{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://titus.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5903", "Democrats renew call for probe of rescinded Boring fines; Lombardo says allegations are \u2018baseless\u2019", "2026-06-05", "2026", "2026-06", "Democrat", "House", "NV", "Dina Titus", "T000468", "titus.house.gov", "titus", "https://titus.house.gov/news/", "scraper", "Nevada state regulators say the investigation into alleged safety violations at The Boring Company\u2019s underground tunnel project\u2014 and the resulting controversies \u2014 have been addressed, but Democratic federal and state lawmakers are calling for an independent investigation, citing inconsistencies.\n\nIn December, Fortune reported that just one day after Nevada Occupational Safety and Health Administration served Elon Musk\u2019s Boring Company more than $425,000 in fines for safety violations in May 2025, the fine was rescinded following a call from Boring president Steve Davis to Gov. Joe Lombardo\u2019s office.\n\nPublic records documenting the meeting with Boring and the revoking of the violations also disappeared. A forensic analysis by the Governor\u2019s Technology Office was unable to recover the records and could not determine how the files were deleted or who deleted them.\n\nA review of the case file by the Governor\u2019s Technology Office indicated that the original files could not be restored or recovered because of \u201cexisting backup retention limitations,\u201d according to the Gov. Joe Lombardo\u2019s office.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s been a whole year since Lombardo\u2019s administration orchestrated the shady cover-up of a company owned by the richest man in the world, and Nevada\u2019s still have zero answers,\u201d Assemblymember Cinthia Moore (D-Las Vegas) said during a press conference with U.S. Rep. Dina Titus (D-NV) last week.\n\nDuring the press conference, Moore said Lombardo has been inconsistent when explaining why his office could not find evidence of how the files were deleted.\n\n\u201cWhen Lombardo\u2019s office was asked about the cover-up, he claimed his office couldn\u2019t find any evidence on the deleted OSHA records because of the cyber attack back that our state suffered back in August, but the files were deleted last May, and no other government official has made such a claim before,\u201d Moore said.\n\nMoore was referring to a March interview during a Nevada Independent event, where Lombardo responded to a question about the Boring controversy by suggesting the files couldn\u2019t be recovered because of a cyber attack that crippled many of the state\u2019s services and websites.\n\n\u201cThere was an allegation that all those records had been deleted. Unfortunately that was in close proximity to the cyber incident and so the computer systems within \u2014 as has been told to me through an investigation \u2014 that were responsible via OSHA and (Nevada Business and Industry), they had lost a lot of records not just that one a lot of records in some of their ongoing investigations,\u201d Lombardo said during the event.\n\nIn a statement provided to the Current this week, Lombardo\u2019s office said that their technology office\u2019s inability to recover the file \u201cwas not related to the cyber-incident,\u201d adding that the governor \u201csimply conflated two issues stemming from the same confusing constellation of baseless accusations\u201d when responding to questions about the Boring investigation.\n\nLombardo\u2019s office said the governor was referring to \u201ca limited set of files contained on the office\u2019s shared drive \u2014 included documents reflecting the composition (and potential vacancies) for certain Nevada State Boards and Commissions.\u201d\n\n\u201cThe Office\u2019s inability to recover those files resulted in some initial uncertainty and processing delays in filling certain vacancies,\u201d said Lombardo\u2019s communication director, Drew Galang, in a statement.\n\nDuring the press conference, Titus and Moore accused Lombardo of participating in a \u201ccover-up\u201d and demanded an independent investigation into the 2024 violation investigated by Nevada OSHA, relating to workers and firefighters enduring chemical burns on the job.\n\n\u201cTell us how they got off the hook,\u201d Titus said. \u201cTell us why there was no appeals process that looked at why they suddenly didn\u2019t have to pay the penalty. None of those questions has been answered.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe learned that suddenly the OSHA penalty just disappeared. There was a mysterious phone call to the governor. The Elon Musk folks made a few phone calls, and suddenly there were no more problems,\u201d she continued.\n\nLegal counsel with the Division of Industrial Relations and Nevada OSHA told lawmakers during a February meeting that the citations were revoked because they were \u201clegally insufficient\u201d due to mistakes and anomalies in the incident report.\n\nA spokesperson for the Nevada Department of Business and Industry in a statement to the Current this week said \u201cquestions about this inspection have been asked and answered,\u201d pointing to a federal OSHA investigation on the incident that found \u201cnew policies established by Nevada OSHA were adequate to address the deficiencies in the process that allowed legally insufficient citations to be issued.\u201d\n\nIn a statement, Business and Industry spokesperson Teri Williams said accusations of a cover up was \u201cpolitical theater\u201d and that \u201cstate and elected officials need to stop using this office as a weapon in their partisan attacks.\u201d\n\n\u201cIf Congresswoman Titus was actually interested in determining the facts, she would have contacted the department directly instead of holding a press conference,\u201d Williams said in a statement.\n\nDuring the press conference, Titus and Moore emphasized that their call for an independent investigation and more transparency from the governor\u2019s office is not political, as election season and the fight for the governor\u2019s seat heats up.\n\n\u201cThis happened over a year ago. It has nothing to do with the election. Nevadans deserve answers,\u201d Moore said.\n\n\u201cWe started this a year ago, that was not the election cycle. This is about the safety of the people who live in District 1, they care more about that than they do about any kind of election politics,\u201d Titus said.\n\n\u201cSince then we\u2019ve learned that there are other problems down there, problems of ventilation, problems of exiting in the case of an emergency. Firefighters don\u2019t have adequate access to what they might need in case of an accident,\u201d Titus continued.", 1, "2026-06-18T06:41:00Z", "2026-06-18T06:43:25Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://titus.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=5903"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.7543382234871387, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}