SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - A House committee that investigated former Utah Attorney General John Swallow is postponing the release of a final report so it can review additional emails recovered from one of Swallow’s computers.
Rep. Jim Dunnigan, a Taylorsville Republican who chairs the House committee, said the group is reviewing the roughly 400 new documents during a closed-door meeting Friday.
Certainly the bulk of what we have has already been out,” Dunnigan said. “But we do have some additional that we want to include in the final report.”
Dunnigan said the new emails supplement 1,300 emails that were previously recovered from the hard drive of Swallow’s personal computer.
He said the bulk of the documents corroborate findings from the committee’s investigators.
Swallow’s personal attorney, Rod Snow, called the investigation unfair and one-sided.
In December, the investigators reported that Swallow’s 2012 attorney general campaign obscured donations from the payday loan industry that were funneled through various groups.
They also say Swallow, a Republican, intentionally deleted and fabricated records to throw off any inquiry into his dealings with businessmen.
The former attorney general stepped down late last year after nearly 11 months in office. He was dogged by accusations of misconduct, including accusations that he offered to protect several businessmen in return for favors.
Swallow repeatedly denied wrongdoing and has pledged to clear his name as a private citizen.
Shortly after his resignation, House lawmakers wound down their nearly $4 million fact-finding probe into the allegations.
Their final report is more than 200 pages and comes with 3,500 attached pages of relevant documents, testimony and other exhibits, Dunnigan said Friday afternoon.
He said the nine-member, bipartisan group of House lawmakers will release the report in the middle of next week.
The committee has three bills pending before the Legislature to beef up state laws on elections, evidence tampering and legislative investigations. The members say the bills are necessary to prevent a similar situation with an elected official in the future.
Committee members plan to study other issues, such as moonlighting rules for state employees, after the session ends.
Beyond the probe by state lawmakers, Swallow has been the subject of several other investigations.
Republican Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox, whose office oversees elections, announced in November that his office found Swallow deliberately withheld information on his 2012 campaign disclosures and later tried to influence a probe into the matter.
Cox declined to pursue penalties because Swallow had announced his resignation.
Swallow and Snow denied the allegations in the report.
Additionally, two Utah county attorneys, with the assistance of the FBI, are in the middle of a criminal investigation of Swallow and others.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney’s Office and the Davis County Attorney’s Office have filed criminal charges against an associate of Swallow as part of that investigation.
Swallow, who has not been charged with any crimes, was also the subject of two complaints at the Utah State Bar last year. Both were dismissed.
In September, the U.S. Department of Justice announced it was closing a federal bribery probe without filing charges against Swallow.
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