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Sept. 30, 2023 - Blood Money
21:46
Timothy Treffinger and the Power of Law - Blood Money episode 19
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Time Text
Alright, so we're on the latest episode of Blood Money here.
Today I have Timothy Treffinger, who is running for DA for Clark County.
Timothy, how are you doing today?
Great, thanks for having me. Thanks for coming down.
Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Sure. I came to Nevada in 2012, straight out of law school.
I worked for the Story County District Attorney's Office up in Northern Nevada.
After that, I went to the Nevada Attorney General's office where I spent five years doing sex crimes, domestic violence cases for three rural counties.
That was basically Pahrump all the way to Hawthorne, Nevada, that whole stretch of highway.
Since then, I went into private practice where I primarily focused on criminal defense and family law and a little bit of civil litigation.
And basically, at least for the past few months, I've been the Republican nominee for the 2022 election for Clark County DA, and we hope to get into that office and make some changes.
So tell us, what do you think qualifies you to be DA, and how do you think you will be an improvement, or if you think you will be an improvement, on the current status quo with the DA's office?
Sure. Well, I've been on both sides of the table on this.
I've been a criminal prosecutor at both the county and state level.
I've also worked as a criminal defense attorney at both the state and federal level.
The biggest difference, I think, between me and the current DA is I want to be a lot more hands-on.
We have a DA who's been in office.
He was appointed about 12 years ago.
He's run two primary elections against Democrats and has retained his seat, but at the same time he hasn't picked up a file, walked into court, and prosecuted a case.
I've done more trials in the past 10 years than he has, which is crazy when you think that he is the DA of one of the largest DA's office is in the country, over 700 employees, but yet doesn't walk into court and actually deal with his deputies on the front lines.
That's an insane statistic.
Are you being literal that you've done more cases than the DA of the entire Clark County?
That is true.
I've gone to jury trial on at least five or six cases in the past few years.
He has not picked up a case and gone into court and even made an appearance in the past six years that I'm aware of.
So what's the logic of not prosecuting cases as a DA? Why do you think he's doing that?
I mean, Steve is a nice guy and he's a consummate politician and he runs his programs and he does admin work, but I don't think he believes he needs to walk into court and actually be Involved in that way.
He runs the office.
He handles HR. He develops some programs for the diversion programs and stuff like that, but he doesn't actually go into the courtroom and handle these cases.
His deputies do. There have been some allegations recently of him just ignoring cases when they involve, let's say, professional sports athletes for teams that have recently come to town.
There's been some incidents with Raiders players where if you or I were accused of those crimes with the evidence that they had, we would certainly be sitting in a jail cell, whereas charges are sometimes not even filed on those cases.
There was also the incident with his old assistant who was allegedly embezzling, I think, $30,000 or $40,000 out of his office, and she didn't face charges either.
So there's just some questionable decisions being made there, and there's no consistency.
That's part of what I want to bring to the office.
Whether you're Joe Schmo on the street, or you're a Raiders player, or you're a judge, or you're a cop, the laws apply to you either way, and they should be applied consistency, and that's just not happening right now.
So he's basically playing politics and not going after well-known athletes, rich athletes, people that are connected because he just doesn't...
I mean, is the reason to basically not upset the status quo?
That's what one would argue.
Again, I haven't seen a lot of evidence related to this sort of stuff, but just based upon charging decisions, it is certainly not being applied evenly.
So we can speculate that it's because they're famous or they have a lot of money.
That's certainly what it looks like.
One would hope that's not the case with your elected DA, but that's certainly the way that policies seem to be put into effect right now.
But as you said, he wasn't elected, he was appointed, and this is his first real election, right?
That's correct. Well, he's run twice before, but there's only ever been a Democratic primary.
I've been the only Republican who stood up in the past three cycles and said, look, we need the other side to have a voice in these elections.
Republicans have not had a chance to vote for DA since we have closed primaries.
It's only been Democrats voting in primary elections, electing the DA the past two cycles.
So, Timothy, explain to me what are the fundamental issues right now with not only the DA's office, but law enforcement, the judicial circles.
What are the fundamental issues that you have identified that you think you could do a better job in repairing those fundamental issues?
Sure. Well, it starts at the front line.
The front line is really law enforcement.
It's Metro. It's Henderson Police Department, North Las Vegas Police Department.
There needs to be somewhat of a partnership between these agencies and the DA's office because without their investigations, we don't have cases to file.
I think that there has not been a lot of cooperation as far as making things easier for officers to come to court and testify.
We've got cops sitting around five or six hours and being told that their cases have been continued.
And let's not forget that the public is paying sometimes these officers overtime to sit there for all those hours.
We need to improve our investigations and the DA's office can help do that.
I actually used to train law enforcement when I was with the AG to help them better investigate sexual assault cases as well as domestic violence cases so we had a higher level of being able to file those cases.
In the judicial circles, Metro also has a public corruption unit that's not being very well used by the current DA's office.
That office should be investigating any corruption, especially in the family court where there's a lot of questions about what's going on over there.
And if those cases cross my desk, I'm not going to have any qualms about filing those cases.
Again, judges, police officers, man on the street, everybody should be treated equally.
So you're saying you're fine with going after judges that are corrupting the law?
Absolutely. If they fall within my jurisdiction, they will be prosecuted.
Wow. Wow. I mean, that's a bold statement because it seems as though most DAs across the country are asleep when it comes to judicial corruption.
And I agree with that. I think it's a matter of courage.
The status quo shouldn't matter.
We have laws that apply to everybody.
If that upsets the status quo, that's unfortunate.
But I'm not going to sit around and just let corruption happen in courtrooms and not do anything about it when we have laws in the books and the ability to do something about it.
Yeah, I thought when I was a kid learning political science, I thought the whole objective of the DA's office was to shake up the status quo if there is rampant corruption.
And I agree. And honestly, the DA's function is not to win or lose.
It's just to enforce the laws.
We're not necessarily there to change things.
We're there to enforce the laws that the legislature gives us.
Don't get me wrong. Obviously, the DA's office has lobbyists.
They're able to involve themselves in that process.
But at the end of the day, we enforce the laws as written, win, lose, or draw.
So, okay, so is there anything in your life on a personal level that's, I mean, you're basically sticking your neck out.
It's very obvious. Most people running for the DA office are playing politics.
They're not going after the status quo.
They're not going after the powerful.
Is there anything in your personal life that you've been through that inspires you and motivates you to be the outlier?
Absolutely. I think it comes back to, and it's one thing that I always end up talking about when people ask about my campaign, is my own brush with law enforcement.
I had an ex who was living in my house who developed a serious heroin issue in the county that I used to prosecute in.
I found out how bad her addiction got when the SWAT team kicked in my door.
Officers I knew, the sheriff who used to be my investigator, I saw how the system doesn't work in some ways when we're putting too much emphasis on making an example out of people.
I don't necessarily believe that anyone should be made an example of.
I think my case, even though I went through the diversion program, spent three years on probation and had it dismissed, I think the normal person on the street would not have had charges charged the way mine were.
I think the way it was handled was awful.
And that really drives me to show equality across the board.
I think it's important that that equality is happening at every stage.
And again, that means that some people who have avoided getting in trouble need to be in some trouble, and some people who have had their charges way overcharged should not have their charges charged that way.
Again, it's about consistency and equality.
You speak about family law a lot.
I've heard you talk about family law.
Why is family law an issue to you in terms of your policies and wanting to make that particular industry better and less corrupt?
I think it goes back to my time as a prosecutor, specifically doing the sex crimes and domestics.
I handled a lot of cases where we had child victims.
I think the youngest child I ever had to put on the stand was in the realm of five or six years old.
When you deal with children who have gone through things like that, you definitely develop a soft spot and a care for all the children in the community.
Family court is really who deals with the children.
They're making decisions that are supposed to be in the best interest of the child, and it's so inconsistent and strange in that world.
I practice a lot of family law.
I've done probably five or six divorce trials that involve children in the past couple of years as well.
And when you don't know what a judge is going to do when you walk into the courtroom or you know that you're at a disadvantage when you're walking into certain judges' courtrooms, that's not the way it should be.
It should matter about the facts and what's best for the children.
And at the end of the day, that's one of my biggest things is protecting the children, whether that be in family court, dealing with the sex trafficking issues down on the strip.
Women and children protection for them and our teachers is extremely important.
What is fundamentally wrong with the family law industry, especially the courts in family law, and how do you propose to fix those issues?
So some of it's a consistency problem, and whether that's because of corruption and graft or being friends with certain attorneys or litigants, I'm not sure, but there is an issue there that definitely needs to be investigated.
There's plenty of resources to do that.
The other issue we currently have in family court is there's a lot of people who are held in contempt without the benefit of being afforded an attorney, a basic right we have.
If you're going to be found guilty of criminal contempt and then put in jail, these people are not always being given attorneys in order to represent them before that happens.
That's another big issue and a violation of the Constitution, in my opinion.
Is there a prejudice against parents, fathers, mothers?
I mean, one of those three?
Honestly, it kind of goes on both sides.
I've seen courtrooms where if you have the wife of the equation, you're going to do way better.
And in other courtrooms, if you have the male half, you're going to do way better.
That's part of the problem.
We have a code of laws that judges are supposed to interpret, but you would hope for some kind of consistency.
There's no consistency whatsoever.
I mean is the solution to this issue that you get juries in family court?
Is it because it seems like part of the issue is you have one judge basically playing a jury executioner.
Depending upon that judge's personal prejudice, whether they favor moms or dads, that often seems to affect the case.
How do we solve what seems like an inherent issue of the bias based upon who the judge is?
And I think that juries would solve a big portion of that.
That's part of the reason we brought juries in to handle domestic violence cases, cases where people's constitutional rights are in jeopardy, because if you get a domestic, you can no longer have a gun.
I think it would be a good thing in family court to have juries.
I think you may get some results you don't expect, but if we can rely on juries to adequately handle murder cases, for instance, I think we can trust juries to adequately handle cases with parents and children.
And they're bringing their experience.
That's the good thing about having more than one person involved in a case.
Back in the jury room, those people bring their personal experiences, apply it into the case, especially with the best interests of the child, totality of the circumstances, standard.
I think that would be a great thing, and I think it would solve some of the issues because it's very, very hard to stack a jury pool.
It's not very hard to sway one person when it's a judge.
To sway, yeah, exactly. So let's talk about judicial oversight committees.
I mean, one of the stories I often hear, especially running this podcast, is that, you know, these oversight committees are absolutely useless, that all they do is really Cover up, push under the rug, all the bad stuff that whether it's judges, social workers, lawyers are doing.
In fact, I could give you one instance.
I just did a documentary called The Godfather of Family Law about a certain family law attorney who was clearly violating the law and absolutely nothing has happened thus far.
In a perfect world, I would have thought that the bar would have came down on that particular attorney, launched an investigation, but as of now, nothing's happened.
How do we fix that issue?
That's a tough call.
I had the pleasure of viewing that episode, actually, and it's astonishing to see some of the things that go on in that courtroom.
I know I certainly couldn't get away with that sort of stuff in my practice, so it's really horrifying to know that those actions were made by attorneys and judges and nobody did anything about it.
As far as the Bar is concerned, they're an independent agency.
They have their own investigations.
It would be difficult for my office, as far as the DA's office, to get involved in that.
As far as the Judicial Oversights Committees, we do have the Judicial Ethics Commission.
Whether they're effective or not is a matter for much debate, I think, at this point.
And I have not seen any real effective results out of them.
I absolutely agree with you.
Now, I don't need to use that commission to get justice, however.
Once installed in office, I have the ability to work with the Public Corruption Unit, help direct some of those investigations, and once I have enough to charge a case, at that point, the case is filed.
These are criminal charges.
It doesn't matter what the Ethics Commission thinks or not.
At that point, it's going to be completely up to a jury of this person's peers.
So, okay, let's say you get elected into office, right?
You have all these great ideas, and then, you know, the minute you're elected in the office, certain people approach you, they say, you know, Timothy, it was really nice what you were saying about investigating judges and all that stuff, but we're not going to do that in this state because, you know, we don't want to start a big hubbub.
How do you deal with that sort of thing?
What do you do when the people that you're relying upon and or powers that be try to impede the progress?
So there's not a lot they can do to impede my progress.
I mean, if Metro doesn't want to investigate, the DA's office certainly has their own investigation units.
We have our own investigators.
They are certified peace officers.
Those investigations, to a certain extent, can be run in-house.
You don't want to do too much of that, obviously, because it does impact the taxpayers' money and the bottom line of the office.
The office already has a $55 million budget and then some.
But at least if we start some of those investigations and we get them on the books and people realize that this type of stuff is going on, I think that'll turn the tide and get more people wanting to get involved in prosecuting these issues.
Timothy, is there any topics we didn't touch upon that are inherent to your campaign, what you stand for?
The only other one, and I think it's big for family court, and it's not necessarily something that the DA's office directly gets involved in, but I feel it's a topic people should know about, is retain or remove.
Currently, with the way that the judicial elections are done in the state, if you do not have an opponent, your name goes on the ballot, you get one vote, you win, basically.
Retain or remove would allow a secondary option where if you have an issue with the judge, you can vote to remove them, even if they don't have an opponent.
That would alleviate some of the issues where we have, I think, certain very well-qualified family court attorneys who do a fantastic job on the bench but don't because they're worried about what would happen to their practice if they get involved in such a thing.
So that's a very important issue to me personally and for a lot of my constituents and the people who have supported me.
Question about judges' immunity, right?
I've heard that if a judge Operates in a way that's in contradiction to the laws in place and or the Constitution.
They basically are not a judge.
They're working in the capacity of a minister and that therefore takes out the judge's immunity and you're able to sue the judge directly for violating those laws which he or she was sworn to protect.
Is this correct or incorrect?
That is correct. I don't think it's handled appropriately a lot of times when it happens, but that is correct.
It's qualified immunity. In order to qualify for that immunity, you have to be working within the bounds of what your position is.
And I don't think that making decisions that fly in the face of the Constitution or favoring one litigant over another that flies in the face of the laws is anything that should be protected by immunity.
Immunity is for making...
You know, you make a decision within the bounds of the law that turns out to be incorrect by the Supreme Court, that's a little different than actively throwing the laws out the window and just doing whatever you want.
And so that is correct.
Immunity should not apply in those cases.
Got you. So why is it that so many judges get away with doing clearly unconstitutional, unlawful things, you know, separating parents from their children, you know, all the horror stories we heard.
Why does that sort of thing go on, yet these judges still retain their immunity?
Where is the problem within that chain of events that protects these judges that should not be protected in cases where they're breaking the law?
So I think there's problems at all sorts of levels there.
You have issues with the Judicial Ethics Commission not effectively doing their job and monitoring these judges and actively bringing ethics investigations in those cases.
I think you have a lack of courage in the DA's office and other governmental entities like the Attorney General to go after some of these judges who are doing unconstitutional things, which it definitely falls within their purview depending on which judge you're talking about.
There's a lot that can be done.
It's just a matter of having the courage to do it.
Wow. And it's basically because the DAs and attorney generals are not necessarily going after those individuals, almost protecting corrupt judges, more or less.
At best, it's willful indifference.
At worst, it's just allowing it to happen.
Now, the Bar Association.
Let's talk about the Bar Association real quick.
Is that a perfect system right now?
Should there be a competing similar organization?
Or is that not the problem?
I think there's issues with every organization out there.
You'd be hard-pressed to find one that I would say is completely perfect.
The Bar has its issues.
It's the type of regulation of this industry that's been going on almost since attorneys were a thing.
There are changes that could be made there.
I think even bar counsel's office could be a lot more strict and a lot more aggressive on the way they handle attorney ethics complaints.
Because again, you have issues where, just like the judges, certain people seem to get away with just about everything.
And certain people, you know, you make one false move and you're defending, basically you're fighting for your life of your law practice to see if they're going to take your license away.
Okay, now let me ask you a question about the Marshall Willick documentary.
There was a gentleman within Marshall Willick's office that I believe was a partner at one point.
Regardless, he was working within the office.
He's a convicted sex offender, lost his license for a brief period, and then was reinstated.
And continue to work at that law firm.
Obviously, in that law firm, this individual is seeing pictures of children, potential naked pictures, that sort of thing, because often when there's abuse, there's pictures passed around within lawyers that are representing the children.
I mean, what's going on there? How did that guy get reinstated?
How is a registered sex offender working in a family law firm?
I don't have a good answer for that.
I think that situation is abhorrent.
First of all, you have a sex offender that has access to very sensitive information that he's no business accessing.
And then you have the fact that he was reinstated, I won't say quickly, but it was relatively quickly based upon the situation he was going through.
I can tell you that the bar very closely monitored my situation.
Which was a, at the end of the day, was a basic possession charge that went through the diversion program.
But I was basically told, you know, take one step out of line, you're losing your license for five or ten years.
Wow. And this is for your former partner having a drug issue, not even having to do with you.
Oh, correct. Yeah, no, they never drug tested me.
You know, even as they were questioning me when they raided my house, because she wasn't home, of course.
Lucky me. They said, you know, look, we know the drugs aren't yours.
We know that she's got this problem.
And yet, you know, that charges were stacked on me.
Luckily, that ended up working out.
But at the same time, I was able to keep my license.
I can't explain why this guy still has his license.
I never sustained a conviction.
I never lost my license.
He's a convicted sex offender, it sounds like.
And he has all this personal access and is still practicing law.
I think it brings shame and suspicion on the whole profession, frankly.
Wow. And I mean, it's like shouldn't somebody like that like permanently lose their license?
I mean, is there? Yeah.
I mean, how could you have somebody like that so close to children?
I hesitate to pass judgment on anybody because you never know what people go through in their life.
But I think in that particular circumstance, if that's not grounds for disbarment, I'm not quite sure what is.
Timothy, is there anything else you'd like to speak about before we wrap up this interview?
Not that I can think of. You've been very thorough and I appreciate that.
Basically, I want to bring conservative values back to the office.
I think that we have a DA who doesn't go far enough to be tough enough on crime.
Decriminalizes some lower-level misdemeanors that hurt small business owners.
Doesn't effectively use the death penalty as the tool that it's meant to be.
And I think those changes need to be made.
And you certainly need to have the courage to be in that office to go after judges and public officials because that's part of your job.
Status quo doesn't matter.
What's right is what matters.
Thank you so much, Timothy, for standing up for constitutional values and the law.
And thank you for having the courage to run.
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