Mazzeo responds to ‘debonair’ Gibbons in lawsuit

Chrissy Mazzeo, the woman who claimed she was assaulted by Gov. Jim Gibbons weeks before the 2006 election, has fired back against Gibbons' request to halt the collection of further evidence in her federal lawsuit against him.

The federal lawsuit filed by Mazzeo last year accuses Gibbons and others of violating the former cocktail waitress's constitutional rights. Along with Gibbons, campaign consultant Sig Rogich, former Clark County Sheriff Bill Young, lawyer Don Campbell and alleged go-between Pennie Mossett-Puhek, described as Mazzeo's "ex-best-friend," are named in the suit.

In addition to Gibbons' request that the court stay discovery in the suit, Young, Campbell, Puhek and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department have filed requests that the lawsuit be dismissed on legal grounds.

In a response filed Monday, Mazzeo lawyer Robert Kossack says the governor has not produced any evidence to support his claims that the suit has no merit and that he is too busy as governor to deal with it. In addition, Kossack argues, the public has an urgent interest in seeing the truth come out before the evidence disappears.

"Gibbons' present Motion ... should be denied because of the public importance of resolving the truth of the allegations, because the evidence is getting stale, because Gibbons has not shown sufficient cause for such a stay having offered no evidence in support of any of his contentions," the new motion states.

The rest of the 22-page motion is devoted mainly to reiterating Mazzeo's allegations that Gibbons attempted to assault her in a parking lot outside McCormick & Schmick's restaurant on Flamingo Road on the night of Oct. 13, 2006, and that he then conspired with his influential cronies to cover up the incident. Las Vegas police investigated the alleged assault and found there was not enough evidence to bring criminal charges.

Mazzeo's version of those events is colorfully summarized in the motion: "Gibbons wrongfully thought himself too debonair for his fantasized charms to be ignored by Wynn Las Vegas cocktail waitress Chrissy Mazzeo ... Gibbons tricked Mazzeo into accompanying him into the Hughes Center parking garage by stealing her keys ... Gibbons boorishly attempted to rape Mazzeo and got kicked in his shins when Mazzeo made her escape ... Gibbons tracked Mazzeo down and threatened to use his position of political power against her if she complained to the police, and then, drawing upon his political power and influence as a United States Congressman and frontrunner in the campaign for Governor of the State of Nevada and then, later, as Governor of the State of Nevada, Gibbons used the powerful trio of his campaign manager, Rogich, his lawyer, Campbell, and his politically allied Clark County Sheriff, Young, to apply pressure to Mazzeo to drop the charges through Pennie, a private investigator and the full power of Metro, resulting in Mazzeo and her family being threatened with bodily harm if Mazzeo did not change her story and retract her charrges, and resulting in the suppression and/or destruction of the video and other evidence of Gibbons' commission of crimes, and resulting in bribing and illegally influencing witness testimony for the purpose of slandering and discrediting Mazzeo for the purpose of subverting the administration of justice and to hold sway over the electorate."

Rogich, though aptly described by the suit as a "king maker," was a consultant to Gibbons' campaign, not the campaign manager.

A hearing on the motions in the case has been set for later this month in federal court.