ritter D-colo , Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet and Sen. Mark Udall, D-Colo effectly handing colorado back to the republicans fully when udall is done. (Nobody here is happy with that trio) udall is a empty suit.

[barryr]

As to remain consistent, the liberal media will wait weeks if not months to bother to report this story since it might make Obama look bad and needing the time to somehow figure out how to paint it all the fault of the Bush admin.

[peacepipe]

Originally Posted by barryr

As to remain consistent, the liberal media will wait weeks if not months to bother to report this story since it might make Obama look bad and needing the time to somehow figure out how to paint it all the fault of the Bush admin.

Don't worry it will be comming to a fox news channel near you soon enough.