Álvarez del Toledo asks the Supreme Court to review the attorney general’s emails if he had any role in the amnesty

The PP deputy Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo has warned this Wednesday that the intervention of the email and mobile phone of the Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, ordered by the Supreme Court in the framework of the investigation into the alleged leak of personal data of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner may lead to another investigation on matters that are not related to the matter. This was explained in his parliamentary question to the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños.

“You are afraid of other things that may appear on the attorney general’s cell phone,” he told him, to specify: “Emails, compromising conversations, even new crimes by García Ortiz or others that the Civil Guard will have to investigate.” “It is the doctrine of chance discovery,” explained the PP deputy spokesperson. “Keep that phrase, forgive life, chance find,” he snapped at Bolaños.

Álvarez de Toledo has even anticipated what matters the Civil Guard and the Supreme Court should seek information on in the attorney general’s communications. “It hasn’t occurred to you to maneuver against Ayuso’s boyfriend or in favor of Begoña Gómez or for the benefit of Puigdemont against the discretion of the prosecutors, right?” he said.

Although the reason why the communications have been intercepted has to do with Alberto González Amador y Ayuso, the PP deputy has proposed diverting the investigation towards other matters: “The seized emails and conversations coincide with the date of approval of the law of amnesty and the first steps of Justice against the political and family environment of the President of the Government. Do you know who is on the covers of the 8th? [de marzo de este año, fecha inicial de la incautación de la información]? You, congratulating yourself on the amnesty law.”

Judge Ángel Hurtado authorized the Central Operational Unit of the Civil Guard to copy and take all the emails and mobile messages of the attorney general from March to the present. Seven months of professional and private communications from Álvaro García Ortiz that, as the State Attorney’s Office has denounced in writing before the judge, include “information that may compromise the security of the State.”

Although the cloning of information was global and indiscriminate, from the beginning Judge Hurtado has explained that only messages related to the case should be collected: the alleged leak to the press of information about the tax fraud case of Alberto González Amador, a couple by Isabel Díaz Ayuso. But in the same order he also left the door open for the UCO to extract anything that, in its opinion, could appear to be a crime.

“In the case of the appearance of a chance discovery,” said the judge, the Supreme Court official was in charge of recording and collecting the identified material, referring to the moment of the search. If that day the Civil Guard seized something outside of what the judge requested because they considered that it could be evidence of another crime not related to Alberto González Amador, a new judicial authorization would be necessary.

A limited search

Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo’s proposal for the Supreme Court to take all the seized material and look for if there is anything else clashes, in principle, with Ángel Hurtado’s orders: the expert analysis of the emails and messages, he said in an order from last eight November, “it is limited to the dates that cover” a few days of March 2024. And all their orders have specified that only material related to the case should be analyzed.

The doctrine of accidental discovery that the PP representative speaks of has been qualified and filed by the Supreme Court and the Prosecutor’s Office in the last five years. “Public authorities cannot intrude into the privacy of suspects, intercepting their communications, with the exclusive purpose or object of blindly investigating their conduct,” the Supreme Court has said on one occasion.

It is not impossible to open a new case when evidence of another type of crime is obtained during a search or telephone intervention. But over the last two decades, Spain has been condemned on several occasions precisely for irregularities in obtaining this type of evidence. “It will be necessary to assess and substantiate that the casual discovery has not been obtained fraudulently, that is, by agreeing to measures that – under the protection of the investigation of another crime – really sought the discovery of infractions for which there was no basis for investigation,” established the Prosecutor’s Office. in a circular from 2019.