Clark County commissioner lied about missing texts, judge says

Clark County Commissioner Justin Jones wasn’t truthful about deleting important text messages from his phone in a long-running legal dispute over development on Blue Diamond Hill, a federal magistrate judge has ruled.

On Friday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Elayna Youchah awarded developer James Rhodes’ Gypsum Resources LLC attorney fees for the time it took to bring the motion for sanctions against Jones, but denied a request to report him to the Nevada State Bar for misconduct.

Instead, the judge said Gypsum Resources could file a Bar complaint, according to the 42-page order.

“I have reviewed the order and I have no further comments while the litigation is pending,” Jones wrote to the Review-Journal in a text message. “I continue to remain focused on serving the needs of my constituents and working to make Clark County a better place to live, work and raise a family.”

Missing texts

Youchah’s order concerns the deletion of all text messages sent and received from Jones’ phone prior to a key vote in 2019 that delayed a controversial proposed housing project overlooking Red Rock Canyon.

“The totality of the evidence presented leaves little doubt that the disappearance of all texts from Mr. Jones’ phone was not an unidentifiable aberration of electronics or some other unidentified accident, but the result of a purposeful act that, as Clark County says, was ‘knowingly done against [County] policy,’ ” Youchah wrote in the order. “The Court can find no logical — even if unlikely — explanation for what happened to Mr. Jones’ texts other than the disappointing explanation that Mr. Jones deleted his texts worried the disclosure would yield a negative or unfavorable outcome for him.”

The ruling adds: “All in all, Jones’ testimony as a Clark County Commissioner, an attorney with demonstrated familiarity with litigation and the requirement to preserve evidence, an attorney who had litigated with Gypsum for two years before becoming Commissioner, and an attorney who understood his independent obligations to be truthful when under oath at deposition, appears to have carefully chosen words that were not out-and-out misrepresentations, but also were not truthful.”

Youchah declined to sanction Clark County for allegations that it did not preserve documentation related to the proposed project, which later led to the litigation for breach of contract.

“Whether the County ‘should have known’ Gypsum would file a lawsuit claiming constitutional violations is again something that could have occurred, but that it should have occurred to the County is too far for this Court to support,” she wrote.

Vote against project

The unanimous April 2019 vote to deny a waiver to advance Rhodes’ development — which county staff had recommended approving before changing course after Jones took office earlier that year — doomed the 3,000-home project.

As a private citizen and attorney, Jones represented the Save Red Rock conservation group that opposed the project, filed a lawsuit against it and ran his campaign for the commission seat on stopping the development, according to the order.

Attorneys for Rhodes alleged that Jones traded favors with Steve Sisolak during the 2018 campaign when Sisolak was the chairman of the county commission and running for governor.

The deal involved Sisolak coming out against the development in exchange for the conservation group dropping the lawsuit against the county and endorsing the future governor, according to court documents.

When Jones couldn’t immediately reach Sisolak’s campaign that October, he lamented in an email: “Well, I’m doing my part. If Sisolak doesn’t want to play, then it[’]s going to blow up in his face tomorrow,” according to the court order.

Days later, Sisolak announced he wasn’t supporting the project and helped delay a commission vote until after two new commissioners took office. One of those new commissioners was Jones.

Save Red Rock then dismissed the lawsuit and endorsed the future governor’s campaign.

“At his deposition, Mr. Jones admitted the deal he struck with Commissioner Sisolak had ‘value,’ that Commissioner Sisolak used language similar to language Jones drafted when releasing his public statement, and that Commissioner Sisolak did what (Save Red Rock) and Jones wanted him to do,” the court order said.

Rhodes has said the waiver denial cost him millions of dollars and sent his company into bankruptcy.

He intends to build master-planned communities at his mine and in October cleared a significant hurdle for the first phase of the project. The county zoning commission voted unanimously to accept a tentative map of the project, but imposed conditions.

A Gypsum Resources spokesperson said the company was still reviewing Youchah’s order and that it would comment further “at a later time.”

Contact Ricardo Torres-Cortez at rtorres@reviewjournal.com. Follow @rickytwrites on Twitter.

Gypsum Resources v. Clark County by Steve Sebelius on Scribd