Utah hires firm to probe Attorney General John Swallow

A large law firm has been hired to investigate Utah Attorney General John Swallow’s alleged campaign violations.
  Of the 14 law firms that put in a bid to help investigate campaign violations in the Utah Attorney General’s office, Snell and Wilmer, LLC was the lieutenant governor’s office top pick. 
Mark Thomas, chief deputy for the lieutenant governor’s office said he feels confident the conflict of interest issue has been solved with hiring the law firm that has more than 400 attorneys practicing in nine locations across the United States and Mexico.
“I would like to think so. Conflict of interest is a big deal. In our particular case, even more important because that’s the issue we’re looking at. We’re looking at whether John Swallow failed to list conflict of interest on the form he was required to have filed on.”
Thomas said there will be a team of 10 people assigned, as well as a backup team. He said one thing that made Snell and Wilmer more attractive was the offer to give a discount off their normal prices. 
“They’ve indicated on their proposal that they would charge no more than $200,000 to meet all of the requirements. It could cost less than that, they’re just going to charge us by the hour. It’s not cheap, obviously. Big law firms, they charge a lot. Even with Snell and Wilmer, they offered a discount to their normal rate in order to bring their cost down a little bit.”
Thomas said the firm will take four months to investigate. 
 
Tavin Stucki is a senior in Utah State University's journalism program, and works as a news reporting intern at UPR. He lives for sports, and is the current editor in chief at The Utah Statesman.