This morning, the News Journal reported on its website that the FBI is investigating how 60,000 text messages from Commissioner Jeff Bergosh’s personal cell phone ended up with the attorneys representing Dr. Rayme Edler, who is suing the county. Read Escambia’s fighting for control of 60,000 texts a commissioner claims were ‘stolen’ by a rival.
- Jonathan Owens, former Commissioner Doug Underhill’s aide, told PNJ reporter Jim Little that the messages were on a thumb drive left by an unknown person on his desk at his county office in 2022. Owens gave the messages to Edler’s attorneys.
On my radio show, Commissioner Bergosh explained how the county’s IT department got his text messages.
“I was having issues with my iPhone, specifically the Apple ID, and I was concerned that the few public records that are on my phone might be lost,” said Bergosh.
“I understand I’m the custodian of my own personal records that are on my personal devices, whether it be my phone or my home computer. So I went to the county’s IT department… and with their assistance was able to get it downloaded and get the phone stripped so that I could start all over again.”
Bergosh said he asked the IT department to delete the files after they gave him the records.
How did Bergosh’s personal texts end up on a thumb drive on Owens’ desk?
- Does, or did, a “deep state” exist in the county?
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Ironically, Bergosh thanked the IT department for their help during the commissioners’ forum at the board’s Feb. 10, 2022 meeting:
“And finally, the IT staff, Bart (Siders – head of IT) and James McCasland, we had a significant problem with my iPhone. It was operator error and my fault completely, but there were public records on my phone that had to be preserved.
“The staff stayed here till seven o’clock at night on my behalf and helped me with a solution that preserved the public records.
“I want to publicly thank you for that. Without your help and Mr. McCasland, I don’t know what would’ve happened, but now we’re back. We’re back on track. So thank you for your help.”
Definition of “Deep State:”
A body of people, typically influential members of government agencies, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.
Here’s some black and white reality for the truth-addled and hopelessly gaslit over on ECW. (Keep in mind that Jacqueline is inner sanctum on this and knows exactly what is going on, and is playing other forum users by baiting them into commenting what she will only hint at in print. One of her many tells is the sunglasses emoticon as short-hand she throws down for being up to nasty business.)
Florida statute 812.014, on stolen property:
http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0800-0899/0812/Sections/0812.014.html
Here is the very first section of that statute (asterisks and caps my emphasis):
“(1)?A person commits theft if he or she knowingly obtains **OR USES**, or endeavors to obtain **OR TO USE**, the property of another with intent to, either temporarily or permanently:
(a)?Deprive the other person of a right to the property or a benefit from the property.
(b)?**APPROPRIATE THE PROPERTY TO HIS OR HER OWN USE OR THE USE OF ANY PERSON NOT ENTITLED TO THE PROPERTY**.
So Jonathan has already admitted, Trump style, that he broke the law, both in print news and during Andrew McKay’s interview.
Moreover, when Andrew messed up on his whitewashing program (poooor Jonathan just got dragged into all of this, shucks) and asked Jonathan if he had reported receiving the drive, Jonathan is on record saying no. (Note that when Jonathan careened into even more dangerous territory trying to expand on there being no protocol, the break music immediately came on, he shut up quick, and they changed the subject after break.)
Of course Edler’s attorneys should be concerned with (1) the private content of what Jonathan gave them; and (2) the provenance.
You can’t submit things to a court docket unless there is an official source of the record that can somehow be verified.
How would the court know if Jonathan and Doug had doctored the text messages?–Which is, by the way, the same argument Doug employed in his own public records case, to a legally absurd degree.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, boys. Guess you guys didn’t get the memo that while your Kool Aid drinkers may still buy into your lies and legal mumbo jumbo, judges have had it with their courtrooms being turned into three ring political circuses where defendants attempt to disinformation the public through the court docket. How many lawyers have been sanctioned, have lost their ability to practice, are being actively investigated for their participation in criminal activity, and are considered criminal co-conspirators at this point? Jonathan, you got a local PAC grifting the brainwashed for your defense fees is you need it?
Other things to keep in mind: just because Jonathan says it showed up on his desk, and he doesn’t know where it came from, that doesn’t mean it’s true. (And with him as with Doug, very likely not.)
–We don’t even know if there WAS a drive, or if somebody sucked it off the server.
–We don’t know how many people Jonathan shared it with beyond Edler’s attorneys.
–We don’t know if this is the *only* case where the D2 office has obtained private property messages and illegally put them around; we just know about this one because Jonathan screwed up and shared them with attorneys who knew it was dangerous territory.
–Jonathan’s theft by using private property illicitly obtained is a separate legal matter than whether everything he turned over to the attorneys is public record.
–The law is clear that it is content, and not the device or medium, that determines public record.
–Doug and Jonathan constantly used their personal devices for County business, and even loaded up Signal onto cell phones that they frequently used for County business. (Of course, they’re so tech inept they didn’t realize when they joined it was going to ping everybody on Signal in their contact lists.)
–Try as they might, ECW will not be successful in their smoke and mirror attempt to paint this as Commissioner Bergosh trying to hide messages. He has turned over public record from his private devices before, and openly acknowledged in public at a BCC meeting that he asked the tech department for help so he didn’t lose his public messages.
–It wasn’t illegal to ask the tech department to delete the messages from their server, as long as he retained the messages himself.
–When the previous IT director installed onion routers on the system I raised holy hell with the security of the system.
–When Doug and Jonathan left the County I stated publicly the Board needed to hire a white hat, independent consultant to come in and clean the systems up and close the back doors.
–Current interim IT director MacDonald was also interim IT director when Kevin Wade and I busted the fact that Doug had pushed the IT department to employ encryption tech on County email–encryption tech that the County Attorney’s office wasn’t even aware of until we outed it. Their reason for doing it was Edler needed it to be able to protect HIPPA communications.
–There was no County wide announce of this capability; apparently only a handful of people knew about it. You had to know to type the word “encrypt” somewhere in your email, and it would automatically encrypt.
–There is one of two possibilities here: either Jonathan or one of his agents obtained those messages directly from the County system, or somebody in IT made a hand-off to another person, whether it was Jonathan or someone who eventually shared them with him.
–Funny he can’t remember the date of this momentous occasion.
–When the piece of crap baby monitor with a limited batt was staged in a potted plant as a listening device, the D2 office came out blustering about how they had changed back to a turnkey lock from a swipe card prior to all that, knowing the card system was insecure. Was that true, or another lie? Who had access to either a card or a key to get into Jonathan’s office?
Huh. Come to think of it, where’s Doug on Jonathan’s defense?
Interesting sidenote: when Doug was refusing to fulfill my public record, and I was operating under the fantasy that the State’s Attorney’s office would hold him accountable to the law for it, I turned over to them the organizational system that Doug and Jonathan used to track public records (they had adopted the software that the Code Department was using at that time). There was a column to rank “Importance” from 5 to 1. Lawyers requests got a 5; mine and others scored a 0.
Guess who owned that database as its manager? Jonathan Owens, of course. Doug’s name was nowhere near any of those lists. It was all Jonathan’s baby, ownership wise.
Things that make you go hmmmm….