PRESS RELEASE

For Immediate Release

8:00 a.m. September 10, 2016
Oakland, CA. Brent D. Ward has a long record in law and public
service. He served at the federal level in all three branches of
government. He was one of the longest serving United States
Attorneys in Utah history, serving for more than seven years spanning
the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.
In 2005 Mr. Ward was recruited by the George W. Bush
administration to organize and lead a nationwide task force in the U. S.
Department of Justice in Washington tasked to investigate and
prosecute the production and distribution of illegal obscenity over the
Internet. From 2010 until 2015 he served as a Trial Attorney in the
Criminal Division of the U. S. Department of Justice and was detailed to
the U. S. Attorneys Office in Salt Lake City.
During his career as a federal prosecutor spanning nearly 40
years, Mr. Ward prosecuted some of Utahs most notorious criminal
cases, including most recently his participation in the governments
successful prosecution of Jeremy Johnson and other officers of iWorks,
Inc., an Internet-based company that committed pervasive criminal
fraud.
Today Salt Lake Tribune published a story alleging ties between
Mr. Ward and former Utah Attorney General John Swallow. Mr. Ward
responded as follows:
As a prosecutor of high-profile criminal cases I am no stranger to
controversy. Yet despite many heated battles in the public arena,
winning most of my cases and losing a few, I am grateful to say that
my integrity has never been questioned, nor have I ever been accused
of a failing to disclose a conflict of interest in any of my cases; that is
until today.
The Tribune article erroneously alleges that while prosecuting
the iWorks case I failed to disclose that I had close ties to John Swallow

and, in addition, had an understanding or a hope of employment under

Swallow should he be elected Utah Attorney General in 2012.1
As I have said before, I do not know John Swallow. I have never
had a personal relationship with him of any kind. I have never spoken
with him on the telephone. Although it is possible that I exchanged an
email with him, I cannot remember doing so.
I met with Swallow only once, during the early stages of the 2012
election cycle. Swallow was already running for Attorney General and
asked a mutual friend, John Harmer, to arrange for me to go to lunch
with the two of them. At this lunch Swallow asked if I planned to run
for Attorney General. I told him no, I had no such plans. At the end of
the lunch he asked me if he could list me as one of his supporters. I
said, yes, as long as he did not mention my title as a Trial Attorney in
the Justice Department. He agreed. Since I was not acquainted with
Swallow, I did this solely on the strength of John Harmers opinion of
him.
Other than that single occasion I have never seen or spoken
with Mr. Swallow, except to shake his hand in passing at a large
banquet of the Lighted Candle Society, a nonprofit anti-obscenity
public interest group of which John Harmer was the founder, Chairman,
and President. I cannot remember the year of that gathering, but I
estimate it occurred in about 2008, when I was living in northern
Virginia. I was in Salt Lake City on other business and was invited by
Mr. Harmer to attend the event, which was attended by several
hundred people. That was my only other personal interaction with
Swallow.
The Tribune story quotes Mark Shurtleff saying It was like
Harmer, Ward, and Swallow were buds. This careless and haphazard
statement is without any truth.
1

Even if I had such ties or understanding, it is not clear how that would create a conflict of
interest in the Johnson case. Swallow was neither a party, nor a witness, in the Johnson case.

The article also quotes a Jim Christensen, one-time officer of the

Lighted Candle Society, stating that Swallow and I were very, very
close friends. There is no basis at all for such a statement, as Mr.
Harmer confirmed in the article. While Mr. Swallow and I each served
on the Board of Trustees of the Lighted Candle Society, we served at
different times and I never attended a board meeting when he was
present. Mr. Christensen knows as much, because he was never in a
board meeting attended by both Swallow and me.
I have never spoken with anyone about the possibility of
employment under Mr. Swallow in the Attorney Generals Office. If
Swallow spoke with Mark Shurtleff about such employment, it was and
remains outside my knowledge. I never considered such employment,
never had any interest in such employment, never sought such
employment, was never offered such employment, and would not have
accepted it, had it been offered to me. All of this can easily be verified
by speaking with people who know me well.
Attorneys in the Attorney Generals office sometimes seek
employment in the U. S. Attorneys Office. Indeed, as U. S. Attorney I
hired them on multiple occasions. However, it is not a two-way street.
I am not aware of any attorney in the U. S. Attorneys Office ever
seeking a job in the Attorney Generals Office, unless it was to run for
the Office of Attorney General itself. There is little motivation to do so.
Generally speaking pay, benefits and working conditions in the U. S.
Attorneys Office have been considered superior to those in the AGs
office. Besides, in recent years my retirement benefits were growing
faster in the federal system than would have been the case had I
started over in the state system.
Finally, the Tribune article asserts that I offered to grant
immunity to Mr. Swallow during a courtroom proceeding on January 11,
2013. This allegation is completely false. I could not have granted

such immunity, even if I had wanted to. It was not within my power to
do so. Furthermore, such immunity had already been refused.
Suffice it to say that other than allowing Swallow to list me as a
campaign supporter, I have never given, offered to give, or even
considered offering to give any benefit to John Swallow in any way,
shape, or form. From a quid pro quo standpoint there could be no
purpose for doing so, since I never had any reason to expect or desire
anything from him. There never was any conflict of interest on my
part relating to the Johnson case.