The ten days that will decide the future of the attorney general

MadridIn the trial of the State Attorney General, the parties are placing great importance on the accuracy of the times and dates in the descriptions given by the witnesses. This is because the central question the trial must answer is who first leaked the email containing confidential information about Alberto González Amador, Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner. Disseminating it once it has been published is no longer considered a crime of revealing secrets, hence the importance of discovering the source of the original leak, which is the criminal act. A few minutes can make all the difference in determining who was responsible. After the first three sessions of the trial and hearing from the first twenty witnesses, it has become clear that ten days in March 2024 are the key period, with the night of the 13th being particularly relevant.

February 2: the date the email was sent

Before March arrives, there is a key date that has been repeatedly mentioned during the trial: February 2, 2024. At 12:45 p.m., González Amador's former lawyer, Carlos Neira, sent the email to Julio Salto, the prosecutor in charge of the case against Ayuso's boyfriend. Both testified this week in the Supreme Court. Neira acknowledged that, in addition to Salto, he also sent the communication to a generic email address in the Madrid Prosecutor's Office's economic crimes department and to a state attorney. This broadens the range of people who had access to the email that was leaked a month later, a relevant circumstance for Álvaro García Ortiz's defense, which intends to demonstrate that more people could have leaked it.

March 6: a journalist obtains the email

According to the testimony of the deputy director ofEldiario.esJosé Precedo was the first journalist to obtain the February 2nd email. Precedo stated that a source, whom he declined to name out of respect for journalistic secrecy but confirmed was not García Ortiz, gave him a printed copy of the email. In it, Neira admitted to tax fraud on behalf of González Amador and proposed a plea bargain with the Prosecutor's Office to avoid a trial. This was on March 6th, a week before the email was leaked. Precedo recounted that his source forbade him from publishing it, which is why it wasn't released until a week later, after other media outlets had already revealed it. However, being the first to have the email allowed him to begin an investigation into Maxwell Cremona, which led to the publication of a more extensive exclusive on the tax fraud investigation on March 12th, the day before the leak.

That afternoon, Precedo called Mar Hedo, the press officer for the State Attorney General's Office, who had testified at the trial the day before him. "I called her and asked if there were any complaints against Maxwell Cremona, without mentioning that he was Ayuso's boyfriend. She replied that she had no idea," the journalist recounted. The call to Hedo, he explained, was intended to "find out how much time" they had to publish. When he saw that the Public Prosecutor's Office was unaware, he calmed down and "assembled an investigative team" that worked throughout that week.

March 7: The Prosecutor's Office discovers who Maxwell Cremona is

The next day, Precedo called the Madrid provincial prosecutor's office, as Hedo had recommended he inquire there. Following the calls from the journalist...Eldiario.es Madrid's chief prosecutor, Pilar Rodríguez, learned that the owner of Maxwell Cremona was the partner of the Madrid regional president. The fact that a previously anonymous case could gain media attention compelled her to inform her superiors, as stipulated by the Public Prosecutor's Office statute, according to Rodríguez's testimony. On March 7th, Madrid's senior prosecutor, Almudena Lastra, was informed, but decided against publicizing the matter, considering González Amador "a private citizen." The Attorney General also learned of the information that day.

March 12th: 'Eldiario.es' breaks the story

The first journalistic report that appears about Maxwell Cremona is an exclusive fromEldiario.es Published at 6:01 a.m. on March 12. "Ayuso's partner defrauded the Tax Office of €350,951 with a scheme of false invoices and shell companies," the headline read. The case was described in detail according to the Prosecutor's Office complaint, but it did not mention that González Amador had offered a plea deal to the prosecution. That day, at midday, Ayuso made controversial statements in which she attributed the investigation to political persecution. Throughout the day, a media frenzy erupted, causing Hedo to receive a multitude of calls. One of them was from the then deputy director ofThe CountryJosé Manuel Romero, who was already asking her about a possible plea agreement, which she claimed to be unaware of at the time. Meanwhile, that same day, Prosecutor Salto responded to Neira, Ayuso's boyfriend's lawyer, in another email, stating that the Prosecutor's Office was open to reaching an agreement.

March 13: the day of the leak

At nine in the morning, González Amador forwarded a screenshot of the previous day's email from the Prosecutor's Office to Ayuso's chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (MAR). At 9:29 p.m. on the same day, March 13, The World It published information claiming that prosecutor Salto had offered a deal to González Amador. This was an erroneous version that other media outlets such as Digital Freedom either Vozpópuli They replicate this, and MAR disseminates it in a chat he has with journalists. Ayuso's right-hand man also maintains, without evidence, that the possibility of an agreement was blocked "on orders from above." It is at this moment that the Attorney General mobilizes to find out what had happened and counter this narrative. Prosecutor Rodríguez calls Salto several times; he was at a football stadium. "What have we committed to?" she asks him. At 9:43 p.m., the Chief Prosecutor of Madrid, who was simultaneously speaking with García Ortiz, conveys in a second call the urgency of accessing the emails that prove the initiative came from González Amador and that there had been no attempt to sabotage the agreement.

At 9:52 p.m., Salto forwarded the emails to her superiors, Rodríguez and Lastra. Rodríguez forwarded them to García Ortiz, who received them at 9:59 p.m. The first article refuting the version being spread by Ayuso's entourage was published on La Sexta's website at 10:10 p.m. However, the journalist who wrote it, Alfonso Pérez Medina, testified that he had already finished writing it at 9:54 p.m., which is when he sent it via a television chat. This was five minutes before the Attorney General received the emails, which, according to the defense, would exonerate him. That same night, Cadena SER also broadcast the correct version of events. And the State Attorney General's Office begins drafting a press release.

March 14: The image is published

At 8:29 a.m. on March 14, former Moncloa advisor Pilar Sánchez Acera sent a message to former PSOE leader Juan Lobato. a screenshot of the email content. The PluralAt 9:06 a.m., a very similar image was published, but with the personal information covered up. This media outlet was the first to publish a screenshot, as previous outlets had only reported the text. As a witness in the trial, Sánchez Acera stated that he received the image from a journalist, not from the Prosecutor's Office, and that he only forwarded it to Lobato. At the same time, it was reported an internal battle between the State Attorney General's Office and the Madrid Superior Prosecutor's Office, led by Lastrawho did not want to distribute the press release prepared by Hedo. It ended up being disseminated in all media outlets that morning at 10:22 a.m., more than an hour after the news broke.The Plural.