Juan Lobato’s testimony before the Supreme Court regarding the leak of emails from Alberto González Amador’s lawyer managed to clear up several unknowns about how these emails got into his hands. He also wondered if, at the time he presented them to Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the Madrid Assembly, they had already been published by various media. But they do not fill one of the big gaps in the story: how they arrived in the hands of their interlocutor, then advisor to Moncloa, before being made public in several digital newspapers.
The former general secretary of the Madrid socialists arrived this Friday alone at the Supreme Court, without making any declarations and with a blank file in which he brought the messages and documents that he had recorded before a notary a few weeks ago. A folder with the PSOE logo in red. An hour and a half later he left the court and, after Judge Ángel Hurtado warned the parties against giving information about the case outside these four walls, he limited himself to confirm that he had handed over his cell phone so that his messages could be compared. . “The socialists, the truth and the law ahead,” he declared into the microphones.
His testimony – without a lawyer and obliged to tell the truth – was accompanied by several unknowns about this new derivative of the case of the emails of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner. Until now, the Supreme Court had focused on whether the state attorney general, Álvaro García Ortiz, played a role in the publication of Alberto González’s confession in the media. Now we also analyze whether, in those days of March, the emails circulated not only in the editorial offices but also on the cell phones of people linked to the PSOE and Moncloa.
Lobato declared before the judge, as he had already done publicly, that he had gone to the notary to record these messages a few weeks ago to demonstrate that at no time had he broadcast anything or which has not already been published by the media. Ultimately, avoid the criminal case for the leak in which the Attorney General is accused. The messages provided essentially support his version and refute certain aspects asserted so far. For example, during his conversation with Pilar Sánchez Acera, it was mentioned that they were going to disclose the document to El Plural themselves.
The Supreme Court is investigating whether, between the night of March 13 and the next morning, the prosecution disclosed these emails. The messages that Lobato provided to Judge Hurtado, and that elDiario.es was able to examine, begin one minute before half past eight in the morning of the 14th of this month. That day, Isabel Díaz Ayuso appeared for the first time before the plenary session of the Madrid Assembly after elDiario.es revealed her partner’s double tax fraud. After an eventful night in which, after some false information, it appeared that Alberto González Amador not only did not consider himself the victim of a “hunt” by the Treasury, but that he had admitted his crimes to avoid prison .
At that time, Pilar Sánchez Acera – then Óscar López’s chief of staff at Moncloa and today his advisor as minister – sent him the email and urged him to withdraw it in his speech to the Assembly a few hours later, requesting “care” with the personal data that appeared in the document. Lobato asked where the documentation came from to avoid it appearing “that the prosecution gave it to me” and his interlocutor replied: “Because it arrives, the media have it.”
After this conversation, a minute before half past nine in the morning, Sánchez Acera sent him a link to which the digital newspaper El Plural had published the email some time ago, at six minutes past nine in the morning. “That’s all,” said the man who was then an advisor to Moncloa. An hour later, Juan Lobato received applause from the opposition when he stood up, showed the email containing Alberto González Amador’s confession, and accused Ayuso of lying. Eight months later, he went to a notary in Madrid to record these messages.
The origin of emails
Lobato’s appearance clears up some unknowns and confirms, in general terms, what he has been defending publicly for days: his interlocutor in Moncloa told him that this document was in the media and he only released the printed email to the Assembly until well after its publication. He also denies, at least based on these emails, that the messages demonstrate that Moncloa or the PSOE were behind the leak, also taking into account that the previous night several media outlets collected their very contents if they did not distribute the document.
What it does not clarify is an aspect that can only be explained by Pilar Sánchez Acera herself if she is called to testify by Judge Hurtado, in case the instructor understands that it is necessary to explore this branch of the matter further. The first media to publish the document, a few minutes after nine in the morning, was El Plural, half an hour after Sánchez Acera forwarded the emails of Ayuso’s partner via WhatsApp to Juan Lobato.
The investigation into this leak is at a key moment. After the elite unit of the Civil Guard analyzed the emails seized from Madrid’s provincial prosecutor, Pilar Rodríguez, the judge is waiting for the agents to send him their report on the emails and messages seized from the phone and computer of the Attorney General, Álvaro García. Ortiz. This first report, in addition to recording the internal tension of the Prosecutor’s Office on the night of March 13, demonstrates what the Attorney General has already publicly recognized: that they collected these emails between Alberto González’s lawyer and the prosecutor in the case to deny several false information published at those times.
The Central Operational Unit deduces that it is very likely that the leak, both that of the initial complaint revealed by elDiario.es and that of the email, came from the public prosecutor’s office. He does this without any messages or emails containing anything about it and by omitting two key pieces of information: that the complaint had been filed in the hands of the court a week before the first information about the case was received and that in the night of March. 13, the first to submit textual extracts from Alberto González’s emails in circulation were no means of communication. It was Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, right-hand man of Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the Community of Madrid, who sent it to several journalists.
