AG says nothing illegal in Huckabee destroying hard drives

AR News Bureau: Former Gov. Mike Huckabee's administration did nothing illegal when it destroyed government hard drives before he left office in January, Attorney General Dustin McDaniel said Wednesday. Huckabee's chief of staff, Brenda Turner, ordered the Dept. of Information Systems to destroy more than 90 hard drives before Huckabee's administration left office and Gov. Mike Beebe replaced him in January. Huckabee defended the decision, saying the action was legal because the hard drives contained sensitive and private information. He spent the last $13,000 in the Governor's Emergency Fund to cover the cost of destroying the drives.

McDaniel said he found nothing illegal in the action. What my staff determined was that although there are no specific code provisions authorizing everything that took place, we don't see anything that prohibits it either," McDaniel said. "We found no evidence that would justify either referring any criminal charges to the prosecutor ... or anything that would justify civil action." State law does not require constitutional officers to save any of their papers after leaving office, McDaniel said . . . [Read More]

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Tags: Arkansas, Dustin McDaniel, Mike Huckabee