SALT LAKE CITY — Former Utah Attorney General John Swallow appears headed for trial on public corruption charges next week.

Third District Judge Elizabeth Hruby-Mills on Friday denied his requests to throw out the case or delay the trial, now scheduled to start Tuesday. The judge also rejected Swallow's claims that the state was late in disclosing some evidence and denied his motion to access an investigator's internal affairs file.

Swallow's attorney Scott Williams says prosecutors "ambushed" him in a hearing last week with a key witness' claim that the former attorney general extorted him for years. Williams said Marc Sessions Jenson's testimony makes it impossible to be ready to defend Swallow.

Hruby-Mills acknowledged in her ruling that neither the defense nor the prosecution had heard some of Jenson's testimony before. But she found that even though new challenges might have emerged, the state's conduct wasn't egregious or in violation of rules of criminal procedure.

Jenson testified that Utah House Speaker Greg Hughes, R-Draper, and then-U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, attended a “secret" meeting at his Southern California office in June 2009 involving Utah Transit Authority officials and developers working on a train station project. Hughes was not speaker, but was a legislator and UTA board chairman at the time.

Hughes denies attending a meeting there and has offered proof of his whereabouts during that time period.

Prosecutors allege Swallow, former Attorney General Mark Shurtleff and the late Tim Lawson were part of a criminal conspiracy to get or keep their offices and bring in money to stay there. Jenson claims they extorted him for money and favors on trips to the exclusive Pelican Hill Resort near Newport Beach that he paid for.

Davis County Attorney Troy Rawlings dropped criminal charges against Shurtleff last year.

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Attorney says prosecutors 'ambushed' John Swallow with extortion claim

An attorney for John Swallow says prosecutors "ambushed" him in a hearing last week with a key witness' claim that the former attorney general extorted him for years.

Assistant Salt Lake County district attorney Chou Chou Collins told the judge in the hearing Thursday that extortion is among the criminal activities associated with racketeering, one of the charges prosecutors have leveled against Swallow.

Swallow faces a dozen felonies, including bribery, accepting gifts and money laundering.

Williams also argued that the defense just received from the state 848 pages of agents' mostly handwritten investigative notes. He said he needs time to read, vet and cross-check the notes with reports and track down any potential witnesses.

Collins said the agents' notes were taken during witness interviews and most were transcribed or turned into reports. She said she never asked the agents for the notes until the defense filed a motion for them last November.

Hruby-Mills ruled that prosecutors "promptly" made the notes available when they learned of them.

"Although not readily searchable because of their handwritten nature, the notes are categorized at least somewhat into bookmarks indicating the subject of the notes," she wrote.

Williams also asked the judge to force the state to turn over an internal affairs file on Scott Nesbitt, the lead state investigator in the case. Hruby-Mills denied that request.

"The IA file apparently contains allegations of improper investigative techniques or wrongdoing, as well as a finding that the claims are unsubstantiated," the judge wrote. "The court is not persuaded that unfounded allegations are either material to the defendant's guilt or punishment, or otherwise exculpatory."

Williams also contends that Nesbitt and FBI special agent Jon Isakson hid evidence from prosecutors, specifically statements Lawson made during plea negotiations in his own case. He said those statements contradict Jenson's testimony about what Lawson said to him.

Rawlings asked the agents to provide him with questions for Lawson, whom he was trying to get to testify against Shurtleff. Nesbitt and Isakson testified that Rawlings told them he got "great stuff" from Lawson but that they never asked him what Lawson had said.

"If Mr. Rawlings obtained answers to the questions from Mr. Lawson, the agents were not made aware, but thought they would have been provided Mr. Lawson's answers by Mr. Rawlings," the judge wrote. "As per their testimony, neither of the agents requested or received a copy of any answers from Tim Lawson to the questions they had prepared."

Lawson faced several criminal charges, but he died before the case was resolved.

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