In Nevada Scandal, Political Ties (and More Questions) SurfaceRep. Jim Gibbons (R-NV) stands accused of sexually assaulting a woman in a parking lot in the later hours of Friday, Oct. 13.
Immediately following the incident, his campaign manager — a big player in the GOP, Nevada politics and business named Sig Rogich — hustled to squelch the story. But Rogich is increasingly in danger of becoming the story.
New questions are being raised about Rogich and a key piece of evidence in the case: the videotapes from the surveillance cameras in the parking lot which surfaced just a few days ago. For two weeks, the police and the public believed they didn’t exist. The property management company responsible for the complex told police the cameras were “operable, but not working.”
Gibbons’ accuser, Chrissy Mazzeo, told police the night of the 13th to get those tapes, because they would prove she was telling the truth. The media first wondered why it took the police several hours to discover there were no tapes — at the time, the Las Vegas Sun looked askance at Rogich, noting that the power broker’s offices were in the same complex which housed the parking garage.
Now that the tapes have turned up, the paper’s giving Rogich a second, harder look. Why? It turns out that Rogich once lobbied for the property company which managed the complex, Crescent Real Estate Equities.
Gibbons’ lawyer, Don Campbell, has confirmed that a Crescent representative told Gibbons’ camp of the existence of the tapes before they turned the tapes over to the police.
“The timing of the discovery of the tapes and the circumstances by which their existence became public have raised a new round of questions – which none of the principals would answer on Monday,” the Sun concluded this morning. There so many unanswered questions surrounding the case, the Sun has taken to running sidebars listing them all.
