WASHINGTON, 28 August — All is fair in love and war ... And politics. Which would explain why, during last year’s presidential campaign, a Bush employee felt perfectly justified in stealing George W. Bush’s debate materials and mailing them to the Al Gore campaign headquarters. In addition, as if that wasn’t dodgy enough, this same person felt justified in lying about it initially.
The person, Juanita Lozano, was eventually discovered. She pleaded guilty in June, admitting that in September 2000 she had helped herself to a Bush videotape, strategy book and other papers — and mailed them to a Gore adviser, just before the first presidential face-off with the Texas governor.
Former Rep. Tom Downey, D-N.Y., the Gore advisor who received the material, promptly turned the materials over to the FBI, and agents later identified her as a likely suspect, based on surveillance videotape from the downtown Austin, Texas, post office. Now federal prosecutors are asking for a year in prison for Lozano, a life-time Democrat.
In preparation for Lozano’s sentencing Friday for mail fraud and perjury, government lawyers are also alleging that she ran up thousands of dollars in unauthorized charges on a credit card issued by Bush’s media advisor.
In her plea, Lozano said she used the credit card to buy postage for the stolen package. The government sentencing memo said she made other unauthorized charges that exceeded her office manager salary. Lozano’s former employer, Bush media adviser Mark McKinnon, said Friday he would not press charges for more than the $10,000 credit card debt that the former office worker made.
“It is clear that embezzling a campaign’s most sensitive work product and secretly mailing it to the opposition has no lawful place in such contests,” government lawyers wrote to US District Judge Same Sparks. “The defendant’s crime was a serious one.”
