Snohomish County Superior Court mistakenly unsealed a divorce file of Ron Dotzauer, a friend and adviser of U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell, a judge said Monday.
The file was made public for a day and a half last week, presiding Judge Thomas Wynne said.
When he returned from vacation, Wynne learned that a substitute court commissioner had ordered the seal broken on the long-closed divorce file.
The file was quickly resealed Monday when Dotzauer’s lawyer, Camden Hall, approached Wynne, alleging that the seal was broken improperly.
Wynne, who had previously fielded requests from reporters to unseal the file, said there will be a hearing before deciding whether to open the file.
“I’m trying to do this on an orderly basis according to the rules,” Wynne said Monday morning. “It doesn’t look like it happened here.”
Under state Supreme Court rules, there are procedures for making public a sealed file, Wynne said.
Attempts must be made to notify all parties to give them a chance to respond to the request to unseal a file, Wynne said. Also, the rules require that a judge or commissioner, not a substitute commissioner, make the final decision.
A Seattle blogger reviewed the briefly unsealed divorce file for several hours Thursday, hoping to find information on why Cantwell had loaned a substantial sum of money to her friend Dotzauer in 1999.
Cantwell, a Democrat, is running for re-election against Republican challenger Mike McGavick. The general election is Nov. 7.
Stefan Sharkansky, a conservative blogger and founder of www.soundpolitics.com, posted information from the file on Monday, but he said he never found the reason for the loan.
He got a form from the court clerk and went to a hearing to get a court order signed, he said Monday.
“I got lucky,” Sharkansky said of getting the record unsealed. “I don’t know if it was done properly or not.”
Sharkansky spent most of Thursday afternoon going through what Wynne said was a large file containing up to 16 separate volumes. Sharkansky made copies of some documents and put them online as part of his blog.
Dotzauer, who is a lobbyist, bristled at what happened.
“We believe that our rights were unlawfully violated and this was done illegally by the court and by the right-wing blogger,” Dotzauer said.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee circulated information about the blog to reporters via e-mail three hours after its posting.
Challenger McGavick said that was wrong.
“I immediately had our campaign call the senatorial committee and tell them to knock it off, and I’ve already received an apology from them,” he said. “It’s inappropriate. I think it has no place in this campaign.”
The Cantwell camp said they wouldn’t discuss the blog.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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