LAS VEGAS – A doctor accused of improperly looking up prescription records of the dead gunman after the Oct. 1 mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip will invoke his constitutional right against self-incrimination at an upcoming Nevada State Pharmacy Board 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 board officials of "grandstanding to try to influence public opinion about Dr. Goldsmith, to paint him in a negative way before the hearing."
Nevada State Prescription Board attorney Brett Kandt denied the grandstanding claim and declined comment about the complaint against Goldsmith.
"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 about Paddock having been prescribed diazepam, an anti-anxiety drug better known as Valium. The report cited Nevada Prescription Monitoring Program records, which are password-protected.
The Prescription Board complaint accuses Goldsmith of looking up Paddock's patient profile to confirm he was not his patient, and accessing 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 who the attorney said had pain management patients in other practices, accessed Paddock's records. He said Goldsmith plans to invoke his Fifth Amendment right not to provide evidence against himself at the Sept. 5 board hearing in Reno.
Goldsmith could face revocation of his Nevada 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 managed to access 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 he was speaking for Goldsmith, declined to say where in Florida his client had moved and said the move had nothing to do with the pharmacy board case.
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