Show us the video. That's what Rep. Jim Gibbons' lawyer will demand of the Metropolitan Police Department this morning.
Attorney Don Campbell is scheduled to go before District Judge Douglas Herndon at 11 a.m. with a legal petition asking that surveillance videos be produced. Gibbons has said they will prove he is innocent of accusations he assaulted a local woman in a parking garage the night of Oct. 13.
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Police have reopened the case and are proceeding with an investigation after Gibbons' accuser, Chrissy Mazzeo, 32, came to police headquarters and signed a crime report Monday, Deputy Chief Greg McCurdy said.
Gibbons, at a Republican fundraiser Monday with former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, said he welcomed the investigation.
"I'm glad she's going to go forward because I want to have this thing fully investigated so I can clear my name," Gibbons said at Cili restaurant.
Surveillance video from the parking garage was thought not to exist. A security guard for the company that owns and operates the garage told police the cameras in the structure were not recording at the time, according to a police report.
But Las Vegas police went back to the company Wednesday and were told that the guard had been wrong and that footage did exist. Detectives received the video late Wednesday and finished watching it Saturday, McCurdy said.
Mazzeo's lawyer, Richard Wright, said now that an investigation has been opened, releasing the footage should be out of the question.
"A potential suspect suing to get evidence in a criminal investigation?" Wright said, laughing loudly. "It sounds like a 'Saturday Night Live' skit. I represent defendants in criminal cases all the time. I'd like to get the evidence in the investigation as soon as they (police) find it. That doesn't happen."
Police have declined to release to the media photographs of scratches on Mazzeo's body, taken by a police technician the night she called 911, on the grounds that the photos were evidence.
Campbell did not return phone calls Monday from the Review-Journal seeking his opinion on whether the reopening of the case would affect his legal argument.
His petition, filed Monday morning, is based on Nevada open records laws. Campbell argues that because no active investigation existed at the time, the footage cannot be considered evidence in an ongoing investigation.
"By withholding the ... surveillance tapes from the public during the ongoing early voting and the eve of the general election," the petition said, police "are depriving the voting public of vital information that could help clarify unfounded allegations against one of its candidates for governor."
Wright said he met Monday morning with District Attorney David Roger, then went to police headquarters with Mazzeo, who spoke to two detectives and signed a request to proceed with the investigation.
Wright said Mazzeo had made up her mind to sign the complaint Thursday and that her decision was not influenced by the revelation over the weekend that surveillance footage existed.
Mazzeo had dropped her complaint the day after she called 911 and alleged that Gibbons had just pinned her up against the wall of the garage and threatened to rape her. Police have said they stopped investigating once Mazzeo declined to press charges.
Mazzeo now alleges she was pressured and threatened to drop the charges by people connected with Gibbons' campaign.
"She committed to going forward to the point of testifying in court," Wright said Monday.
He said he has questions about the footage, said to contain material from every camera in the garage for the hour prior to and hour after the time that Mazzeo said she and Gibbons were present. Sources have said neither Gibbons nor Mazzeo appear in any of the surveillance.
Wright said he did not believe that was possible.
"If in fact there is a tape of wherever it (the alleged incident) was, then Gibbons and she will be there," Wright said. "If she isn't or he isn't, then it's not the tape or it's been altered."
Gibbons on Monday was confident the footage would bolster his side. He said that he walked with Mazzeo up to, but not into, the garage, and that the two parted ways outside the garage after Mazzeo slipped and fell and Gibbons helped her up.
"I've not seen the tapes, but I don't need to see the tapes because I know I wasn't in that garage, so the tapes can't possibly hold an image of Jim Gibbons assaulting that woman," Gibbons said.
His wife, Dawn Gibbons, interjected, "We want the whole state of Nevada to see those tapes."
Detectives from the Police Department's violent crimes unit are investigating Mazzeo's allegations as a misdemeanor, but critics, including Wright, have said the allegations ought to add up to several felonies, including attempted sexual assault.
"I told them (detectives) to investigate this one like any other misdemeanor battery," McCurdy said. "The only difference is, this one is higher profile."
Campbell's petition pits Gibbons as the plaintiff against defendant Clark County Sheriff Bill Young, even as the two have been accused of cronyism over Young's handling of the case.
The case was assigned to District Judge Mark Denton, a Democrat, but he recused himself because he has family members affiliated with Gibbons' opponent, Democrat Dina Titus, court officials said.
It was reassigned to Herndon, a Republican who is unopposed on the current ballot. According to his campaign finance disclosures, Herndon this year has taken $200 from Roger, $250 from Young's disbanded campaign and $250 from the company of Gibbons adviser Sig Rogich. Young in May announced he would not seek a second term.
Dawn Gibbons on Monday called the allegations against her husband "evil."
Shushing her gently, her husband said the scandal has been "a distraction, there's no doubt about it; we need to be able to get back to the issues."
Although he said his behavior that night was nothing short of gentlemanly, Gibbons said he surely would have acted differently had he had any idea what was coming.
"I would have probably walked home soaking wet in the rain," he said. "I would have hung up in my hotel room my one suit I brought with me and let it wrinkle. But we have to deal with what we're dealt."
Gibbons and Rogich have said they met Mazzeo after deciding to sit in the bar area of a local restaurant to wait out a rainstorm.
Review-Journal writer Brian Haynes contributed to this report.
