A tale twice told by Boggs reveals the lies beneath

More than once I suspected Lynette Boggs was lying, but I couldn’t prove it.

In 2004, documents showed that the then-county commissioner’s Summerlin home was going into foreclosure because she hadn’t paid the mortgage for 10 months. She told me the bank had made a mistake and she actually had been paying her mortgage. But she couldn’t find the paperwork to prove it. I doubted her veracity then. Later, her estranged husband, Steven McDonald, said her story that the mortgage was sold and their checks were going to the wrong company was a whopper.

Before the 2006 election, the Republican commissioner announced she had reimbursed her campaign account for the $1,230 she had paid her nanny. She omitted the fact that because her personal check bounced, she didn’t really repay the account.

Boggs even changed the story about her 1999 trip to her alma mater, Notre Dame, on a Station Casinos jet. Her first version was that it was purely a social event with friends. The second version offered by the then-Las Vegas City Council member was that it was a political trip, an in-kind political donation.

So, hearing that she had been charged with two counts of perjury and two counts of offering false instruments for filing or recording was sort of a vindication of long-held suspicions that this avowed religious woman quite possibly lies when it suits her.

That said, here’s a prediction: Her attorney, Bill Terry, will be able to beat two of the four charges filed against her Monday.

He probably can’t beat the accusation that she lied about her residency when she filed to run for the Clark County Commission. That’s a slam-dunk: The video surveillance, the paper trail, the testimony of her former personal assistant Linda Ferris, even her husband’s testimony, should nail the two residency charges. It’s the cover-up that will sink Boggs, particularly the $400 checks she wrote to Ferris with the understanding that they were “rent,” even though Ferris said she had to return the money to the cash-strapped Boggs.

While Boggs can argue that other politicians live outside their districts sometimes, the examples she might cite will not have the paper trail she created living outside Commission District F. Other lawmakers who have two homes actually have homes in their district, even if they spend time in their other homes outside their district.

Where I’m guessing Boggs will skate are the two charges involving the nanny payments. She will be able to argue that a lot of politicians use campaign dollars for unrelated payments, despite the law saying they shouldn’t, because there’s a history of loose interpretation of what’s a “campaign expense.”

The four felony charges might not be the end of the criminal charges Boggs will face. Nevada Division of Investigation Deputy Chief Gerald Hafen said Monday: “There are some glaring things that we’re continuing to look at.”

First, there’s the $5,000 campaign check from Dr. Raj Chanderraj and his wife, Gaming Commissioner Radha Chanderraj, that wasn’t deposited into Boggs’ campaign account. Whether there was any nefarious reason for the check being written two days before Boggs voted on a cardiology contract that benefited the doctor, there’s a paper trail that the money didn’t go where it was legally supposed to go. Boggs told the Chanderrajes’ lawyer that the check was cashed this year. The truth: It was cashed Dec. 18 and should have been reported on her final campaign report for 2006. (So far, Boggs hasn’t offered any explanation of why the check didn’t go into her campaign account.)

Then there’s the $43,000 Volvo from Volvo of Las Vegas. There are questions about whether she paid for it. Investigators are chasing that paper trail as well.

The FBI is still looking at the land Boggs obtained in Arizona and whether there might have been something hinky about that. That was another case where her first story was that she had been making payments on the land for 16 months. Oops. More like three months.

Whether it’s jet trips, mortgage payments, nanny check repayments, land payments, errant $5,000 checks or her residency, for Boggs there’s a first version and then a second version of the story.

“Thou shalt not lie” seems to be an optional commandment for Lynette Boggs.

Jane Ann Morrison’s column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call 383-0275.