Controversies keep an unflattering spotlight on Utah Attorney General’s Office

SALT LAKE CITY – When Sean Reyes took over as Utah’s attorney general in 2013, he began a new chapter for an office mired in scandal.

His predecessors were hit with bribery charges and accused of accepting gifts like a posh stay at a resort and then covering it up. John Swallow was ultimately acquitted; the case against Mark Shurtleff was dismissed.

Utahns questioned if they could place trust in the highest level of state law enforcement. And Reyes, a new face in Utah law enforcement and politics recognized as a standout attorney by the American Bar Association in 2007, tried to alleviate those concerns.

“We have spent a year returning trust to the A.G.’s office,” he told reporters early in 2015.

But that trust would be threatened years later by controversies that continued to hang over the office as Reyes departed this week to make way for new Attorney General Derek Brown.

They include Reyes’ moves to resist releasing a copy of his calendar to the news media, along with his tight friendship with the founder of an anti-human trafficking charity who came under intense scrutiny last year.

Reyes, a longtime ally of the nonprofit Operation Underground Railroad, went overseas with the group in 2014, posing as a bodyguard in a sting operation in Colombia. He was credited as a producer for “Sound of Freedom,” a movie inspired by OUR founder Timothy Ballard. And the pair testified together before a congressional panel – a team bringing government and charity to fight human trafficking.

When Ballard was accused last year of sexual misconduct and misleading donors, claims he strongly denies, Reyes came under fire, too. A critic of OUR sued Reyes, alleging he acted as “de facto general counsel” for the group and tried to intimidate her around the time she spoke with a prosecutor who was investigating OUR.

The legal claims against Reyes were dismissed about a month later after an apology and explanation from Reyes to the woman who’d sued him. But the allegations reverberated at the Capitol, with state lawmakers passing a new law barring the attorney general from doing legal work outside the office.

They also ordered an audit reviewing the AG’s travel policies, along with his friendship with Ballard and whether it affected Reyes’ leadership. Gov. Spencer Cox and some lawmakers also revived old conversations about Utah switching from electing its attorney generals to appointing them, noted Leah Murray, host of KSLNewsRadio’s “Inside Sources” and director of Weber State University’s Walker Institute of Politics and Public Service.

“Even in Republican circles, his legacy is that everyone was paying attention to that office, in a way that made the Legislature have conversations about how it could be better,” Murray said.

A spokesperson for Reyes did not answer a series specific of questions from KSL about how he views his legacy and the controversies that shaped time as Utah’s top cop, but sent a document reviewing initiatives during Reyes’ tenure and saying Utah’s settlements reached in opioid lawsuits will bring in $540 million. The money is scheduled to come in stages over the better part of the next two decades.

Among the office’s other efforts during Reyes’ tenure: the ongoing lawsuits against Meta, Instagram and Facebook’s parent company, along with its case against TikTok and Utah’s case seeking to reclaim millions of acres in federal land.

Under Reyes, the office formed an opioid taskforce bringing together law enforcers, advocates and others to inform solutions to widespread addiction to powerful painkillers and heroin and address the effects of the crisis. The office also worked with other state leaders to create the SafeUT app and set up Utah’s white collar crime registry.

Away from the office and its day-to-day work, Reyes drew attention for his travel outside the state, including a trip to Nevada following the 2020 election. He returned voicing concern, but offering no proof, about what he called “voting irregularities.” He later faced criticism for a 2022 World Cup junket paid for by the host nation of Qatar.

With trips like this in mind, KSL wanted to know more about how Reyes was spending his time on the clock. In 2022, the KSL Investigators filed a public records request for a copy of his calendar, kicking off a public records fight that dragged on for two years.

Roughly a year ago, as scrutiny of his travel and ties to OUR mounted, he announced he wouldn’t run for reelection.

His office continued fighting KSL’s attempts to see his calendar until November 2024, when he settled the case with the news organization and turned over five years worth of entries, withholding those his office deemed personal or subject to attorney-client privilege.

Tim Chambless, a political science professor at the University of Utah, said taxpayers deserve greater transparency from the highest level of state law enforcement and have a right to demand it.

“You hope the person who’s the attorney general will do his job and do it in an open way,” Chambless said. “People don’t want secrecy.”

In one of his first moves as Utah’s new attorney general, Derek Brown released his calendar Tuesday for the week.