By
April Baumgarten
March 01, 2024 at 12:46 PM
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BISMARCK — Charges will not be filed in connection to the deletion of
former Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem’s emails.
In a memorandum obtained Friday, March 1, by The Forum, Mountrail County State’s Attorney Wade Enget said there is not enough evidence to warrant charges against anyone involved in
deleting Stenehjem’s emails shortly after the attorney general died two years ago.
Stenehjem was the attorney general from 2000 through Jan. 28, 2022, when he died in Bismarck. His family said he died from cardiac arrest.
An autopsy was not performed on his body.
Days after his death, Stenehjem’s spokeswoman Liz Brocker asked an information technology employee to delete her boss’ email account. Former Deputy Attorney General Troy Seibel signed off on the request.
Attorney General Drew Wrigley was appointed to succeed Stenehjem in February 2022. Seibel resigned a month later, and Brocker left the office in July 2022 following reports of the email deletion.
At the time the emails were deleted, North Dakota law was unclear on whether emails were considered a government record, Enget said in the memo. Communication must be defined as a “government record” to be considered part of a crime that alleges a person tampered with public records.
Electronic mail, or email, was not listed as a record in North Dakota law in 2022, Enget noted. The North Dakota Legislature amended the law last year to include emails as a public record.
Wrigley also suggested no laws were broken since the Attorney General’s Office had no pending records request for any of Stenehjem's emails before they were deleted.
Consultants determined the emails
are not recoverable.
Enget said he based his decision on information from
the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation. Wrigley asked the Montana office to review a $1.7 million budget overrun that occurred during Stenehjem’s tenure. The costs were associated with a lease procurement for office space.
The report also noted an investigation into the deleted emails.
Enget said his review of the lease case is still open.
North Dakota Rep. Jason Dockter, R-Bismarck, has been charged with misdemeanor speculating or wagering on an official action for personal benefit.
An audit found he and his business partners secured a lease to provide office space to Stenehem’s office.
Brocker's attorney, Tom Dickson, said he was not surprised by the decision. He determined early on that deleting the emails was not a crime, adding that the law passed in 2023 is not retroactive.
"The law at the time was pretty clear, and it wasn't (a) crime," Dickson said.
