Arkansas treasurer's top assistants testify on how reporters got confidential email after firing

Milligan aides: Tried to check legality

Arkansas Treasurer Dennis Milligan's two top assistants spent most of Thursday afternoon on the witness stand in a federal courtroom, offering their account of how a confidential email got into the hands of reporters in the spring of 2015 after Milligan fired employee David Singer.

The two also explained at length to a federal jury a monthslong series of problems that they said led to Singer's firing. They said Singer could not or would not perform various jobs, but, despite his claims, they weren't aware that anyone thought he was mentally ill.

In a lawsuit filed May 28, 2015, a month and a day after his termination, Singer accused Milligan of firing him over a perceived disability -- mental illness. Singer also accused Jim Harris, who was then Singer's chief of staff, of defaming him by distributing the email to the press.

The email was dated April 6, 2015. It was written by Harris to his then-chief of staff, Jason Brady, and discussed concerns and speculations about Singer.

The three-page email began with Harris noting that he had seen a Facebook posting of Singer's on an account that Singer created "to talk to his dead wife." Harris wrote, "Sometimes he posts messages two or three times a day as if she could read what he says."

Singer's wife, Wendy, died in 2014 from breast cancer.

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Harris attached a copy of one of Singer's Facebook postings that began, "Good evening my darling."

"For some time now," Harris wrote, "I have been concerned about his mental health." Harris said he overheard Singer telling someone on the phone that women in the office call him "a little troll" when they think he is out of earshot, but that they will "change their tune" when they find out he is a "secret agent."

Singer has denied making those remarks, and female co-workers have testified that they never heard anyone call him a troll.

Harris also wrote about his fears that a "delusional" co-worker might be manipulating Singer; his difficulty in trying to talk to Singer, who responded by "looking off into space;" and concerns that he said women in the office had relayed to him about Singer -- which the women in question have denied.

Grant Wallace, the current chief deputy treasurer who at the time was in charge of handling Freedom of Information Act requests from reporters, testified Thursday that he never saw the email until Freedom of Information requests started coming in April 28, 2015, the day after Singer's firing. Wallace testified that the requests varied, with some reporters seeking Singer's personnel file and others requesting emails between various executives in the office.

Wallace said the email wasn't ever in Singer's personnel file, but that he discovered it in the course of printing out a 4-foot-high stack of emails to comply with the Freedom of Information requests. He said he was immediately concerned that its release might violate the federal health care privacy law, prompting him, Brady and Gary Underwood, another member of the executive team, to hold a joint telephone conference call with Amy Ford, a former senior assistant attorney general who regularly took calls from the treasurer's office seeking legal advice.

Wallace and Brady testified that the purpose of the conference call was to determine whether the email should be released as part of the Freedom of Information requests. Because Ford was on her mobile phone at a conference, and the time to comply with the requests was growing short, Wallace said, each executive took turns reading parts of the email to Ford, but they didn't send her a copy.

Wallace said that after the call, he was left with the impression that "we had to release it."

Brady said Ford told them that "this is a communication between one manager and another, and it was a document that should be released."

Ford testified Monday that she didn't authorize the release of the email, and that the executives only referenced pieces of it during the phone call.

Wallace said he didn't find out until after the fact that, several days later, Harris went to KATV, Channel 7, and gave a copy of the email to reporter Marine Glisovic, telling her it was "the real story."

Harris has testified that he went to the station out of frustration, after hearing a televised report in which Singer claimed to have been wrongfully fired because he was a "whistleblower." Harris said his intention was to direct the station's attention to the email, which was part of a voluminous amount of information that Glisovic had already received through her Freedom of Information request but hadn't had time to sort through.

Although Glisovic testified earlier that she thought the station posted the email on its website as early as May 4, she also said the website wasn't working correctly and that she couldn't verify the date.

Harris testified that he never would have taken the email to the station if he didn't believe, from talking to his executive team, that the attorney general's office had authorized its release. He said he didn't talk to Ford directly.

Defense attorneys Byron Freeland and Kathlyn Graves said it wasn't Harris' trip to the TV station that led to the release of the email. They suggested that even though the email that was never meant to be seen beyond the treasurer's office had already been distributed by the office to some reporters, it also may have been released with the filing of the lawsuit on May 28, presumably by the plaintiffs' attorneys or someone associated with them. The defense attorneys said that would torpedo the lawsuit's defamation claim that Harris caused the email to be published by KATV.

Singer's attorneys have denied attaching the email to the lawsuit. Still, defense attorneys note that no proof has been presented to show that the email was published anywhere before that date, even if some reporters had a copy of it. Some plaintiffs' witnesses have recalled seeing it on or after May 24 on the Arkansas Times' blog.

Metro on 02/03/2017

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