Criminal Justice
Oops. DOJ Spokesman Accidentally Sends Out Confidential Witness List
Posted Jan 8, 2009, 08:32 pm CST
By Martha Neil
Uh-oh. A spokesman for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald accidentally e-mailed to journalists yesterday a copy of a federal criminal complaint that also included a one-page list identifying almost 20 confidential witnesses in a $15 million fraudulent investment case.
"The inadvertent disclosure of the sources—former One World employees, customers, and 'other' individuals who spoke with FBI and IRS agents—caused Fitzgerald spokesman Randall Samborn to send an urgent follow-up email asking journalists to destroy the complaint due to the 'non-public information disclosing the identities of persons not named in the affidavit,' " reports the Smoking Gun.
Fitzgerald is based in Chicago. The blog post also includes a copy of the criminal complaint filed in U.S. v. Charles G. Martin and John E. Walsh, as well as a copy of the witness list that redacts the names of those identified.
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