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Search continues for John Swallow missing documents

Posted at 12:32 PM, Nov 05, 2013
and last updated 2013-11-05 15:19:09-05

SALT LAKE CITY -- A special meeting was held at the Utah State Capitol Tuesday to look into the bribery allegations against Utah Attorney General John Swallow.

The House Special Investigative Committee reported they've hit a roadblock recently, as they found that electronic documents from Swallow's office went missing.

The missing documents include e-mails and electronic records from Swallow's desktop, laptop and palmtop computers. They all reportedly contained information dating back before 2013.

The committee said they believe they will be able to retrieve data from the attorney general office servers, but there's a good chance information from Swallow's personal computer may be gone for good.

Investigators said they interviewed two of the three people in the attorney general's office who had access to the information. They said those didn't delete it, and that just leaves Swallow.

Attorneys have now asked the Third District Court to grant the court access to copies of the computer hard drives and servers in an attempt to recover files from Swallow's e-mail account and computers.

"This is data that would be helpful to us to determine what the facts are," Utah Rep. Jim Dunnigan said. "And to the extent that information is missing it makes the committee do more work, more time and more expense."

Committee members said this investigation is becoming a costly process. Since August the committee has racked up a $700,000 bill.