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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

West lawyers make final pitch in recall fight

Voters should have no chance to oust Mayor Jim West based on “The Spokesman-Review’s invasive surveillance and contrived evidence” and that’s all that recall sponsor Shannon Sullivan offered to support her petition, the mayor’s attorneys contend.

In their last legal brief before next week’s state Supreme Court hearing, West’s attorneys also argue that a trial judge overstepped his authority by overhauling the only charge in the recall that he didn’t throw out, and that the mayor wasn’t given an opportunity to explain e-mails offering an internship to someone he met through a gay chat line.

“Ms. Sullivan’s petition is based on incomplete, misleading and unverified newspaper stories,” the attorneys say. “This Court should not permit the fruits of The Spokesman-Review’s invasive surveillance to be the factual basis for a recall.”

Sullivan called the brief “a smokescreen” and insisted the facts and the law are on her side.

“They’re just trying to mask and confuse the issue,” she said Tuesday afternoon.

West’s lawyers, Bill Etter, Carl Oreskovich and Susan Troppmann, wrapped up more than a month’s worth of written sparring with Sullivan and her legal team in advance of a special hearing next Wednesday during the high court’s summer session. Signature gathering on the recall petition is on hold until the court rules on West’s appeal.

If the Supreme Court sides with West, it could throw the recall out or send the petition back to Superior Court Judge Craig Matheson for further action. If it rejects his appeal, Sullivan has said the recall petitions will start circulating within 24 hours.

As they did in their initial appeal brief, West’s attorneys argue that Matheson should not have performed a wholesale rewrite of Sullivan’s charge that the mayor “solicited internships for young men for his own purposes.”

After a hearing at which Sullivan was allowed to submit more information she said formed the basis of her knowledge of that charge, Matheson wrote a much longer explanation of the charge, which includes dates and details of West’s contact with a person he believed to be an 18-year-old high school student whom he met on the Internet.

That person actually was a forensic computer expert hired by The Spokesman-Review to confirm the report of a young man who told the newspaper he had met someone he believed to be the mayor on a gay chat line, whom he later met in person and had consensual sex with.

Sullivan may assume there was no justification for West to invite someone he met on the chat line to apply for an internship, his attorneys say. But if he had been given a chance, West could have explained the e-mail he sent to the newspaper’s computer expert and demonstrated he had helped “over a hundred young people obtain internships over the years,” they said.

“He would have shown that he had ‘personal’ connections with some of the interns and none of the relationships were improper,” they added. “He would have easily refuted Ms. Sullivan’s inference of nefarious intent.”

But Sullivan countered that the mayor didn’t even attend the hearing on the recall petition: “If West wanted his side told, he should have showed up in court.”

The Supreme Court shouldn’t even be considering the charge that Matheson wrote, the mayor’s attorneys argue, but should focus on Sullivan’s charge, which they say is merely conclusions she is drawing from reading the newspaper stories.

As they did in their initial appeal brief, West’s attorneys criticized the newspaper’s coverage, which began May 5. The entire investigation can still be read on the newspaper’s Web site, www.spokesmanreview.com.

“Mayor West’s decision not to reveal his identity on a gay Web site was a personal decision which Ms. Sullivan has no right to judge,” they wrote. “If not for The Spokesman-Review’s surveillance and intrusion into his personal life, Mayor West’s identity and sexuality would have remained private.”

The newspaper reports are the only basis for her allegations, West’s attorneys contend. “FBI and internal investigations have revealed no evidence that Mayor West ‘was using city computers to chat during his working hours’ to date. Similarly, there is currently no evidence that Mayor West ‘was abusing his office.’ “

But Sullivan countered that the FBI investigation is not yet complete, “so obviously it has not come up with anything.”

The agency’s work thus far has resulted in agents getting a search warrant for West’s home, she said. That search warrant was signed by a federal magistrate based on an affidavit of probable cause that lists allegations against the mayor by four different men.

The city’s own internal investigation was suspended because the five people appointed by former City Attorney Mike Connelly to a special panel all resigned before they even began the bulk of their work.

Early this month, the City Council passed a resolution in support of doing its own investigation. But the council has not yet appointed an investigator to handle that task.