The fate of whomever may have broken the law, when a fraudulent and forged document made to look like an official legislative amendment from Sen. Chris Duenas was created and circulated in March, will be decided by the Office of the Attorney General of Guam. Guam Police Department spokeswoman Berlyn Savella today confirmed her agency’s investigators closed the case, and referred the matter to the AG for prosecution.
No arrests have been made as of this time.
Ms. Savella was not able to provide any other details, as the criminal matter is privileged from public disclosure.
Attorney General Douglas Moylan confirmed his office received the case today. “I will be having [the case] reviewed and investigated now that we have received [it],” Mr. Moylan said.
The scandal started in late March, when senators began receiving viral messages in the middle of session and while Adelup was trying to force senators to pass its 22 percent pay raise authorization for members of the government’s General Pay Plan. The messages included what appeared to be an official legislative document of a proposed amendment to the pay raise authorization bill that purported to revoke previous pay raises for teachers. The forged document was made to appear as though Sen. Chris Duenas had authored the fake amendment.
The document was circulated widely by Julian Janssen, an Adelup employee at the Governor’s Office Bureau of Statistics and Plans, who heads the fringe group Progressive Democrats of Guam.
Mr. Duenas immediately took the forgery to the Guam Police Department and filed a criminal complaint, alleging Mr. Janssen and his Progressive Democrats of Guam circulated and may have created the forgery.
The criminally-referred Janssen denied he created the document, and alleged the document came from within the legislature, though he did not name his source.
Mr. Barnett, whose Rules Committee manages the legislature and its online servers, said his staff investigated the matter and found that no such document was generated within or sent from the legislature’s servers.
The legislature then debated and passed Resolution No. 67-37, authorizing a Special Investigation Committee to look into the crimes that may have been committed. Sen. William Parkinson led the debate against the resolution’s passage.
Following the vote, Sen. Tom Fisher discovered literature from the Progressive Democrats of Guam showing Mr. Parkinson has been an officer of the organization. Mr. Fisher then filed an ethics complaint against Mr. Parkinson for not recusing himself from the vote, or at least disclosing his alleged affiliation during the debate.
Mr. Parkinson publicly stated after the ethics filing that he was, but no longer is, an officer of the organization.
