SAN DIEGO — (UT San Diego report by Mark Walker) Two former staffers may be the ones responsible for a burglary at GOP congressional candidate Carl DeMaio’s Mira Mesa campaign headquarters on the eve of the June 3 primary election, a San Diego Police Department spokesman said Friday.
Lt. Kevin Mayer said police have concluded that a burglary did occur at the office late in the evening of May 27 or in the early morning hours of May 28. Several thousand dollars of hardware was damaged or destroyed, including computers, telephones, a copy machine and an Internet router and cable modem.
Mayer said the DeMaio campaign identified two former staff members as potential suspects early on in the investigation.
“Both staff members are cooperating with our investigation,” Mayer said. “We anticipate the our investigation will be turned over to the District Attorney’s Office in the next couple of weeks.”
He was unable to say if the two were staffers at the time of the burglary or left the campaign subsequent to the incident.
When the damage was first discovered, DeMaio campaign spokesman Dave McCulloch called it a deliberate attempt to shut down communications shortly before the primary.
“It is clear this is not a random act of violence,” McCulloch said at the time. “It’s an attempt to silence Carl.”
DeMaio declined comment when asked about the case this week.
Mayer said police have not developed sufficient probable cause to identify a suspect or suspects by name.
“However, the investigation is ongoing,” he said. “Our goal is to develop probable cause to make an arrest and solve the crime.”
Republican DeMaio wound up finishing second in the five-candidate election for the 52nd Congressional District seat held by freshman Democrat Scott Peters, who garnered the most votes.
When the incident occurred, DeMaio staffers told police they left the office about 9:15 p.m. and discovered the damage when they arrived at about 8:30 a.m. the next morning.
When you think about it this story leads to two potential narratives. Either A) Carl DeMaio is so divisive that he even pushes his own staff members to do stuff like this or B) Someone in his camp ordered these staffers to vandalize his office to create a fantasy that he was being silenced by his Democratic opponent.
I’m not sure which is worse, the latter seems more damning to me as it implies that he is so morally bankrupt that he was going to frame his opponents in a crime.
It will be fascinating to know which it is. Hopefully before people vote.