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BISMARCK – Six months after former Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem’s email account was deleted in January, North Dakota information technology officials have assured state leaders there is no way to recover deleted messages.
But an investigation released this week by State Auditor Josh Gallion and a report tracked by Forum News Service found that the North Dakota Information Technology Department (ITD) did not bring in an outside firm to help recover Stenehjem’s emails, despite pressure from outside the agency.
That changed Thursday, Sept. 29, when ITD Chief Technology Officer Duane Schell said the department had begun the process of hiring private consulting firm Planet Technologies to help with email rescue efforts.
Shell’s dispute with the attorney general’s office has led ITD to delay contracting with an outside company, but critics suspect the state’s search for lost emails is a deliberate attempt to withhold information.
ITD officials remain steadfast in their belief that the deleted data cannot be recovered, Schell said.
Three days after Stenehjem’s death in January, ITD officials, led by Liz Brocker, a longtime aide to the Republican attorney general, deleted his government email account. Brocker instructed ITD to remove former Deputy Attorney General Troy Seibel’s email account after he resigned in May.
Brocker stepped down in July while new Attorney General Drew Wrigley was responding to a request for documents alleging that she orchestrated the impeachment.
Wrigley, who was appointed in February, condemned the broker’s actions and said he wanted to exhaust all options to retrieve the emails, which could shed light on the $1.7 million in expenses collected by the office under Stenehjem.
ITD officials told Wrigley over the summer that the emails “actually disappeared,” the attorney general said.
Wrigley told Forum News Service that ITD Deputy Chief Information Officer Greg Hoffman asked in a phone conversation in July to hire an outside technology company to help with email recovery.
Hoffman only intended Wrigley to look at the possibility of hiring a private firm and did not interpret Wrigley’s comments as asking to sign a contract, Schell said.
“I’m at a loss as to how to be clear,” Wrigley said of the question on the call with Hoffman.
David Samson / Forum
Shell said in an email it requested a bid from Planet Technologies in early August to help with recovery efforts. The consulting firm responded with a price of $9,240, but Shell did not pass on the offer because ITD did not believe it had received a request from Wrigley or the Legislature to enter into a contract with an outside company.
Shell asserted that ITD could have hired Planet Technologies without taking it from another state government.
Wrigley said he did not hear back from ITD after speaking with Hoffman, and assumed the agency had hired Planet Technologies. The Republican attorney general told a group of lawmakers this week that he was disappointed to learn that ITD was not included in the plan.
Wrigley said, “I understand … that ITD may have taken a different course than what was represented to me.” “That worries me too. Don’t tell me you’re going to see something… and then not.”
After speaking with the attorney general’s office on Thursday, Schell said it was a misunderstanding between the two agencies.
Galleon’s report to lawmakers on Tuesday focused primarily on spending by Stenehjem’s office in 2020, but several of the Republican auditor’s findings indicate that ITD did not take full advantage of the deleted emails.
When Gallien requested emails from the Stenehjem and Seibel accounts, NDIT Chief Information Officer Sean Riley said, “We have exhausted all efforts to retrieve the email in these two mailboxes and have determined that it cannot be recovered.”
However, Galion confirmed that ITD had not opened a support issue with email service provider Microsoft to help retrieve Stenehjem’s account information.
Shell ITD knew he was logging in and out of the state’s email system, and believed the emails would not be returned for more than 30 days after the account was deleted.
Email records published in the report show that shell deleted accounts are no longer available in a standard document that asked a Microsoft support employee in late July.
In response to Shell, Microsoft employee Michael Anderson said, “I want to make sure we’re clear on one point… just because an account is deleted doesn’t mean the data is gone.”
Andersen notes that retention policies or legal holds that apply to the accounts may retain email data after deletion. Even after any existing holdings are removed from the account, the Microsoft system retains the corresponding data for six months unless the mailbox is “hard-deleted”.
Lawyers for horse-betting businesswoman Suzanne Balla last year placed a legal hold on Stenehjem’s records, including emails, and Balla is locked in a long court battle with the state. It is unclear whether the legal hold affects Stenehjem’s retention of deleted emails.
Democratic NPL Chairman Patrick Hart said he thinks there are government employees who don’t want deleted emails returned, adding that the budget overage combined with canceling the bill “reeks of a cover-up.”
I don’t want to say, “When there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Hart said, because I think we’re past the smoke. “I think the bonfire started flashing in the night.”
Stenehjem’s government email account may contain up to 20 years of sensitive records, and the dubious deletion of the paper trail speaks to a culture of lack of accountability at the Capitol, Hart said.
Kyle Martin / Forum
Shell rejected any suggestion that ITD was part of a scheme to hide information related to deleted email accounts.
“I can say with 100% confidence that there is no cover-up at the North Dakota Department of Information Technology,” Schell said. “We take great care and pride in being the custodians of the information on behalf of the state government and will not do anything against anyone without their consent.”
After Galion filed his report, lawmakers referred the findings to Wrigley for further investigation, who said he would hire an outside law enforcement agency to look into any possible wrongdoing. It is not yet clear whether investigators will dig into the deletion of the email accounts.
Shell ITD plans to finalize an agreement to hire Planet Technologies on Thursday or Friday. He expects it won’t take long for the company to start operations.
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