349: Attorney General speaks out on rogue employee who deleted emails

Last week, in response to an open record request filed by myself and others for emails, Attorney General Drew Wrigley announced that his office wouldn't be able to satisfy those requests in full.

An employee, who was not a supervisor or attorney in his office and who had no authority to do so, ordered the deletion of former Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem's email account. Stenehjem passed away earlier this year. Wrigley, who had already announced a campaign for the office, was appointed his replacement by Governor Doug Burgum.

Subsequent to the deletion of Stenehjem's account, the employee also ordered the deletion of Deputy Attorney General Troy Seibel's account. Seibel left the office earlier this year after Wrigley informed him that he would be bringing in his own personnel for that position.

The original records requests were part of investigations into controversy over a cost overrun for newly-constructed office space for employees of the AG's office, but these deletions have become a controversy in their own right.

Wrigley addressed the matter on this episode of Plain Talk. He declined to name the employee during our interview, but indicated that afterward his office would be releasing the communication in which the account deletions were ordered, and that this would identify the employee.

He also declined to discuss what disciplinary actions his office would take with regard to this employee, saying they're an "internal personnel" matter. He added that he'd received at least one "plea" not to identify this person publicly, but said he had no legal authority to keep that information from the public.

There is "no way to ascertain" the number of emails that were deleted.

Wrigley also said that while he wasn't aware of any situation where records that needed to be retained for on-going matters of litigation, "the timeline was very rapid" for the removal of the accounts.

Wrigley said that he assumes a "vast" number of the emails in those accounts were also sent to other state employees, and so are maintained as records in those accounts, but with the accounts now gone, and with the state's IT personnel assuring him there's no way to get them back, there's also no way to measure how much information is now lost.

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