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The FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice are now cooperating with a request from the state attorneys prosecuting former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff to produce the evidence they had previously withheld, new court papers say.
The reversal appears in a motion filed Wednesday by Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings that asks a 3rd District judge to move a Dec. 1 hearing to January.
"The parties to the motion are cooperating in working toward a resolution of at least some of their differences," Rawlings wrote in court papers. "The state of Utah and Mr. Shurtleff will need time to evaluate the promised production."
In September, Rawlings asked the judge to force the federal government to turn over all the evidence it held from a multiyear investigation of Shurtleff and his attorney general successor, John Swallow.
Justice Department attorneys refused, saying the FBI already fulfilled its obligation to Rawlings by handing over hundreds of thousands of pages of documents or their electronic equivalents.
It isn't clear from the new court document why the government has decided to cooperate, but Rawlings says the agencies are trying to produce "some of the requests from the state of Utah," including some items specifically sought by Shurtleff's defense team.
Shurtleff's attorneys joined with Rawlings in asking for additional evidence, contending in their own filing that without it, the former top lawman can't adequately mount a defense against the public corruption charges levied against him.
Swallow's new attorney, Scott C. Williams, is also interested in the government's cache of evidence, and he has asked the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office to provide it.
Williams raised the issue with 3rd District Judge Elizabeth Hruby-Mills in a letter made public Wednesday, saying he believed the issues raised in Shurtleff's case overlap with the Swallow case. The letter suggested that she might want to address the matter for both cases in a single hearing.
"I would very much like to invigorate my client's standing on these issues and give voice to them on Mr. Swallow's behalf, concurrent with the presentation in the Shurtleff case and prior to a ruling, rather than litigate the identical issues separately — possibly with reference to a ruling, which this Court will have already issued," Williams wrote.
It wasn't clear Wednesday what the judge would do.
Swallow and Shurtleff, both Republicans, are charged in state court with multiple felonies and misdemeanors related to allegations of bribery and corruption inside the attorney general's office.
The 2014 charges followed the investigation by state police and the FBI, and came only after the DOJ declined to bring federal charges.
Rawlings has argued that a sealed federal court order tells the FBI and the DOJ to cooperate with his office.
On Wednesday, he told the judge both sides are working to have the document released to Hruby-Mills so she can make an informed ruling on the motion to compel.