A journalist from 'Eldiario.es' exonerates the Attorney General: "I know he is innocent"

MadridWhich the origin of the leak of confidential information Regarding the tax fraud case involving Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner, this is the key question in the case against Álvaro García Ortiz, which has not received a conclusive answer in the third session of the trial, largely due to the fact that the journalists who testified were able to invoke professional secrecy to avoid revealing who leaked the information to them. However, José Precedo, deputy director in Eldiario.es, He exonerated the Attorney General on Wednesday, the only person currently on trial in the Supreme Court. "In 22 years of my career, Álvaro García Ortiz has never given me a single document. I know who the source of this story is, but I won't say due to journalistic privilege. I have a moral dilemma because there's a person facing prison time, and I know he's innocent," the journalist from the online newspaper concluded.. Precedo has asserted that he had access to the email dated February 2, 2024, in which Alberto González Amador's former lawyer, Carlos Neira, proposed a plea bargain—which would have involved pleading guilty—to economic crimes prosecutor Julián Salto, a week before the leak attributed to García Ortiz. Investigators place the Attorney General's leak on the night of March 13, 2024, and Precedo claims to have had the email on March 6. González Amador's current lawyer, acting as a private prosecutor, has questioned the journalist's version. "Why was he the last to publish the email if he was the first to have it?" asked Gabriel Rodríguez-Ramos. La Sexta and Cadena SER reported on it before... Eldiario.es of the content of the communication that refuted a previous news item published in The World at 9:29 p.m. on March 13—which erroneously attributed the initiative for the pact to the Prosecutor's Office. "The information was not intended to cause harm the prestige of the Public Prosecutor's Office"," said Esteban Urreiztieta, the author of this reportThe WorldThis triggered alarms at the public prosecutor's office and led to the publication of a press release the following day to refute it. Faced with this whirlwind, Precedo justified waiting to publish, despite having the information, citing, among other reasons, "respect" for his source, who asked him not to disclose the email.

Was it the same source as the media outlets that first published it? The author of the La Sexta news story, journalist Alfonso Pérez Medina, claimed he accessed the "full content" of the email through three different sources. During Pérez Medina's questioning, it became clear that five minutes can make all the difference in this trial. The state attorney defending the Attorney General, Consuelo Castro, focused on the publication times. Medina stated that he sent a message at 9:54 p.m. in the television station's chat with the text of the news story that refuted the version of events.The WorldThe La Sexta website published it at 10:10 PM. Between 9:54 PM and 10:10 PM, therefore, the news story was already written and the journalist had already consulted his sources. Why is this timeline relevant to García Ortiz's defense? The answer is that the Attorney General received the email that he supposedly leaked at 9:59 PM. This gives him an argument to distance himself from the origin of the leak.

The PSOE messages

Two PSOE officials have distanced both the Public Prosecutor's Office and the Moncloa Palace from the leak of the email. Pilar Sánchez Acera, former advisor to the Moncloa Palace and current second-in-command of the Madrid PSOE, who was summoned because on the morning of March 14, 2024, the day after the leak, she forwarded a screenshot of the leaked email to former Madrid Socialist leader Juan Lobato, denied that it was the image she sent him. "It came to me from a journalist whose media outlet I can't recall," she asserted. The PSOE's organizational secretary emphasized that she doesn't know anyone at the State Attorney General's Office and that, apart from Lobato, she didn't forward the image to anyone else.

The former leader of the Madrid PSOE also spoke that morning with Francesc Vallès, the former Secretary of Communication at La Moncloa. Both Lobato and Sánchez Acera denied having received instructions from Vallès, thus rejecting the theory of González Amador's lawyer, who suggested collusion between them, the Spanish government, and the Public Prosecutor's Office in the leak. González Amador's lawyer seized upon a message sent by Lobato to Sánchez Acera to also implicate the Public Prosecutor's Office.

"Has the letter been published anywhere? If not, it seems like the Prosecutor's Office gave it to me.""Why?" asked the former leader of the Madrid PSOE to the former advisor at Moncloa Palace when Sánchez Acera asked her that morning to show the document she had forwarded to him during the Madrid Assembly plenary session, in which Lobato was to question Ayuso with the aim of proving that the Madrid president... Lobato explained his reluctance to make it public because he believed that "it could be interpreted that the Prosecutor's Office might have an interest in disseminating it" and that it "could reach him through that channel." However, the now-senator denied having any "suspicion." "What I had was prudence," he said. Coinciding with the start of the judicial investigation into the Attorney General, Lobato registered the messages he exchanged that morning on the matter with a notary, as he stated, to protect himself. A move that cost him his position.

In a radio interview Wednesday night, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, criticized the "abuse of power and institutions" and stated that she "only" wants the truth to come out. She maintained that it is a case in which she "has absolutely nothing to do" but questioned how it is possible that "a man alone with his lawyer" is on trial, while on the other side are "prosecutors and journalists."