EDWARDSVILLE – Former Madison County state’s attorney Tom Gibbons formed a regional police squad to investigate Republicans about a rumor, according to public record of the investigation.
No evidence for the rumor ever turned up.
The team searched for political activity inside the courthouse and found it only on the Democratic side of the fence.
Top Democrats wound up explaining why party messages showed up in their computer mailboxes.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, who replaced Gibbons as prosecutor by court order, brought no charges against any Republicans.
Gibbons paid a price for the failure of the investigation last November, when voters rejected him for judge.
Voters rejected his assistant Crystal Uhe as his successor.
Voters granted a second term to county board Chair Kurt Prenzler, whose administration was the original target of the investigation.
By then Prenzler had lost county administrator Doug Hulme and information technology director Rob Dorman, who had helped him win his job in 2016.
The county board fired them last April, and they sued to get their jobs back.
Through Freedom of Information Act requests, Dorman has obtained a partial record of the investigation from Raoul’s office as well as from Sheriff John Lakin.
Raoul’s office produces records about once a week, Dorman said.
Raoul redacts some information and Lakin redacts much more.
Lakin redacts names of sources, but an index from Raoul’s office connects names to numbers on reports.
The case initiation report described a briefing at Edwardsville police station on Jan. 3, 2018, regarding formation of a multi jurisdictional task force.
“Multiple departments’ involvement were selected to alleviate any potential conflict of interest,” the report states.
It states that police were present from Edwardsville, Granite City, Collinsville, Alton, along with state police and representatives of Lakin and Gibbons.
“The investigation began to surround the infrastructure and history of the Madison County computer servers,” it states.
“It also created the appearance that unauthorized access to Madison County emails were also done without proper authority granted to him/her.”
It instructed officers not to use email, copy documents, transmit faxes, or make telephone calls from hard lines within county offices.
A report two days later stated that the task force discussed strategies to determine if privileged emails were being circulated.
“We decided the best course of action would be to create a ruse to see if it generated any calls or inquiries during the course of this investigation,” it states. “This would potentially assist in determining what was suspected.”
They sent fictitious messages, with no result.
Lakin deputy Brian Koberna applied for a warrant to seize computers on Jan. 8, 2018, stating a belief that evidence of crimes existed on them.
Associate Judge Neil Schroeder signed it and the team executed it.
On that date officer Jeff Donahey interviewed circuit judge William Mudge, now chief judge, at Edwardsville police station.
Donahey reported that Mudge stated he “had heard rumors around the courthouse that certain individuals in Madison County government had improperly accessed the email server looking at judges’ emails.”
Mudge told Donahey he wasn’t a county employee, he was a state employee.
Donahey asked who he heard rumors from and Mudge said he couldn’t remember but it had been several people.
He said he believed he heard it first from Gibbons.
Koberna wrote, “Judge Mudge stated that he has never confirmed that someone actually has his emails and has only received that information second hand.”
Mudge told Donahey he heard that Dorman, Hulme, and Steve Adler acquired the user rights to access everyone’s email in Madison County.
He said he went to a retirement party at Big Daddy’s bar, for information technology workers leaving county employment.
Koberna wrote, “Judge Mudge stated that he talked to them about hearing of someone possibly accessing emails.”
He said he couldn’t remember names except Jeff Kochan, and that Kochan confirmed the three individuals had full access.
He said he discussed it with chief judge David Hylla, who met with Dorman.
He said Hylla told him Dorman assured him it wasn’t happening and they would protect everyone’s communications.
Koberna wrote, “Judge Mudge said that he reviewed his own emails and said he could only surmise that they were looking at emails he had with Sherry Price from his campaign.”
Price runs a political and corporate consulting firm in St. Louis.
Mudge told Koberna that if he answered personal emails from county email, it would have been strictly innocuous and unintentional.
Inside a computer the task force seized, they found one of Price’s reports in the email account of county clerk Debra Ming-Mendoza.
When an unnamed officer showed the report to Ming-Mendoza at Edwardsville police station on Jan. 26, 2018, she “initially did not recognize the document.”
The officer wrote, “Then after reviewing it closer, she realized that it was from her 2014 campaign.”
On Jan. 29, 2018, officer Mark Krug interviewed Price by phone.
He wrote that she “advised that she did create the document for the purpose of presenting it to the law firm of Gori for the purpose of raising money.”
On the same date, at Edwardsville police station, team member Kenneth Wojtowicz interviewed Mudge’s wife, assistant state’s attorney Jennifer Mudge.
He showed her a spreadsheet she sent to her husband in 2016, and she told him it was a list of contacts provided to her by Allan Napp, who at the time was the Democratic party county chairman.
Officer Mike Lybarger pursued information through Apple and reported that, “I’ve been unable to locate any items of investigative interest.”
Krug interviewed information technology worker Rob Henke, who said he hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary or any improprieties.
Krug interviewed outside data contractor Travis Williams, who said nothing stood out as to unethical or illegal activity.
Task force leader David Vucich called chief judge Hylla, who conversed briefly and said he wouldn’t meet about it.
On Feb. 1, at Edwardsville police station, Vucich questioned board chairman Prenzler in an adversarial manner.
Vucich wrote, “I advised him that he was not under arrest and was free to stop talking with me at any time and the door behind me was unlocked.
“I explained that lying or furnishing false information to me is a crime and carries with it some criminal liability.”
He asked Prenzler if he heard anything illegal going on.
“He said he was aware of other cases that were on the other side but he did not want to discuss that right now,” Vucich wrote.
Prenzler showed him a handbook advising employees that their communications belong to the county and they shouldn’t expect privacy.
“I asked if he read paragraph five prohibiting employees from authorization without department head to conduct certain activities,” Vucich wrote. “I read the paragraph where the policy said it was a violation for employees to easvesdrop, record, or intercept electronic communications.”
He wrote that Prenzler “had difficulty answering pointed questions and would commonly change the topic or not answer the question correctly.”
Gibbons represented Prenzler and his office by statute as the county’s attorney all the while, until visiting judge Jerry Crisel took him off the case.
Crisel appointed Raoul, who closed the investigation without bringing charges.