(Fargo, ND) — EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is provided by WDAY Radio media partner North Dakota Monitor. It was written by MARY STEURER, AMY DALRYMPLE, AND JEFF BEACH.
About 2,700 pages of messages from former Attorney General Wayne Stenehjem’s state email account were released to media Wednesday afternoon after the long-sought records were discovered by state investigators in February.
The emails — once thought to be lost forever — were found on data copied from Stenehjem’s personal cellphone by the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation.
Most of the messages were ordinary, a review by the North Dakota Monitor found: Exchanges between Stenehjem and his staff about day-to-day business, updates on lawsuits, newsletters and invitations to public events, among others.
However, one email exchange discussed Nicholas Morgan-Derosier, a Grand Forks man who last year pleaded guilty to federal child porn charges and is linked to former Sen. Ray Holmberg.
The Forum reported in April 2022 that Holmberg and Morgan-Derosier exchanged numerous text messages while Morgan-Derosier was jailed.
An assistant attorney general forwarded Morgan-Derosier’s federal court complaint to Stenehjem as an FYI after it was filed in December 2021.
Holmberg was indicted in October 2023, with federal court documents alleging that the former lawmaker repeatedly traveled from North Dakota to the Czech Republic to have sex with children. Attorney General Drew Wrigley has said Stenehjem and Holmberg were close associates. Stenehjem’s cellphone data was obtained by law enforcement in connection with Holmberg’s federal court case, Wrigley said.
There is one email exchange with Holmberg. The former senator emailed an article from the Grand Forks Herald about a ban on special assessments for nonprofit cemeteries to Stenehjem, noting that the attorney general was quoted.
The North Dakota Monitor also requested other records from Stenehjem’s cellphone data, including personal emails that relate to state business.
“We will be providing others as they become available,” Executive Assistant to the Attorney General Suzie Weigel wrote in a Wednesday message sharing the documents.
Wrigley said he had no comment on Wednesday but planned to talk to the media on Thursday.
The emails do not appear to reference the over-budget lease and renovation of a south Bismarck building pursued by Stenehjem’s administration.
The records spanned from late 2021 to the time of Stenehjem’s death, which was Jan. 28, 2022. Many email chains appeared in the file multiple times. Numerous messages were redacted, citing exemptions to state public records law including attorney work product, attorney consultation and negotiation preparation.
A handful of messages sent from public officials, attorneys and others who knew Stenehjem congratulated him on his upcoming retirement.
Background
The emails became the subject of intense public speculation after Stenehjem died in office. Immediately after his death, the former attorney general’s executive assistant, Liz Brocker, directed IT staff to delete Stenehjem’s email account.
News of the account’s deletion first became public after members of the media submitted open records requests related to the south Bismarck building project.
In February, Mountrail County State’s Attorney Wade Enget decided not to bring criminal charges for the deletion of the emails.
Reviews by the state Information Technology Department, Microsoft and an outside expert concluded the emails could not be recovered.
Then in February, the BCI realized it had retained copies of Stenehjem’s emails, the North Dakota Monitor reported previously.
Not long after the attorney general’s death, Stenehjem’s family asked BCI personnel for help unlocking his personal phone. A year would pass before the agency had the technology to access the device. The agency ultimately returned the phone to Stenehjem’s family in 2023.
State police notified Wrigley in February that the software used to access Stenehjem’s phone had automatically copied and stored its contents. The state obtained a federal warrant to access the phone data as part of its investigation into Holmberg.
Holmberg has pleaded not guilty to the charges. He is set to go to trial in September.
