FEDS MARRY GAVITO: HERALD SWALLOWS BAIT

"La mentira que a ti te dijieron
Nos a separado
Te lo juro por mi madre santa
Que no soy casado"
La Mentira, by Intocable

By Juan Montoya
In his zeal to convict, and using anonymous "unindicted co-conspirators" as sources for his allegations, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael J. Wynne – the lead prosecutor in the government's case against Austin attorney Marc G. Rosenthal – has cast a wide net to snag former Cameron County lawman George Gavito.
Gavito, most recently police chief and director of security at the Brownsville Navigation District-Port of Brownsville, is alleged to have "had interactions" with Rosenthal. Among some of those "interactions" are included claims that he might have allowed Rosenthal to draft a paragraph in one of his port police reports of a fatal accident in 2006 at the Port of Brownsville. Wynne – again quoting the unnamed co-conspirator – charged that the language had been highly favorable to the plaintiffs that Rosenthal represented in a subsequent civil lawsuit.
He also charged that Gavito at various times received lump sums of money from Rosenthal through convicted former state representative Jim Solis, who pleaded guilty to aiding and abetting  former state District Judge Abel C. Limas in an extortion scheme and was disbarred from practicing law.
Solis pleaded guilty in April 2011 after admitting to involvement in the extortion scheme of Limas, who pleaded guilty to racketeering in March.
As if this wasn't bad enough, Wynne alleges in the documents provided to the court that Gavito is now married to Rosenthal’s partner, Lynn Watson.
Now, we searched our data bases far and wide and for the life of us we can find no record of Gavito's getting hitched to Ms. Watson. Unless they eloped and left no paper trail, this is probably going to throw a crimp on Gorgeous George's social life.
But, ah, well, all good things must come to an end, we suppose.
This is not the first time the feds have come after Gavito trying to tie him directly to Rosenthal's alleged criminal activities. We remember that George was among the people that they wanted to turn over to them their personal computers and all the emails in their system going back years. This ended up in the dismissed basket as we suspect the current batch will, too.
What does make the Herald's reports suspect is that we have the transcript of Wynne's allegations where he states that according to Solis, Rosenthal instructed Solis to pay Gavito $15,000 for referring a case to Rosenthal’s firm and for providing investigative information.
What the Herald's Emma Perez-Treviño doesn't report is that Solis at first told federal investigators during a briefing that Gavito had traveled to Corpus Christi Feb. 17 with him and in a hotel room at a country club to pay him $15,000 as per Rosenthal's instructions for his help on a case involving an accident at the Port of Brownsville. Solis told investigators at the debriefing that he had cashed the check before the meeting and given the money to Gavito
However, when confronted with the fact that the check was dated Feb. 15  two days before the accident, and that it would have been impossible for Gavito to have contacted the family of the victim, Solis changed his story and said that he had given Gavito the money in his office in Harlingen after they returned to South Texas.
The tangled web that the feds are weaving, the morass of facts that leave the Herald gaping, and the myth that is being built around Gavito as a legendary lawmen and now an alleged runner for a law firm is awful. But to have one's alleged marital status aired to the four winds by a federal prosecutor is definitely below the belt
"Te lo juro por mi madre santa, que no soy casado..."