U.S. scrambling to arrest fugitive Snowden

WASHINGTON — The United States grasped for help Monday from both adversaries and allies to catch fugitive National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden. The White House demanded that he be denied asylum, blasted China for letting him go and urged Russia to “do the right thing” and send him back to America to face espionage charges.

Snowden was thought to be in Russia, where he fled Sunday after weeks of hiding out in Hong Kong following his disclosure of the broad scope of two classified counterterror surveillance programs to two newspapers. The programs collect vast amounts of Americans’ phone records and worldwide online data in the name of national security.

Snowden had flown from Hong Kong to Russia and was expected to fly early Monday to Havana, from where he would continue on to Ecuador, where he has applied for asylum. But he didn’t get on that plane, and his whereabouts were unclear.

The founder of WikiLeaks, the secret-spilling organization that has embraced Snowden, said the Ameri- Almanac 11A | Bridge 5B | Business 1D | Classified 5D | Comics 8C | Crosswords 5B | Lotteries 3A | Movies 7B Obituaries 4B | Opinion 8B | Sports 1C | Television 9B

a separate trial from Benzer.

The allegations are contained in the mass of documents the Justice Department turned over to defense attorneys in the high-profile HOA investigation, Rasmussen said.

Benzer, Gillespie and nine others were indicted by a federal grand jury in January in the final push by prosecutors to charge conspirators in the corruption scheme, which took place between 2003 and 2009. They are to stand trial on March 3.

A total of 29 defendants have been convicted since the investigation became public in September 2008 with a joint FBI-Las Vegas police raid across the valley.

After a brief hearing Monday, Foley told Rasmussen he was inclined to recommend denying his motions.

The lead Justice Department prosecutor in the case, Charles La Bella, did not respond to Rasmussen’s revelations about the public officials in court and would not comment afterward. La Bella, a deputy chief in the Justice Department’s Fraud Section in Washington, oversees the department’s criminal prosecutions on the West Coast.

Rasmussen also declined comment outside the courtroom.

Earlier this year, U.S. District Judge James Mahan, who is presiding over the Benzer case, issued a protective order barring defense attorneys from making public outside court proceedings the evidence prosecutors are turning over to them.

Last month, Rasmussen filed two redacted pages of an investigative report detailing a 2011 debriefing of Benzer while he considered cooperating with the government.

In the two pages, Benzer told investigators Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto, in a face-to-face meeting with him, approved of his efforts to conduct business with the homeowners associations.

Masto acknowledged in an interview with the Review-Journal that she met with Benzer in 2006 when she ran for office.

But she said Benzer did not talk to her about the scheme, and had he done that, she would have told him it was illegal.

In court documents, federal prosecutors have revealed a vast conspiracy to swindle the 11 homeowners associations out of millions of dollars.

Prosecutors have alleged Benzer, who once ran Silver Lining Construction Co., and the late construction defects lawyer Nancy Quon pulled the strings in the scheme.

The key to the scheme was getting straw buyers elected to the HOA boards to help Benzer and Quon land lucrative contracts. Quon committed suicide in March 2012 under the weight of the investigation. She was not charged at the time.

Lawyers, community management company employees, private investigators and former cops were among those enlisted to pack association boards.

Benzer was indicted last month on tax evasion charges stemming from the HOA scheme. He faces a separate trial on those charges.