JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — The Governor’s Office has until 1 p.m. Friday to submit the names of every person who downloaded and/or used a message-destroying app on their phones.
In a lawsuit brought by a St. Louis attorney against Gov. Eric Greitens and his office for Sunshine Law violations, Cole County Circuit Judge Jon Beetem also ordered that all data cellphones are to be preserved. Phones owned by the State of Missouri are also to be secured.
The order, issued Thursday, comes as Greitens is set to resign at 5 p.m. Friday and Robert Thomas, the attorney for the Office of the Governor, could get new marching orders from soon-to-be-Gov. Mike Parson.
Beetem ordered the defendants to turn over “The names of all people who worked for the Office of the Governor, at any time during the term of Governor Eric Greitens, including the governor himself, who at any time downloaded and/or used Confide.
“Corresponding to the above names, Defendants are ordered to identify the a) number of phones that downloaded and/or used Confide associated with each person identified, b) the make and model of each phone and, c) the mobile number for each corresponding phone, and d) all Confide screen names and/or monikers used by each person.
“For each phone identified, the identity of the current possessor of the phone.”
All of the must be submitted to the plaintiff, which is Ben Sansone, by 1 p.m. June 1 mear hours before Greitens is expected to step down.
With Greitens announcement that he was leaving office, concerns about evidence preservation were brought up and in the order, Beetem instructed that any evidence in the possession of outgoing staff member be preserved, including information of personal phones. The defendants were also instructed to “secure and preserve” any cell phone owned by the State of Missouri along with the data contained on them.
Alisha Shurr was a reporter for The Missouri Times and The Missouri Times Magazine. She joined The Missouri Times in January 2018 after working as a copy editor for her hometown newspaper in Southern Oregon. Alisha is a graduate of Kansas State University.
