State investigators have searched the home of a Los Angeles Police Department officer they believe played a key role in mailing out thousands of racially charged letters to Latino voters in an Orange County congressional district this month.
The officer has been identified as Mark Nhan Nguyen, 32, a three-year veteran of the force who works as a collision investigator in South Los Angeles, according to sources familiar with an ongoing investigation by the state attorney general into the letter and whether the mailing violated any laws.
Mark Nguyen lives in the same house as a campaign staffer for Republican congressional candidate Tan Nguyen, who is running an underdog effort to unseat Democratic incumbent Loretta Sanchez (D-Santa Ana).
Tan Nguyen, who is not related to the officer, has acknowledged that the campaign worker was involved in sending out the controversial letters. He said he fired her but has since offered to rehire her, saying he now believes the letter was accurate and legal.
Investigators have also identified the person believed to have written the letter, sources said.
The letter has been criticized by politicians across the country who called it an incendiary attempt to scare Latinos from the polls in next month's elections. Nguyen has rejected calls that he quit the race and, on Wednesday, appeared on conservative talk radio to tout his campaign.
The search of Mark Nguyen's home is another piece in the puzzle of a fast-unfolding investigation into who was responsible for the mailing. Investigators searched Tan Nguyen's campaign office and home last week, hauling away computers and documents.
The letter falsely warned that immigrants could be jailed or deported for voting and claimed the state had developed a tracking system to turn over the names of Latino voters to anti-illegal immigrant groups. The letter was printed on what appeared to be the letterhead of a Huntington Beach-based group that favors tightening the border. The group said it had no involvement in the letter.
The voter list used to send the mailer contained the names of 14,000 registered Democrats with Latino surnames born outside of the United States. On Wednesday, the secretary of state's office sent a corrective letter written in English and Spanish to those same voters, saying it contained "false and misleading information about your right to vote in California" and that it should be ignored.
