Former communications director Troy Torres on Friday alleged that the anonymous email containing a supposed communication chain between Gov. Eddie Calvo and Sen. Dennis Rodriguez trading political favors in 2011 originated from Adelup’s communications office.
Torres said investigators — whom he declined to identity — traced the fake email, sent from the address iwilldisappearsoon@gmail.com, to the office of the governor’s IP network and linked to communications director Oya Ngirairikl’s email address.
The anonymous email sender last week sent to local media organizations a PDF copy of alleged email exchanges between Calvo and Rodriguez supposedly making a quid pro quo arrangement, in which the senator was seeking tax-debt relief on behalf of his parents in exchange for supporting Calvo’s bond borrowing proposal in 2011.
Rodriguez, the youngest gubernatorial candidate running under the Democratic Party, has dismissed the emails as “fake” and “fabricated.”
“PDFs have digital fingerprints where you can find the network traffic. The investigators looked at the fingerprints of that email. It led to an office in Hagatna, which, if it stopped there, would have led us to believe it came from Lou Leon Guerrero’s office,” Torres said.
From there, the email was rerouted to Sen. Frank Aguon’s office. “I cannot say definitely that Senator Aguon’s office was behind that email. But thanks to Senator Aguon’s office, who provided us with their own investigation,” Torres said.
Leon Guerrero, Aguon and Rodriguez—along with former Gov. Carl Gutierrez — are seeking the Democratic Party’s gubernatorial nomination in the Aug. 25 primary.
Torres speculated that the “fake email” distribution was a ploy to make Democrats “fight among each other; they did a sloppy job with it.”
Torres worked briefly with Rodriguez’s campaign after leaving the governor’s office last year. Since his arrest after a drug raid two months ago, Torres has been hurling allegations of corruption at the administration.
Aguon’s campaign released a statement, confirming that a member of the team received the original email from the anonymous ‘iwilldisappearverysoon@gmail.com’ email address.
“This individual provided the information gathered from the original email. We assure Senator Rodriguez that our office has no connection to the authorship, origin or routing of the email in question and will provide access to the original email received should an investigation arise,” Aguon said. “We hope Senator Rodriguez’s office and his investigation team are able to resolve this issue.”
Ngirairikl denied Torres’ allegation. “ This lie is another example of how the Rodriguez Cruz campaign in concert with Troy Torres continue to irresponsibly spread false information to the public,” she said.
The communications director said she will personally request that the FBI do forensics to put it to rest.
“It will be interesting to see if the Rodriguez Cruz camp is guilty of the corruption they are blanketing people with – because it hasn’t been just me – they have trampled upon the names of many other others who work hard to raise up this community,” she wrote in a message to a Whatsapp group.
“In the meantime, I ask that Dennis Rodriguez and Dave Cruz refrain from their campaign of dirty politics and attempts to indict good people in the court of public opinion. The public is smarter than this, and wants candidates to speak to real issues that affect the people of Guam.”