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| Caribbean-Latin America |
| Year in prison for leaking wiretap in NM gunrunning case |
| 2014-01-22 |
| The husband of a former federal prosecutor was sentenced to one year and a day in federal prison for leaking wiretap information to one of the targets of a federal gun smuggling investigation. Retired school superintendent Danny Burnett was convicted last fall at trial for leaking the information to Angelo Vega, who at the time was the police chief in Columbus, and then lying about it to federal investigators. Prosecutors said Burnett was Vega’s mentor when he was a teenager in Carrizozo and Burnett was in charge of the small school system. Prosecutors claimed Burnett told Vega about the investigation over lunch in February 2011. Burnett’s wife, Paula Burnett, was the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office at that time. She was never charged with any wrongdoing and retired last year after her husband’s conviction. According to trial testimony, Vega was earning $2,000 a month on top of his police salary for the work he did for the cartel plus $1,500 each time he allowed the cartel to use village and police vehicles to carry out their smuggling operation. All told, prosecutors estimated Vega was paid $40,000 to be the “badge in the pocket” of the smugglers, vouching for honesty of members of the gun smuggling ring to other law enforcement officers, identifying undercover federal agents and providing counter surveillance. “By disclosing the existence of a wiretap to former Columbus [NM] Police Chief Angelo Vega, Mr. Burnett undermined a federal investigation of the trafficking of firearms into Mexico and put law enforcement agents in jeopardy,” U.S. Attorney Robert Pitman, of San Antonio, said in a statement. |
| Posted by:Anguper Hupomosing9418 |
| #1 Burnett's wife, Paula Burnett, was the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney's Office at that time. What's the story here--liberals eating their own--old-style communist purge? |
| Posted by: JohnQC 2014-01-22 12:39 |