Nearly seven months after party officials reported a burglary at the Nebraska Republican Party headquarters, the Lincoln Police Department is seeking a special prosecutor to take a second look at its investigation into the break-in.
Lincoln Police Sgt. Chris Vollmer on Wednesday confirmed that LPD had made the request for a special prosecutor, which was first reported by the Nebraska Examiner.
Vollmer deferred questions on the potential appointment process to County Attorney Pat Condon, who did not return phone calls seeking comment Wednesday.
The police department’s request comes months after the Nebraska GOP reported a computer, a camera system, paperwork and files were stolen from the party’s downtown Lincoln headquarters in July.
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The files and paperwork were later recovered, according to the public incident report stemming from the case.
In an email last week, Lincoln Police Capt. Todd Kocian said LPD’s investigation into the incident had concluded.
“No arrests were made as the investigation yielded no criminal offense that would support law enforcement action,†he said.
The break-in at the 1610 N St. headquarters, reported to police July 11, occurred over the same weekend as the party’s state convention in Kearney, where Eric Underwood was elected as the party’s new chairman after members ousted Dan Welch of Omaha, the longtime chairman, from the position.
The party hired Tom Nesbitt, the former superintendent of the Nebraska State Patrol, to independently investigate the break-in.
At a quarterly party meeting in Omaha last month, Nesbitt raised concerns about what he described as LPD’s refusal to release reports stemming from the agency’s investigation, according to live tweets of the meeting from the Nebraska Freedom Coalition, a political action committee.Â
Nebraska’s public records statute allows law enforcement agencies to withhold records they deem “investigatory†in nature. does not require an investigation to be active or ongoing for an agency to withhold records.
Paul Kratz, the Nebraska GOP’s attorney, filed a document in October in Lancaster County Court seeking permission to subpoena the police department’s case file stemming from the reported break-in.
In a motion to quash the party’s request filed in December, Tonya Peters, an assistant city attorney and LPD’s legal adviser, said the court clerk issued such a subpoena in response to Kratz’s filing despite the fact that no court granted the party permission to seek the documents.
In her motion, Peters argued “there is no legal basis for granting (the party’s) request,†in part because Kratz and the party haven’t actually filed a lawsuit against the city seeking the records.
A hearing on the city’s motion to quash is set for Friday morning.