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Former Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff told the FBI that he pressed his deputies to prosecute Marc Sessions Jenson, acknowledging that his pursuit of the troubled businessman became personal.

"I want him, I want him bad," Shurtleff said. "My only concern is I wanna win. ... I want this guy to go down."

The former three-term attorney general also told federal agents he was unaware that Jenson, whom his office had prosecuted, was footing the bill for his controversial stay at a luxury resort in Southern California and that he didn't know why his eventual successor, John Swallow, came on the 2009 trip as well.

These revelations appear in a voluntary interview Shurtleff, without a lawyer at his side, gave to the FBI in May 2013 amid sweeping investigations of conduct within the state's top law office that led to multiple criminal corruption charges against Utah's past two attorneys general.

A 200-plus-page transcript — The Salt Lake Tribune obtained a copy — surfaced last month after Jenson's attorneys provided it to the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole.

His lawyer, Marcus Mumford, said the FBI transcript was anonymously left in an unmarked manila envelope under one of his legal team's cars just days before the parole board hearing. The attorneys say they had previously tried to secure the transcript through records requests or subpoenas but were shot down.

The board is weighing whether Jenson, recently freed from prison, still owes more than $4.1 million in restitution as part of a plea agreement that resolved his 2005 securities-fraud case.

Shurtleff had pushed the prosecution, he said, after campaign donors and others he knew repeatedly asked why no one was investigating Jenson over business deals gone bad.

"I'm like, 'this guy sounds like a dirtbag,' " Shurtleff told the agents.

The prosecution turned personal, he added, when dozens of Jenson's friends — including a Mormon mission president, along with local political and community heavyweights — began calling him to vouch for the businessman's character and pressuring him to abandon the case.

Shurtleff also said he was contacted by a lobbyist who had seen a Jenson associate preparing a "fake Salt Lake Tribune headline" that read: "Jealous attorney general prosecutes wife's old boyfriend."

Accompanying the bogus headline was an old high school prom photo of Jenson and his date, Missy Marler, now Shurtleff's wife, M'Liss.

"That pisses me off," Shurtleff told investigators. " … He really thinks this is going to stop me from going after him?"

In an interview last week, Jenson said the phony headline never was intended for Shurtleff's eyes. It had been created by an employee and shown to the lobbyist, whom Jenson had hired to try to make his case to the attorney general and forestall any charges.

The FBI transcript, Jenson said, "confirms in every way what I've been saying for years. … I am shocked at how blatant he is with federal investigators about his motivation for coming after me, how personal it had become."

Political payback? • Under Shurtleff, the Utah attorney general's office twice prosecuted Jenson, who long has argued that the 2005 securities case — to which he pleaded no contest in 2008 — was trumped up by disgruntled business partners who also were Shurtleff donors.

The second case involved Mount Holly, a ritzy private ski and golf resort that Jenson had hoped to develop near Beaver. A year ago, a Utah jury cleared him of multiple fraud and money-laundering counts stemming from the failed venture.

Jenson insists those charges were merely political punishment for his refusal to bend to demands from Shurtleff and Swallow for money and favors.

Shurtleff has steadfastly denied those allegations. He and Swallow have pleaded not guilty to the charges they face and are awaiting separate trials.

Richard Van Wagoner, Shurtleff's lawyer, accuses Jenson of selectively using the FBI transcript to perpetuate his own vendetta against the former attorney general and deflect attention from Jenson's criminal record.

The defense lawyer pointed out that, unlike Jenson — who Van Wagoner said tried to bribe Shurtleff into dismissing the 2005 charges — his client has no criminal history and a long résumé of public service.

"It was after this interview," he noted, "that the [Department of Justice's] Public Integrity Section declined prosecution," against Shurtleff.

In September 2013, after the feds opted against charging Shurtleff or Swallow, top prosecutors in Salt Lake and Davis counties — with continuing help from the FBI and state investigators — pressed forward with their probes. They filed charges in July 2014 against the two former Republican officeholders, barely seven months after Swallow resigned as attorney general.

Sweetheart deal turns sour • Jenson's original plea agreement with Shurtleff's office in the securities case was seen by many, including the attorney general's own staff, as a sweetheart deal that called for no prison time or restitution.

A judge rejected it and later ordered the $4.1 million in restitution paid within three years. When the state deemed Jenson had failed to deliver, he went to prison.

Officials released him last October after his lawyers presented the parole board with documents they maintain show that debts to his former business partners were paid through settlement agreements and civil cases litigated before the charges were even filed.

"For an accused and charged [person], the board is your last line of defense," Jenson said. "I want them to see what really happened."

The Utah attorney general's office disputes that Jenson has made restitution — as does Van Wagoner, who said the proof lies in statements Jenson made to his business partners in phone calls recorded when he was in the Beaver County Jail.

The calls to Morris Ebeling and Michael Bodell occurred in 2012, just ahead of Jenson's first parole hearing and are among 800 recordings gathered by prosecutors as evidence in the Shurtleff case.

In excerpts Van Wagoner provided from transcripts of four calls, Jenson apologized and acknowledged mistakes. He then tried to coach his partners on what to tell the parole board so he could get out of jail. He promised to pay Ebeling $50,000 within days of being released. Jenson made similar payment pledges to Bodell.

"I want to make you whole," Jenson said in a June 13, 2012, call, according to the transcript. "We will work closely together. … You will get paid."

The Tribune could not independently verify the veracity of the call transcripts provided by Shurtleff's lawyer.

Jenson's attorneys counter that the transcript of Shurtleff's FBI interview speaks for itself.

"Any excuse, explanation or misdirection that the Shurtleff camp now offers," Jenson lawyer Helen Redd said, "is nothing but a smoke screen designed to divert the public eye from the truth of the motivations that caused the extraordinary actions that Shurtleff committed in his role as the attorney general."

Van Wagoner contends Jenson never sought to blame Shurtleff until after he had been in prison for more than a year.

"Sitting in prison," he said, "gives someone lots of time to come up with ideas."

Who paid at Pelican Hill? • It's clear from the FBI transcript that federal agents were deeply interested in Shurtleff's interactions with Jenson. Several of the five felony and two misdemeanor counts the former attorney general faces are linked in some way to his dealings with Jenson.

Questions about their relationship take up roughly half the 200-plus pages, although investigators also asked about Swallow; Shurtleff's so-called "fixer," Tim Lawson, who faces multiple felony charges; and Jeremy Johnson, who made hefty campaign contributions to Shurtleff and whose federal trial begins in earnest Monday on charges related to the St. George businessman's Internet marketing company.

Shurtleff met with investigators on his own, Van Wagoner said, because he was committed to cooperating with them and had a history of doing so. That included working with the FBI as a confidential informant in a sting after a Jenson employee attempted, according to Shurtleff, to bribe him.

In 2012, Shurtleff also took to federal agents his concerns about accusations that Swallow helped Johnson try to bribe then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.

"He had nothing to hide," Van Wagoner said of his client.

In the transcript, Shurtleff told investigators his memory may not be sharp, because some of the events occurred in proximity to his 2007 motorcycle accident, after which he had multiple surgeries in the span of a year and spent considerable time taking painkillers.

The May 6, 2013, FBI interview, during which agents said Shurtleff was not considered a "target," came about two months after federal agents spoke with Jenson in prison.

Three days after Shurtleff talked to the FBI, The Tribune published a story in which Jenson said Shurtleff pushed him to pay Lawson $120,000 to serve as a middleman in negotiating his 2008 plea.

In 2009, Jenson twice hosted Shurtleff and his then-campaign manager, Swallow, at Pelican Hill, a swanky resort in Newport Beach, Calif. The businessman paid for the pair's lodging, massages, golf and other perks.

Shurtleff told the agents he had been invited by Lawson and thought Lawson was picking up the tab. He said Lawson suggested the resort would be a good place for Shurtleff to work on his 2011 book, "Am I Not a Man? — The Dred Scott Story."

When the agents said they have receipts showing Shurtleff's signature on bills for amenities that were clearly being charged to Jenson, the former attorney general expressed surprise and accused them of playing "gotcha."

"I really don't remember doing that," he said. " ... I was being told … to the contrary."

Asked whether he thought it was OK for Lawson, who was getting money from Jenson, to pay for the trip, Shurtleff said only if there were no quid-pro-quo expectations.

"Tim wasn't asking me for anything," Shurtleff remarked. "We'd already got the plea [from Jenson] in place. … Nothing else is being asked of me."

Shurtleff characterized his initial Pelican Hill meet-up with Jenson as an accident. He then said he had dinner with him, saw him at a church service and observed him conducting what appeared to be business deals at the resort pool. He added that when he did speak with Jenson, he "reminded him that he needed to pay his restitution" as soon as possible.

"I remember him saying," Shurtleff recalled, " 'Well I still got a couple of years.' "

Upon returning to Utah, Shurtleff said, he told his staffers Jenson was living "high on the hog" and urged them to amp up the pressure on him to pay restitution.

Office intrigue • That position was far different than the one Shurtleff held in the months leading up to the 2008 plea, his chief of law enforcement, Ken Wallentine, told the FBI in his own 2013 interview.

Wallentine said Shurtleff kept unusually close tabs on Jenson's case.

At one point, Shurtleff told staffers that information from defense attorneys suggested that Jenson might be a victim, not a perpetrator, of shady business deals.

A staff review found no evidence to back that belief — a finding that irritated Shurtleff, Wallentine said in a transcript of the April interview obtained by The Tribune.

Wallentine said the office later learned Shurtleff had met with Jenson and his lawyer to discuss a deal, without including the staff attorney assigned to the case.

"I felt Mr. Shurtleff had realigned his loyalty," Wallentine told investigators, "from the office of the attorney general to Mr. Marc Jenson."

Shurtleff told the FBI he pushed for a plea because he feared that weak witnesses and testimony from a charismatic Jenson might sway a jury.

"I really thought we could lose it," he said.

Shurtleff also noted his office already was investigating complaints about the Mount Holly development, so he believed Jenson would never be able to comply with the plea terms.

At more than one point during his FBI interview, Shurtleff acknowledged he may have made missteps and "dumb" decisions being anywhere near Jenson at Pelican Hill and elsewhere "because of appearances." But he insisted he never helped Jenson nor was offered money to do so.

"At the end of the day … if there is a grand jury or whatever, that's just what, ya know, obviously you're going to have to prove," Shurtleff said. "What did Mark Jenson get? A damn long prison sentence."