New Mexico AG Opens Criminal Investigation Into Missing Susana Martinez Emails

New Mexico AG Gary King, who is running for governor against Republican Susana Martinez.Robin Zielinski/AP Images

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The New Mexico Attorney General’s office is opening a criminal investigation into missing and/or destroyed emails covering part of Republican Gov. Susana Martinez’s tenure as a district attorney and also the tenure of Martinez’s successor, Amy Orlando, a close friend of the governor. Complicating the investigation is the fact that New Mexico’s AG, Democrat Gary King, is Martinez’s opponent in this year’s gubernatorial race. 

The investigation was triggered by an internal report released last week by the district attorney in New Mexico’s Third Judicial District. As I reported, it found that many emails sent and received by staff members inside the Third Judicial District office were apparently “deleted and/or removed” during the period when Martinez and later Orlando headed the office. Those missing emails—which are state property—likely include messages to and from Martinez herself, who served as DA until she became governor in 2011.

Martinez handpicked Orlando as her successor, but her term was shortlived. In 2012, Orlando lost her DA election to a former FBI agent and federal prosecutor named Mark D’Antonio, who is a Democrat. It was D’Antonio who forwarded his office’s findings to the AG for further investigation.

At a Monday afternoon press conference, King, the state AG, made a brief appearance in which he said that the disappearance of the emails in question “appears not to be the result of an inadvertent clerical error or policy but rather the planned intentional destruction of vital government records.” Dave Pederson, the general counsel in the AG’s office, downplayed the potential conflict of interest posed by King’s gubernatorial run and said this case “goes way beyond simply pressing the delete button on certain emails or electronic files.” According to the Santa Fe Reporter, Pederson declined to tell reporters which statutes may have been violated to avoid alerting potential targets.

Orlando is currently the general counsel at the state’s Department of Public Safety (DPS). Her boss, DPS Secretary Greg Fouratt, dismissed the AG’s investigation as “nothing more than a clumsy and amateur political stunt coordinated between a DA with what appears to be a personal vendetta and a gubernatorial candidate who’s just a few weeks away from an election.” Orlando herself slammed last week’s report on the missing emails as an “amateurish political stunt on the eve of an election” that was filled with “baseless innuendos.”

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate