In Nevada Scandal, Questions about Crucial Evidence

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We’ve spent some time here cataloguing the myriad signs that point to a cover-up of Rep. Jim Gibbons’ (R-NV) alleged assault of a cocktail waitress in a Las Vegas parking garage. But the mystery of the disappearing videotapes from surveillance cameras in the garage just has to take the cake.

Today, The Las Vegas Sun provided the fullest accounting yet of the tapes’ journey. And it just gets worse.

Chrissy Mazzeo, the cocktail waitress who says she was assaulted, has said from the beginning that the tapes would show just what happened that night. “[A]ll that stuff will be on tape if there is a camera there,” she told a 911 dispatcher the night of the incident.

When police first contacted the parking garage that night, they were told by a security officer “identified in police reports only as Aaron,'” that the cameras in the garage weren’t recording. Sorry. “The next day,” the Sun reports, “after officers told Mazzeo there was no video after all, she decided to drop the case.”

But two weeks later, Mazzeo called a press conference to say that she would press charges if the police reopened the case. So the police decided to “tie up some loose ends,” as a police Deputy Chief put it to the Sun. They went over to check up on the tapes and maybe interview that Aaron fella.

To their surprise, “Robert Clavier, director of security for Hughes Center [the garage], showed up to say that videotapes indeed existed from Oct. 13.” They were told that Hughes had had the tapes the whole time, but “didn’t know what to do because it was a closed case.”

There’s been no explanation as to why Aaron (whose last name remains undisclosed) gave police such bad information early on. For some reason, though, police don’t suspect Aaron of knowingly misleading them. Deputy Chief Greg McCurdy would only tell the Sun that “He may have been given wrong information.” It’s not clear from whom.

But that’s not all. The garage is owned by Crescent Real Estate Equities, a real estate firm that just happens to be closely connected to top state Republicans, and Gibbons in particular. The company is represented by Jones Vargas, a local firm that counts Republican National committeeman Joe Brown as one of its leading partners. The firm actually held a fundraiser for Gibbons on October 12th, the night before the alleged sexual assault, the Sun reports.

Keep in mind that Crescent also has close ties to Sig Rogich, Gibbons close advisor, who had been drinking with Gibbons and Mazzeo the night of the alleged assault.

Not surprisingly, the law firm leaked word of the tapes to Gibbons shortly after turning them over to police. They said that the tapes cleared Gibbons of wrongdoing — a message that Gibbons quickly announced to the press. He began to push for the release of the tapes.

Mazzeo’s lawyer, meanwhile, is understandably reserved about the tapes’ probable authenticity. And as experts point out to the Sun, the tapes’ disappearance makes them nearly useless as evidence (at least for Gibbons, who says that they’ll show he was never in the garage with Mazzeo), since it’s unclear who had custody of them during that time — and surveillance tapes are very easy to fake.

The tapes were released to Mazzeo and Gibbons today. Stay tuned.

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