FARGO (KFGO) – North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley says some emails deleted after the death of late Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem that were thought to be lost forever have been retrieved.
What Wrigley believes are a “couple thousand” emails from Stenehjem’s personal phone that were linked to his state account were recently recovered by the Bureau of Criminal Investigation after an agent discovered that they were accessible using a digital program that was not available in the past.
Wrigley says the phone was initially examined at the request of Stenehjem’s family who asked whether photographs that he had taken could be recovered prior to his funeral two years ago. Wrigley says the BCI just recently determined that there was a back up “digital copy” of the phone’s contents.
“A copy had been made of Wayne’s personal cell phone, and on that cell phone – and this is not out of the ordinary, the days of two phones are gone – Wayne had installed the state Outlook account onto his cell phone and it had his emails,” Wrigley says. “Either the kill directive didn’t get to that phone [to] erase the emails from it, or it did and the emails were cashed in the phone.”
A letter detailing the revelation and timeline of the retrieved emails was sent from Wrigley’s office to Wade Enget – the Mountrail County State’s Attorney who was asked to review an outside investigation into the deletion of the emails. Last week, Enget said he would not file charges against anyone in relation to the deleted emails. A copy of Wrigley’s letter to Enget is linked below.
According to Wrigley, it will take time to determine whether the emails will play any role in the investigation of former senate majority leader Ray Holmberg of Grand Forks, a close friend of Stenehjem.
Holmberg faces federal charges related to international travel where he’s accused of having sex with underage boys.
Wrigley shared the latest development in response to an open records request that KFGO News had made not long after Stenehjem’s death.
Stenehjem’s long-time administrative assistant and his deputy attorney general deleted his emails.
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