The state attorney general’s opening words in the defense’s closing argument contained a clear message disguised as flattery to the court. “This was a trial characterized by an exceptional media background, and at times even beyond the legal framework,” state prosecutor José Ignacio Osio began the intervention on behalf of Álvaro García Ortiz. “It’s a speculative parallel trial,” Osio continued, ending with a message wrapped in diplomatic velvet: “All this does not affect the seriousness or independence of this court.”
At the edge of 5:30 p.m., this Thursday, Chief Justice Andres Martínez Arrieta pronounced a “sentence,” and the clock began ticking toward one of the most compromising decisions the Supreme Court has faced in decades. The trial ended without presenting new evidence to those who had put the nation’s sixth-ranking official on trial for revealing secrets for the first time in history. And in the middle of the political and media circus, seven judges have to slide. Four people are considered conservative (Manuel Marchena, Juan Ramón Verdugo, Antonio del Moral, Carmen Lamera), two are progressive (Ana Ferrer, Susana Polo), and one person with no clear affiliation (Martínez Arrieta).
This incident has been fraught with politics from its inception. García Ortiz’s action was in response to the maneuver of Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s aides to present the indictment of the Economic Crimes Prosecutor’s Office against the partner of the President of Madrid for an alleged fraud of 350,000 euros to the Treasury as political persecution. Since the beginning of the case, the PP has assumed the defendant’s guilt. The government, its innocence. The last time, already in full trial, the president himself was published in this newspaper last week. Knives are flying in the media and at rallies in the capital. Not least because journalists have played a major role in trials. This is because what is being solved is a leak, a leak of “litigation documents” in legal parlance. It was an email from a lawyer for Ayuso’s boyfriend, Alberto González Amador, to the prosecutor’s office, proposing an agreement in which he would admit in advance to two tax crimes. Even during trials, investigations were conducted as if the judgment were equivalent to a people’s court.
During the six-day trial, no evidence was brought forward by the prosecution that was not found during the investigation. Although the UCO directly blamed García Ortiz, as his superior, Lt. Col. Antonio Botas, admitted at trial, such conclusions are based on “inference”, essentially certain temporal coincidences. In pleading not guilty, the state attorney said, “There is no evidence at all, because it is impossible.” Meanwhile, as Hands Clean’s lawyer and Senate PP Counsel Victor Soriano explained, the charges (in the private case and four other civil cases) elicit “multiple lines of evidence that make it possible to reach a full conviction.”
The defense’s final report sought to refute these “points that are constantly manipulated by accusations,” in the words of José Ignacio Osio. The most repeated of these was the deletion of the attorney general’s communications history, which both the attorney general and his legal representative asserted had been done monthly for security reasons even before the investigation into the attorney general began.
Both Mr. Osio and Supreme Court Deputy Prosecutor Ángeles Sánchez Conde denied there was any talk of revealing secrets. They pointed out that the leaked content is no longer a secret. To do so, they appealed to the testimony of six journalists from four different media outlets who declared themselves aware of González Amador’s confession before SER Cadena detailed for the first time quotations from “litigation documents.” Even if the court rejects that claim, Garcia-Ortiz cannot be singled out as the only potential leaker, Osio added. The defense stressed that “high-profile emails” in Conde’s name were accessible to hundreds of people for several days through common email addresses and applications in the prosecutor’s office and state attorney’s office. Mr. Osio summarized the attorney general’s actions as merely attempting to rebut his aides after Mr. Ayuso attributed “prior acts” to the civil service ministry.
In the year and a half since the lawsuit began, Guadiana element. That fragment, which appears and disappears at different moments, is a memo issued by the prosecutor’s office on March 14, 2024, reporting, among other things, González Amador’s confession to the crime. This statement received corpus delicti consideration when the Madrid High Court elevated the matter to the Supreme Court. On the other hand, it denied that a criminal matter existed and made changes. Ordered an investigation into Garcia Ortiz in connection with the leaked emails.
However, this memo, although related to the rest of the facts, is an important part of the argument for the charges. This helped González Amador’s lawyer, Gabriel Rodríguez Ramos, claim that García Ortiz had leaked the emails with the intention of paving the way for the statement and including a reference to the confession of the crime in it. The ultimate goal, the lawyer said, was to prepare an “account of systemic guilt.”
A significant portion of the indictment was aimed at undermining the credibility of SER journalists. eldiario.es EL PAÍS did not reveal the source of the information and declared that the information did not come from García Ortiz. Rodríguez-Ramos acknowledged journalists’ right to benefit from professional secrecy, but another accuser, Juan Antonio Fargo, a senior lawyer with the extremely minority Association of Independent Public Prosecution Professionals, did not, who stressed that this undermined the value of what he had to say.
In between citing codes and legal literature, the accusers delved into full political considerations to accuse García Ortiz of acting “in sync with the government.” Law, politics, journalism: the cocktail the Supreme Court must decide.
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