The State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, assured on Wednesday that he will delete WhatsApp messages every month for security reasons in his testimony before the Supreme Court as accused of the crime of revealing secrets. The public prosecutor, present for almost an hour and a half, made use of the right not to respond to the accusations, attributing them to “disloyalty”. And he insisted once again that he was not behind the leak e-mail with the confession of tax fraud by Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner. These are the five key moments of the declaration:
García Ortiz, on the leak: “No, I didn’t send it to you”
The State Attorney General denied at the beginning of his speech before the Supreme Court that he had leaked the email of the boyfriend of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. “No, I didn’t send it,” he said.
García Ortiz’s explanations of what happened on March 13, 2024
García Ortiz explained that he would organize his account of what happened on March 13, 2024 starting at 7:00 pm. in four fundamental stages, so as not to get lost over the hours and to make the explanation easier.
Thus, he retraced everything that happened that day, since he received the phone call from the chief prosecutor of the Community of Madrid, Almudena Lastra, informing him of the intervention of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez; to the internal investigation to clarify the incident, including the publication of the art The world or the decision to react institutionally, agreeing to prepare a press release.
García Ortiz, on the press release from the Prosecutor’s Office and on Lastra’s version
During his testimony as a witness, the chief prosecutor of the Community of Madrid, Almudena Lastra, expressed doubts about García Ortiz. According to what Lastra told the court, in a telephone conversation he even told the prosecutor: “You leaked it!” or “You leaked it!”, in reference to the email released by the press. According to the version provided by Lastra, García Ortiz responded: “Now it doesn’t matter anymore,” which the attorney general denied.
Why does the attorney general claim to have deleted his cell phone?
The Attorney General asked you to be aware that your cell phone or that of some prosecutor ends up in the hands of third parties. “It would endanger a lot of people in this country,” he said. “I’m very aware of it, that’s why I have automatic deletions, I have deletions 24 hours a day, obviously with a lot of chats, but I systematically don’t allow information in chats that may contain professional information or professional relationships to remain on my WhatsApp for more than a month. I don’t allow it and I do it systematically.”
Why didn’t the attorney general respond to the allegations?
García Ortiz gave the court four reasons to exercise his right not to respond to the accusations, “especially” to Alberto González Amador’s lawyer.
The first. As already mentioned, González Amador’s lawyers had hidden in the original complaint that the leaked email had also been sent to the Public Prosecutor’s Office, which multiplies the number of potential leakers.
The second. According to García Ortiz, González Amador provided Miguel Ángel Rodríguez with an email from prosecutor Julián Salto, which was used to spread a distorted version of the conversations between Ayuso’s boyfriend’s defense and the Prosecutor’s Office.
The third. García Ortiz pointed out that González Amador met with a journalist from The world (who provided the distorted version), a person unrelated to the procedure.
And fourth. The prosecutor emphasized that González Amador renounced subsidiary responsibility of the State; So, according to what was said, this shows that their only goal is to go against him.
The attorney general’s latest argument: “The truth is not leaked, the truth defends itself”
Shortly before concluding his testimony, García Ortiz told the court that a person he did not know told him a sentence that seemed to him to be a summary of what happened in this case. “It says, ‘the truth is not filtered, the truth is defended,’ and I think that’s kind of a summary of what’s happened here,” he said. During his speech, he also believed “beyond any doubt” that he had some interest in harming Alberto González Amador. The court then gave him permission to return to court and thanked him.
