Attorney: Swallow’s fee was for consulting

Politics » Friend of late Check City founder backs A.G.’s claim that $23.5K had nothing to do with Johnson’s woes.

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"John would come to these meetings, was involved in strategizing on what to do, who to do it with, how to do it," Young said. "I didn’t specifically ask him if his employer [the Attorney General’s Office] allowed him to do that" but assumed it was permitted.

Chaparral also sought to approach the Moapa Band about potential limestone deposits on the Indian land, and Swallow recruited David Colvin, the former counsel for the Las Vegas Band of Paiute Indians and a law school friend, to try to set up meetings with the Moapa Band’s governing council. The meetings never happened.

Swallow also recruited another lawyer, Dennis Ickes, to contact the Bureau of Indian Affairs on Chaparral’s behalf, but the company didn’t hire Ickes.

Young’s description of Swallow’s role differs somewhat from what Swallow told Fox 13 News in a recent interview. Then, the attorney general described his consulting work as "market research" and "some relationship research," along with finding people who had connections to the tribe.

Swallow has declined to respond to questions from The Salt Lake Tribune, citing a potential federal investigation into Johnson’s allegations.

More than 14 months after Swallow was paid — after Johnson had confronted him about his involvement in the deal, and Swallow had transferred management of his P-Solutions consulting company into his wife’s name — Swallow returned the money to RMR Consulting and asked to be paid from a different account.

Young says he never discussed why Swallow did that, but he suspects it was because being paid out of the money Johnson and Leavitt had provided didn’t look right.

gehrke@sltrib.com

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