Justice says employees who destroy evidence should be terminated 

Addressing an order by a federal magistrate that said state officials intentionally destroyed evidence in a lawsuit against it, Gov. Jim Justice on Wednesday touted his office’s transparency. 

“Everybody knows, anybody in my office, or any of our secretaries — everybody knows I expect everybody to be transparent,” Justice said. “I expect everybody to be honest. I expect everybody to be absolutely open book. Whatever you want to look at I think we ought to be able to show everyone anything that is within our capabilities or reason to be able to do so.”

Last week, Justice’s chief of staff Brian Abraham said it was state Department of Technology policy to delete emails of employees who leave employment. Abraham said during the Oct. 26 press briefing there is “no basis whatsoever for any allegation that emails were intentionally deleted from any agency.”

On Wednesday, the governor said employees who destroy evidence or who disregard orders to produce it will have a “very, very, very long and difficult day.”

“If they’ve done what it is alleged that they did do, then they have to be terminated,” Justice told reporters during Wednesday’s press briefing. “That’s all there is to it.”

Justice’s comments came two days after an order by U.S. Magistrate Omar Aboulhosn recommending a judge grant the plaintiff’s request for summary judgment in a federal jails case. The recommendation outlined issues getting access to discovery, including employee emails, inmate grievances, incident reports and other records.

Aboulhosn wrote that the “only logical explanation” about the loss of evidence is that the defendants intentionally destroyed it. Defendants in the lawsuit include Betsy Jividen, former commissioner of the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, former Southern Regional Jail superintendent Michael Francis and former chief correctional officer Larry Warden. 

Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia chalked those issues up to “administrative problems.”

“We did have some administrative problems where we failed to do so, but the individuals who were responsible for that failure were properly disciplined and that situation has been corrected,” Sorsaia said.

Sorsaia said he has no evidence that anyone intentionally destroyed evidence or took action to hide it from disclosure. 

“I will tell you in all due respect to the magistrate, we disagree with that contention,” Sorsaia  said. “We will agree that there were some mistakes in that process by individuals, and those individuals no longer have any responsibility for future discovery. We’ve taken steps to clean that up. But I can say that I respectfully disagree with the magistrate that we intentionally failed to disclose evidence.”