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On March 2, 2013, Isaac and Nephi Jeffs went to the prison in Palestine, Texas. They were visiting their brother Warren Jeffs, president of the polygamous Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

Among the discussion that day, according to a filing in federal court, Isaac told Warren that his loyalists had retrieved church documents that had been in the possession of former FLDS spokesman Willie Jessop, who left the church 1½ years earlier.

Isaac wanted to know what Warren wanted done with the church records stolen from Jessop.

Lawyers for the U.S. Department of Justice believe the conversation demonstrates why marshals in Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., didn't sufficiently investigate the theft report.

And in a civil trial scheduled to start Jan. 19 in Phoenix, the Justice Department will use the alleged theft and the prison conversation as evidence that the municipal governments in Hildale and Colorado City, collectively known as Short Creek, discriminate against people who do not follow FLDS leaders.

Federal lawyers also appear ready to tackle the question many have asked since Warren Jeffs was arrested in 2006: How does he run the FLDS from prison?

The answer seems to be that Warren Jeffs sometimes communicates with the outside world the way other prisoners do, and sometimes through clandestine means, including recording his instructions from behind bars.

The Justice Department's list of planned evidence includes eight recorded phone calls Warren Jeffs made from prison in 2012 and 2013, plus about a dozen letters between him and town officials going back to 2004.

The witnesses could be just as illuminating.

They include Charlene Jeffs, the estranged, legal wife of another Jeffs brother — Lyle.

The Justice Department's filed witness list says she will testify about how Nephi and Isaac Jeffs are "messengers between imprisoned Warren Jeffs and Bishop Lyle Jeffs."

An earlier court filing said Charlene Jeffs has knowledge of how "Warren Jeffs is still directing the church and cities from prison."

The Justice Department also plans to call to the witness stand three Texas law enforcement officials who will testify about Warren Jeffs' calls, correspondence and visitors.

One is an agent with the Texas Office of Inspector General. The Justice Department summary says the agent will testify "concerning visitors of Warren Jeffs recording conversations with him via wristwatch recorders and Warren Jeffs' violation of prison rules regarding communications."

A website for Texas' prison system says visitors may not bring recorders.

A prison mailroom employee will testify about Warren Jeffs' correspondence and "how he selects the mail he receives," a witness list says.

Jurors also will hear from Nick Hanna, the Texas ranger who led that state's investigation into the FLDS ranch near Eldorado. In addition to discussing Warren Jeffs' sex abuse crimes in Texas, for which he is serving a sentence of life plus 20 years, court documents say Hanna will testify about "communications and activities during his incarceration in Texas."

The Justice Department wants to prove the municipalities followed orders Warren Jeffs gave them, either directly or through messengers. If the federal government prevails, it will ask a judge to impose steps to ensure discrimination against nonchurch members ceases.

The trial will mark the second time in two years that a federal jury in Phoenix has heard a lawsuit alleging that the municipal governments in Short Creek engaged in discrimination.

In 2014, a jury awarded Ron and Jinjer Cooke $5 million for the towns' failure to provide utility connections for five years. After the verdict, all sides settled the case for $3 million. While the Cooke case made the same general allegations as the current lawsuit — that the municipal governments function as arms of the church — there was less of an emphasis on Warren Jeffs. Hanna testified in the Cooke trial. The inspector general agent and the mailroom employee did not.

The Cookes' attorney, Bill Walker, said he used Hanna's testimony about Warren Jeffs to lay a foundation for why the towns were uncooperative with the Cookes, but there was no evidence Warren Jeffs himself had forbidden the utility connections.

The Justice Department now has a wider case, Walker said, and has acquired a larger swath of evidence about Warren Jeffs' role in the towns."

"They've done a really, really excellent job of filling in things that we didn't have access to," Walker said.

Neither lawyers for the Justice Department nor the two towns returned messages seeking comment.

Lawyers for the towns have argued that municipal employees have the right to their religion and any discrimination was isolated and did not cause significant harm.

As for communications between Warren Jeffs and other high-ranking church officials, the towns' lawyers have argued in court documents that they do not show anyone "discriminated against non-FLDS individuals or were ordered to do so by their church leaders."

Federal Judge H. Russel Holland has already denied the towns' motion to bar the correspondence and other evidence regarding Warren Jeffs from the trial.

Texas prison officials announced in January 2012 that Warren Jeffs had lost phone privileges for 90 days after he was found to have addressed his congregation by speaker phone twice on Christmas Day. Prison rules allowed him to speak to only one person at a time. A prison spokesman last week declined to specify whether Warren Jeffs had received any other sanctions for rule violations.

Warren Jeffs himself is not on any side's witness list.

Twitter: @natecarlisle