BISMARCK, N.D. (KFGO) – An interim legislative committee heard testimony from North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley and an independent investigator Tuesday regarding a report from the Montana Division of Criminal Investigation probing a significant cost overrun at a state-leased building as well as the deletion of emails following former N.D. AG Wayne Stenehjem’s death and former Deputy AG Troy Seibel’s resignation.
Wrigley told members of the Legislative Audit and Fiscal Review Committee that he was informed on Monday that Morton County States Attorney Allen Koppy, who had originally agreed to take on the determination of whether criminal charges will be filed in the matters, would no longer be able to take the case.
Wrigley said the case does not have a prosecuting attorney assigned to it as a result, and that he would likely refer it back to Burleigh County, despite States Attorney Julie Lawyer having earlier recused her office due to its employment of Liz Brocker, one of the individuals named as a “suspect” in the Montana report. Brocker was Stenehjem’s executive assistant and requested both Stenehjem and Seibel’s email accounts be deleted. Seibel was also named as a suspect in the report.
Legislators peppered Wrigley with questions about whether the email deletion was criminal in nature or whether he believed any laws had been broken after reviewing the report. Wrigley said his office had “done our job” in the case by alerting legislators and the state auditor of the overrun and related issues, but deferred any judgement on whether there were “elements of an offense” involved to the yet-to-be-named independent prosecutor. Because the building was leased by the Attorney General’s office, Wrigley said he had to recuse his office from case due to the legal conflict. “A lot of things (in the report) are very alarming,” he said. “But it would improper for me to offer up an opinion about whether I think crimes have been committed, there’s evidence of a crime, there’s evidence supporting that, or not.” Wrigley said he could not provide a timeline for when more information will be made available in the case, but that any prosecutor who takes it up should not take too long to make a charging decision since the investigation is mostly complete.
The investigator from Montana, Dan Guiberson, told the committee he was surprised that his report was released to the public due to there being an active criminal investigation underway into the building overrun and email deletion matters. Guiberson called his investigation “frustrating” as it related to trying to get assistance from the Burleigh County States Attorney’s office and Brocker, and not being able to subpoena certain witnesses in the case.
The building project at the center of the investigation is owned in part by State Representative Jason Dockter. The state signed a lease for the building in April of 2020 and an extensive remodel of the building began, directed by Seibel. Montana investigators found that Seibel managed the project with little to no input from other Attorney General’s office supervisors and financial professionals. “Invoices, expenditures, payments, and records were not organized or professionally processed. The undetailed, ambiguous, and large monetary invoices that were requested lacked specific and necessary details,” the report concluded.
Two days before the end of the biennium in June of 2021, Seibel instructed the chief financial officer for the AG’s office to pay over $1.3 million of what was then thought to be a $1.7 million overrun, which was the first knowledge any other employee in AG’s office had of it, according to investigators. The CFO, Becky Keller, told investigators she “almost choked” when she heard the amount.
An attorney for the building’s management company disputed significant findings in the Montana report with regard to his clients during Tuesday’s hearing.