Was Las Vegas Sands chairman Sheldon Adelson’s recent purchase of the Las Vegas Review-Journal newspaper intended to help the casino mogul dig up dirt on a local judge?

On Friday, the LVRJ printed a lengthy article detailing a strange assignment its reporters were handed six weeks before the delayed announcement/admission that Adelson was the paper’s mystery buyer.

The LVRJ said that in the first week of November, three of its reporters were given marching orders from Gatehouse Media, the newspaper’s corporate management (which continues to manage the paper post-sale). The orders were to “drop everything” and spend the next two weeks monitoring the activity of three Clark County judges.

The three jurists included District Judge Elizabeth Gonzalez, who is handling the wrongful termination suit brought against Adelson and Las Vegas Sands by former Sands China CEO Steve Jacobs. Gonzalez has made some rulings in that case that favored Jacobs – not to mention fining Sands $250k for monkeying with evidence – and who personally chastised Adelson for not listening to her instructions when the Sands chairman took the stand this spring.