Brock: “The Texts were Never Deleted From My Phone.”
BLYTHEWOOD – The Town’s MPA Strategies legal team has been dismissed and settlement talks with MPA – the Town’s former marketing firm – are moving forward.
Monday’s town council meeting, however, was dominated by Councilman Rich McKenrick continuing to review and defend the Town’s almost three years of MPA litigation and almost $700,000 in litigation expenses. He also tried to convince council that if MPA Strategies’ Ashley Hunter is sanctioned by the court for destroying evidence, the town could recoup some of its money.
“It is my understanding that the Town could recoup a large portion of its legal fees spent defending the Town against lawsuits brought by MPA. That amount could exceed $500,000,” McKenrick said, referring to how much he thinks the Town could recoup from the sanctions.
In a statement issued to WLTX-TV on Dec. 11, the Maynard Nexsen Law Firm in Columbia, represented by Attorney David Black as the Town’s lead attorney on the MPA legal issues, also touted the large amount of money the Town would be allowed to recoup from sanctions ordered by Judge Clifton Newman against Hunter.
“The order allows the town to recoup the majority of its legal fees and costs against Ashley Hunter and MPA for destruction of evidence,” according to the statement issued by Maynard Nexsen.
However, in his ruling on sanctions during a public hearing on Aug. 9, 2023, Judge Newman made no mention at all of how much money the Town would be allowed to recoup or whether it would recoup any money at all – only that such a determination on sanctions would be made by the trial judge if the case should end up going to court.
“The remedy for spoilation will be determined by the trial court,” Judge Newman said.
So far, however, the Town’s attorneys have presented little of what they say is proof that evidence has been destroyed.
During Monday night’s meeting, McKenrick focused on an email that he claimed proves Brock destroyed evidence. He said he obtained the email through an FOI request.
That email, McKenrick said, was sent by Brock to an attorney on June 8, 2021. The email described how a computer forensic expert named Stephen would download information from Brock’s devices in response to an FOI (Freedom of Information) request from The Country Chronicle.
McKenrick would not show the email to The Voice, but did read it aloud during council meeting, as follows:
“Stephen, here’s how I think is the best way to handle this – export and download all the text information and all the html files since you said each conversation is separate and would make it easier to search. I’ll send you the FOI request so you can compare the search criteria with the document.
[The FOI requests for Brock’s documents were numbered as follows]
1 & 2 – [conversations] related to MPA Strategies and any conversations between council members and the mayor
3 & 4 – my conversations with Ashley Hunter
5 & 6 – my conversations with Joseph Dickey
7 & 8 – my conversations with Barbara Ball
9 – I will let my attorney handle this one – all personnel, employees, businesses and Town of Blythewood cellular and landline phone calls.
Once the device is copied, send an unredacted copy plus the query parameters to my attorney and he and I will go through them.
Once those and only those conversations at town level [are extracted for the response], of the remaining conversations, any data prior to 10-1-2020 shall be destroyed and any data after 5-24-2021 shall be destroyed. Is this do-able?”
“This [email] is going to become public,” McKenrick said. “And when it does, it’s going to be a shame for Blythewood. There is no question in my mind, Donald Brock should resign from the Blythewood Town Council.”
“Let’s be clear,” Brock told The Voice after the meeting “The FOI request asked for documents from my devices produced only ‘from October 1, 2020 through present’ [May 6, 2021]. That’s what I submitted from the master copy. I was instructing Stephen to destroy texts on the master copy that were produced prior to October 1, 2020 and after May 24, 2021, which were outside the dates specified in the FOI request.
“Councilman McKenrick is hung up on my use of the word destroy,” Brock said. “He doesn’t understand the forensic process and is just throwing out words that sound bad. His misinterpretation of the wording in my email implies that evidence on my phone was destroyed. That’s not the case. He is blurring the line between deleting text messages from my phone and deleting non-responsive communications from a master copy after they were downloaded off my phone.”
After initially calling the email “very damning evidence,” McKenrick conceded at the end of his speech that, “the email could be twisted a lot of ways – what was meant, what was destroyed, what wasn’t destroyed, and if there’s a master copy somewhere.”
“Those texts that were, quote, destroyed, were texts that had been downloaded off my phone,” Brock said. “The original texts should still be on my phone, the native device.”