The Attorney General of Arizona is involved in a deliberate effort to stall and/or cover up information about “criminal activity including rape, incest, assault, kidnapping, forced marriages of underage girls, weapons violations and welfare fraud,” according to the Phoenix New Times.
The New Times is a prominent Southwest newspaper known for its investigative journalism. It claims to have received through a confidential source a “three page memo” that outlines the criminal activities of the Arizona polygamist group known as the “Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints” (FLDS). This memo also explains how the Attorney General of Arizona intends to suppress that information to avoid possible political problems.
However, the largest newspaper in Arizona says that the memo received by the New Times and other media, is a fraud and did not originate from the Attorney General’s office. Instead The Arizona Republic reports it came from the “the basement of the Arizona Department of Corrections headquarters” in downtown Phoenix.
An official spokesperson for the Attorney General said, “The document is completely bogus.” That spokesperson then declined to comment about a claimed “criminal probe” now supposedly underway regarding the FLDS.
It remains unclear what law enforcement officials intend to do about the FLDS. What is clear is that the group has historically been engaged for some time in a pattern of abuse and very rarely has been the focus of a “criminal probe.”
It appears that the FLDS has received a dispensation for its conduct or a kind of blanket immunity from criminal prosecution. This seems to be due to concerns about the political fallout that might occur if any meaningful action took place to enforce the law in Colorado, City Arizona, which is where the FLDS is largely situated.
It should be noted that this is an election year and the Arizona Attorney General Janet Napolitano is running for governor.
Ms. Napolitano claims to have met with Utah officials to form a “joint task force.” The FLDS does span both sides of an area on the Arizona-Utah border.
It will be interesting to see if the claimed “task force” ultimately takes any meaningful action. It just may turn out that the review of the facts and the political situation within the fraudulent memo were not “bogus.”
no comment untill now