The Supreme Court publishes the sentence against the Attorney General: "He cannot respond to a false news story by committing a crime"

Madrid"We must condemn and do condemn Álvaro García Ortiz as the perpetrator of a crime of disclosing confidential information." Nineteen days after announcing the sentence, the Supreme Court has made the sentence public that consummates an unprecedented institutional clash and that disqualifies the Attorney General of the State for two yearsThe court, by a majority of five votes to two, relied on a set of "solid, consistent and conclusive" evidence to "necessarily" affirm that he or "a person in his immediate circle and with his knowledge" leaked the Cadena SER The email from the lawyer of Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner. The 181-page ruling considers that Álvaro García Ortiz had a "reinforced duty of confidentiality" which he "violated without justification." In contrast, the progressive justices Ana Ferrer and Susana Polo, who issued a dissenting opinion, maintain that it "has not been proven" that the Attorney General was the one who leaked the information. Álvaro García Ortiz will be replaced by Teresa Peramato, who was formally appointed this Tuesday and will take office this week.

Finally, the Supreme Court has convicted Álvaro García Ortiz both for leaking the email in which the lawyer for Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner admitted that he had "certainly" committed two tax offenses and for the press release published hours later: it sees a "unity" within the "unity." Specifically, the press release was the official response after Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, the chief of staff for the Madrid president, falsely spread the word that the Prosecutor's Office had offered a deal to Alberto González Amador—when in reality it was the other way around and the initiative had come from him—and that he had been stopped on orders "from above." This is the version that was published The WorldThe criterion that has prevailed in the Supreme Court has been that of the conservative majority, led by the president of the Criminal Chamber, Andrés Martínez Arrieta, who is highly critical of the role of the Attorney General: he reproaches him for the fact that it is "harmful" for someone who is "guarantor of the obligation of confidentiality" to divulge classified information within his reach.

Sentència condemnatòria al fiscal general de l’Estat

The leak and the press release

The ruling argues that there is no "reasonable alternative explanation" that "allows us to question" whether the leak occurred within the State Attorney General's Office and whether Álvaro García Ortiz had "direct involvement." It criticizes the "urgency" and "haste" he displayed on the evening of March 13, 2024, in obtaining the emails exchanged between the prosecutor in the case and González Amador's lawyer, which he believes "were unnecessary" to publicly refute a false news story. Furthermore, it argues that it is "unacceptable" to suggest that dozens of people had access to the email, as alleged by the Attorney General's defense, given that this would imply a "significant security breach." Regarding the press release, it maintains that Álvaro García Ortiz "cannot respond to a false news story by committing a crime" and argues that there were "many possibilities" to refute it "without exposing the accused as a confessed criminal to the public." He condemns the Attorney General's "overreach" and believes the memo contained "manifestly unnecessary" documents and included data that "should not have been disclosed." "Reporting is not intervening in media controversies by sacrificing [Alberto González Amador's] rights," he emphasizes.

And what does he say about the journalists who claimed to have access to the controversial email before the Attorney General received it? He states that he does not question its "veracity," but counters that the fact that confidential information was known beforehand "does not mean" it lost its protection. He compares the case, for example, to a plastic surgeon operating on a celebrity or a doctor who knows a person has a sexually transmitted disease.

A "very striking coincidence"

One of the elements the ruling emphasizes is the fact that Álvaro García Ortiz deleted the WhatsApp messages on the very day it became known that the Supreme Court had opened a case against him. "The choice of such a singular day is a very striking coincidence," the court states, questioning the explanations given by the Attorney General to defend his claim that he performed periodic deletions for security reasons. "There is no provision that obliges him to periodically wipe absolutely all the information blank," the ruling counters, attributing the "manual destruction" and the "voluntary and conscious complete erasure" of the phone to a "genuine defense strategy." Furthermore, the court "in no way" understands why García Ortiz did not save the emails related to the events if, as he claimed, "they constituted essential proof of his innocence." Ferrer and Polo dissent from the majority.

In their dissenting opinion, Judges Ana Ferrer and Susana Polo rejected the conviction of the Attorney General based on four points. First, there is no evidence, either direct or indirect, incriminating García Ortiz in the email leak. Second, none of the journalists who published the story identified the Attorney General as a source of information. Third, the Public Prosecutor's Office was within its rights to address the false information published by... The WorldThe plaintiffs, who had attributed the plea bargain offer to the Public Prosecutor's Office, emphasize that the statement released by the Prosecutor's Office did not reveal any previously unknown information. Their final point is that the plaintiffs reject the possibility of ordering the Attorney General to delete the messages from his mobile phone and email, given that their content is unknown and, furthermore, that the periodic deletion of sensitive data has been shown to be standard practice within the Prosecutor's Office precisely to prevent leaks.