A doctor accused of improperly looking up prescription records of the dead gunman in last October’s mass shooting in Las Vegas will invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination at an upcoming disciplinary hearing, his lawyer said Wednesday.
Dr. Ivan Goldsmith is the focus of a “witch hunt” for the source of a newspaper report about Stephen Paddock’s prescriptions in the days after the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history, attorney E. Brent Bryson said.
Bryson accused officials with the state pharmacy board of “grandstanding to try to influence public opinion about Dr. Goldsmith, to paint him in a negative way before the hearing.”
Board attorney Brett Kandt denied that claim and declined comment about the complaint. “It’s important that the matter not be tried in the media,” Kandt said.
The disciplinary hearing stems from an Oct. 3 report by the Las Vegas Review-Journal saying Paddock had been prescribed diazepam, an anti-anxiety drug better known as Valium. The report cited state records that are password-protected.
The complaint accuses Goldsmith of looking up Paddock’s patient profile to confirm he was not his patient, and that he accessed the database five more times before “disclosing or allowing to be disclosed to the press” Paddock’s prescription data.
Bryson declined to say whether Goldsmith, a weight loss specialist, accessed Paddock’s records. He said Goldsmith plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to provide evidence against himself at the Sept. 5 hearing.
Goldsmith could face revocation of his state license to prescribe medicine if he is found to have violated the federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the patient privacy law known as HIPAA.
Kandt and another board attorney told the Review-Journal that Goldsmith was the only health care provider who accessed Paddock’s patient profile after his death.
Two other medical practitioners received letters of reprimand for trying unsuccessfully to access the records after the Review-Journal story was published and Paddock’s prescription profile had been locked, the newspaper said.
Bryson said Goldsmith moved in recent months to Florida, where he is licensed to practice medicine, and now works with a relative in the finance business. The attorney said the move had nothing to do with the pharmacy board case.
Also Wednesday, police released 22 more video clips of body-worn camera footage showing gun-wielding officers encountering tourists on Las Vegas Boulevard after the Oct. 1 shooting that killed 58 people and injured hundreds.
The release was the 16th by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department since May 3 under a court order following a public records lawsuit filed by media including The Associated Press.
It offered no new insight about the shooting, but provided images of officers staging with rifles in parking lots, stopping motorists, advising hotel residents which properties were open and searching empty casino floors in the hours after the massacre.
Sheriff Joe Lombardo has declared the police investigation over, with no motive for the shooting. An FBI report is expected by the end of the year. Authorities say the shooting from the Mandalay Bay resort into an outdoor country music concert audience was the act of a lone gunman and not a broad conspiracy.