Lincoln Police Seek Special Prosecutor To Check GOP Headquarters Probe

From Nebraska Examiner:

By Aaron Sanderford

February 1, 2023

LINCOLN — The Lincoln Police Department is asking that a special prosecutor take a second look at the evidence after its officers concluded no crime was committed during an alleged break-in last summer at the Nebraska Republican Party headquarters.

Police started notifying people of the department’s request this week. Lincoln Police Sgt. Chris Vollmer confirmed the request Tuesday and referred questions about the final decision and process to Lancaster County Attorney Pat Condon.

Condon did not immediately return messages Tuesday seeking comment, but sources familiar with the investigation said he is likely to decide this week whether to appoint a special prosecutor.

Insiders said the police department is confident about its work. Several compared the GOP case to a domestic quarrel between a divorcing husband and wife: The wife changed the locks. The husband pushed past the locks. Both own the damaged house. No crime.

At issue is whether anyone involved with the alleged break-in were still employees or people who otherwise had legal access to the GOP headquarters and property when items were accessed. If they were, it gets harder to prove a crime, experts explained.

Police have not said who was in the building at the time.

LPD has stayed largely quiet about the investigation, amid months of speculation about why the department decided that the temporary disappearance of security cameras and files during a leadership transition at the state GOP constituted no crime.

Police have declined to comment about it since issuing a statement in August. They have not released police reports from the July 9-10 incident, despite pressure from the state GOP’s private investigator and lawyer.

A decision to select a special prosecutor could delay a push by Tom Nesbitt, a private investigator hired by the GOP and a former Nebraska State Patrol colonel, Paul Kratz, the party’s attorney, to force release of the police reports.

The reason: The reports would again be part of an active investigation.

The GOP effort to subpoena those records is the subject of a hearing set for Friday in Lancaster County Court. The motions argue that the reports should be handed over to Nesbitt Investigations, the firm the GOP is paying over $9,000 to investigate what happened.

Earlier this month, Nesbitt expressed frustration to the GOP’s State Central Committee about LPD’s decision on the case and about being unable to get the fuller police reports.

Nesbitt told the group that new GOP leadership had been unable to access footage from the security cameras without the password and that he had to recover 200 gigabytes of emails deleted by someone tied to the former leadership team.

People close to the former leadership team, speaking on the condition that they not be named, have said the group entered GOP headquarters to retrieve candidate campaign records, including personal financial information about donors.

While preliminary police reports estimated the loss of property and data at about $1,000, many items were returned over the next several days, including the security cameras, Nesbitt said. He alleged some documents were not returned.

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