Two officials from the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office called HEAT CITY this afternoon, both with the same message: We’re not leaking.
A post here yesterday looked at the language used in recent local news reports about the criminal investigation of county Supervisor Don Stapley. The articles online left a lot of questions unanswered about where much of this new information was coming from. Two of the articles said they “obtained” new documents, but did not say how they came by them.
So, Mike Scerbo, spokesman for the county attorney’s office, and Barnett Lotstein, an aide in the office, called today to clear things up a bit. They both said in separate intverivews that a 1,300-page document was made available for public inspection last week and several media outlets took a peek. “They put in a public records request,” said Scerbo, without naming which specific news outlets looked at the report.
According to the two officials, news organizations got the information the same way anybody who wants it can: They just asked for it.