Ep. 22 Wait Until You Hear This One

Ep. 22 WAIT UNTIL YOU HEAR THIS ONE

[AI VO] (0:00 - 0:31)

Before we start, a quick heads up. Some of the voices you'll hear reading documents in this podcast are AI generated, but the words are real. They come straight from public records, produced by real people inside government.

Further, if you're a public employee who's been asked to bend the rules, or if you've seen something that just doesn't sit right, we want to hear from you, confidentially, off the record. Your identity stays with us. You can reach out to us at contact at thepublicrecordsofficer.com.

[AI VO] (0:41 - 0:56)

When Mr. Myers argued that the penalty sought shocks the conscience of the $2.2 million, what really shocks the conscience is the behaviors of Auditor McLean and Mr. Turnbull. That's what shocks the conscience.

[Nixon] (0:57 - 1:39)

What you just heard were AI generated readings from the transcript of a court hearing I accidentally had to sit through on a PRA case. That case is Elduen versus Grace Harbor County. That's right. 

I was not in court that morning to hear any of this. I was there because I was suing someone else. And the only reason I was still sitting in that courtroom when Thurston County Superior Court Judge Christine Schaller said that an election in Grace Harbor County was not properly conducted was because the government's lawyer, in my case, forgot to show up to court wearing a coat and tie as his protocol for lawyers. 

Yeah, this one gets weird right off the bat. 

[AI VO] (1:42 - 1:52)

You're listening to the Public Records Officer Podcast, where we fight for your right to know. Now, here's your host, Jamie Nixon. 

[Nixon] (1:59 - 6:01)

Hello and welcome. This is the Public Records Officer Podcast. I am your host, Jamie Nixon. 

Today, I want to tell you about one of the most genuinely bizarre ways I have ever stumbled into a story. This one didn't come from a whistleblower or a public records request that I had submitted, not through some anonymous envelope stuffed under my door like Woodward and Bernstein or some shit. I found this one because of courtroom formal wear. 

On Friday, July 24th, I was in Thurston County Superior Court for a scheduling hearing in one of my own Public Records Act cases. This one is against South Puget Sound Community College. That's a story for another day. 

My hearing was supposed to go before this other one. The attorney representing the college showed up without a coat and tie. Now, apparently in Judge Schaller's courtroom, that's a bit of a thing. 

She told him not to appear in her courtroom on official business trust like that again. And because of it, our matter got pushed to the back of the line for that day's list of hearings in that morning. So there I sat waiting and waiting. 

And instead of spending 10 minutes handling my matter and then heading out the door, I found myself sitting through another Public Records Act case that I knew absolutely nothing about. Elduen v. Grace Harbor County at this point was in its penalties hearing phase. 

This was a penalties hearing in that case. Penalties hearings, for those who don't know, are the second trial, so to speak, in a Public Records Act case. This is where the agency has already lost. 

And now the court is going to assign whatever penalties against the agency the court deems appropriate under law. And as it started, I wasn't thinking, you know, holy shit, I've stumbled into a major election integrity story. I was thinking more something like, well, I guess this is what I'm doing for my next hour. 

And then the judge started talking, and I ended up starting to text a friend about what was happening in real time. This is a friend who knows my work and would understand why I was texting them out of nowhere about something like this. So one of my texts says, Judge Schaller just said that an election in Grace Harbor wasn't conducted fairly. 

She said it appears intentional and willful in her opinion, but she wasn't hearing that matter particularly. Then next, I said, she called it an interference with the election process. Then I said, she ruled Grace Harbor auditor's office acted in bad faith and intentional noncompliance in this PRA case. 

And then I said, she found agency dishonesty, their explanations were not credible. She basically called the county's witnesses liars, but in judge speak. Well, now I have the certified transcript from that hearing. 

And apparently I owe judge Schaller an apology because some of that wasn't even judge speak. She was considerably more direct than I even, I remembered. But before we get to what she said, we need to go back to Ocean Shores, Washington in 2023. 

When candidates file for office in Washington, ballot order is not supposed to be selected according to, you know, who the elections office likes best, who has the cooler name or, you know, who brought a dozen donuts to the office or whatever. There's what's called a lot draw. In Grace Harbor County in May, 2023, election officials conducted the candidate lot draw. 

For the Ocean Shores mayor's race, the official result placed Frank Elduen first and his opponent, John Martin second. Here's an AI voiceover reading of judge Schaller explaining it during the April merits hearing. 

[AI VO] (6:02 - 6:13)

When the lot draw was done, as it relates to the mayor of Ocean Shores in that year, Mr. Elduen was to be listed first and the other candidate was to be listed second, Mr. Martin. 

[Nixon] (6:13 - 6:46)

Pretty simple. Elduen won, Martin too. Then months later, the military ballot appeared online and the order had been reversed. 

Martin was first, Elduen was second. Well, Elduen noticed. And according to Judge Schaller's description of what happened next, Grace Harbor elections administrator, Scott Turnbull, believed the county's election computer system had the order wrong. 

So he changed it. 

[AI VO] (6:46 - 6:54)

Mr. Turnbull, who was the elections administrator, mistakenly believed that the computer system was wrong. And so he changed it. 

[Nixon] (6:55 - 8:36)

I'm going to give everybody just a second with that sentence. All right. I mean, the elections administrator apparently believed the election system was wrong. 

So he changed the candidate order. Why did he think the computer was wrong? Well, there was supposed to be a paper record documenting the actual lot draw. 

And they couldn't find it. The process, according to the evidence described by the court, was that the paper lot draw form was supposed to be scanned into the computer system. And then the physical original could be recycled. 

Except this one apparently didn't make it into the system where it belonged. Instead, judge Schaller said the record wound up sitting on auditor Joe McLean's desk for months. Then in October, 2023, McLean says he found it while sorting through paperwork. 

He gave it to Turnbull. Turnbull scanned it, emailed it to himself, saved it into the system with a numerical file name instead of something descriptive, and placed it in a folder where later electronic searches would not readily find it. Then the paper copy was discarded. 

Now, here's where the Public Records Act story begins, because people started asking for that document. And the county couldn't seem to find it. Except the two people at the center of this story knew the document existed. 

They had both literally handled it. Needless to say, Judge Schaller was not impressed. 

[AI VO] (8:37 - 8:47)

It is disingenuous to argue that I searched the record system. I couldn't find it. Yet I know the document exists because I just had my hands on it four days ago. 

[Nixon] (8:47 - 9:04)

So she explains here essentially that a reasonable search did not require Sherlock Holmes, right? Asked Turnbull. Turnbull had scanned the thing. 

Turnbull had emailed the thing to himself. Search his email. And then Judge Schaller delivered one of those wonderfully unambiguous judicial sentences. 

[AI VO] (9:05 - 9:12)

This is not a close call for the court in any fashion. Grace Harbor did not conduct an adequate search for responsive records. 

[Nixon] (9:14 - 10:52)

Damn. Not a close call. And I want to emphasize something here because it becomes important later. 

Judge Schaller was not just rubber stamping everything the Elduen’s argued here. She dismissed an earlier claim because the statute of limitations had run. She declined to find a separate violation based on the county's general record-keeping rules. 

And she repeatedly distinguished the Public Records Act issues actually before her from the broader question of what happened during this election. In other words, this was not a judge throwing every available grenade at Grace Harbor County, right? She was drawing lines. 

Some claims survived. Some did not. And the claims that survived were the ones where she concluded the evidence was overwhelming, which makes what came later all the more remarkable because there was another request. 

Another public records request at play in this matter. There were two total. That request involved text messages between Auditor McLean and Elections Administrator Turnbull. 

And we have a small problem. McLean had some records. Turnbull? 

Nothing. No text messages. Defense counsel explained what happened during the penalties hearing. 

And I swear to God, I am not punching up this quote for comedic effect. This is in the certified transcript. You can find it on our website. 

[AI VO] (10:52 - 10:59)

Mr. Turnbull testified at his deposition that he changed phones almost like we change our shirts four or five times. 

[Nixon] (10:59 - 12:05)

Four or five phones almost like changing shirts. Cool. Apparently the Grace Harbor Auditor's Office was operating some sort of Verizon wireless witness protection program. 

Now, to be fair to defense counsel, his argument was straightforward. Right. Turnbull had replaced the phones before this particular request came in. 

He checked his current phone. The old messages weren't there. McLean still had messages and had supplied what he had. 

Therefore, the county argued Elduen had effectively received the conversations that he had requested anyway. OK, that's the defense. There's just one really substantial problem with that defense. 

Judge Schaller did not believe them. Not kind of didn't believe them. Not I have some concerns. 

She did not find Turnbull credible. And she did not accept the explanation that cycling through phones somehow absolved him of the obligation to preserve public records documenting the county's business. 

[AI VO] (12:06 - 12:17)

I don't find credible, as I've already indicated, his explanation as to just that he has had multiple phones. He didn't maintain any records. I do not find that credible. 

[Nixon] (12:18 - 12:46)

And here's where the destruction of one side of a text conversation creates an enormous accountability problem. I mean, McLean produced what he represented as the responsive communications, but Turnbull's copies were gone. So how do you verify that McLean produced everything? 

You can't. Normally, maybe you could rely on the official's sworn assurance. Except the court didn't believe Auditor McLean either. 

[AI VO] (12:47 - 13:13)

Now, listen carefully to this part. Mr. Elduen actually doesn't know that he has all the text messages. He only knows what Mr. McLean provided. Mr. Eldwyn has nothing to compare it to because he doesn't have Turnbull's texts. And they certainly cannot rely on Mr. McLean saying, yep, this is everything, because what he says is not credible, and what Mr. Turnbull says is not credible. 

[Nixon] (13:13 - 14:26)

There it is. This is why digital records destruction matters so much. When one side of a conversation disappears, the damage isn't just limited to the specific messages that vanished. 

There's a lot that's lost. You lose your ability to authenticate the surviving side. You lose contacts, attachments, the starts and stops, you know, the messages someone selectively retained or didn't retain. 

And perhaps most importantly, you lose the ability to know exactly what it was that you did lose. That uncertainty is not a reason to treat records destruction casually. That uncertainty is the harm. 

Now, let's go back to Judge Schaller's penalties ruling, because this is the part that had me texting my friend like I had just won the damn lottery. The county's lawyer argued that a $2.2 million penalty demand shocked the conscience. Right. 

So it's a defense lawyer. Oh, my God, $2.2 million, Your Honor. How could it be? 

It shocks the conscience. Judge Schaller responded that something else shocked her conscience. 

[AI VO] (14:26 - 14:31)

What really shocks the conscience is the behaviors of Auditor McLean and Mr. Turnbull. 

[Nixon] (14:31 - 14:49)

She said she did not find it credible, the idea that the lot draw record was innocently lost. She questioned the purportedly accidental change in ballot order. She even made verbal quotation marks when talking about the record later being discovered on McLean's desk. 

And then. 

[AI VO] (14:49 - 14:57)

And that is truly what shocks the conscience, that in Grays Harbor, that particular election was not properly conducted. 

[Nixon] (14:58 - 15:12)

An election was not properly conducted. That was said from the bench in open court. Judge Schaller continued. 

[AI VO] (15:12 - 15:38)

I think I especially try and keep that in mind when there are cases that are so egregious, like I think this case is egregious as it relates to what happened. I cannot enter a penalty that punishes the auditor and Mr. Turnbull from the actual behavior as it relates to what they did in that election, which I've already indicated is it's terrible and it appears intentional. 

[Nixon] (15:39 - 16:24)

It's important to note that qualification she made there. Judge Schaller was not hearing an election contest, which is one of the things that hit me while I was watching this. I mean, the context around this PRA case was just amazing. 

She was not deciding criminal liability. She repeatedly said those issues were outside the legal question before her. The Public Records Act case could not be used as a backdoor to punish people for conduct the court was not formally adjudicating. 

And that is an important judicial restraint. But it does not erase what she said about the evidence she had seen. She then described Auditor McLean's responsibility for allowing the ballot order to be changed contrary to the actual lot draw. 

And she said this. 

[AI VO] (16:24 - 16:33)

All of that calls into question everything that Mr. Turnbull and Mr. McLean have said, because they are just trying to see why a CYA. 

[Nixon] (16:34 - 17:03)

For those who don't know, that means cover your ass, cover your ass from the bench. So apparently my text to my friend saying the judge basically called them liars and judge speak was unnecessarily charitable. But we weren't finished. 

Judge Schaller went through the aggravating factors used to determine Public Records Act penalties. She found the county's explanations completely unreasonable. 

[AI VO] (17:03 - 17:12)

There is nothing reasonable about anything Grays Harbor said as it relates to their failure to produce the lot draw document or the text messages. 

[Nixon] (17:12 - 17:13)

Then she brings up bad faith. 

[AI VO] (17:13 - 17:16)

Yes, there has been bad faith in this case. 

[Nixon] (17:16 - 17:19)

And on the text messages specifically, she says. 

[AI VO] (17:19 - 17:34)

On the text messages, the issue with the bad faith and intentional noncompliance is that there then is no ability to compare actual text messages to see whether or not Mr. McLean disclosed everything, since the court finds that he is not credible either. 

[Nixon] (17:34 - 17:37)

Then Judge Schaller actually labeled the next aggravating factor out loud. 

[AI VO] (17:37 - 17:47)

Agency dishonesty. Yes, I find that the Grays Harbor Auditor's office engaged in dishonesty. Their explanations are not credible. 

[Nixon] (17:47 - 19:19)

Listen to that list. Bad faith, intentional noncompliance, agency dishonesty, unreasonable explanations, uncredible witnesses, missing or destroyed text messages, and an election the judge said was not properly conducted involving conduct she described as apparently intentional and willful. Holy shit. 

If this were like an HBO political thriller, I would tell the writers to dial it back about, you know, 20%. Nobody's going to believe a judge would say all that in one hearing. Here we are. 

So now we get to the money, right? The penalty, the actual penalties. Now, Washington's Public Records Act allows the court to impose penalties of up to $100 per day per record for certain violations. 

That doesn't mean every violation gets a $100 fine per record per day. Courts look at aggravating factors, mitigating factors, the agency's behavior, the public importance of the records, timeliness, and deterrence among other considerations they have. And Judge Schaller did all of that here in detail. 

For the Lot Draw record itself, she found 184 days of denial, right? One record. And she imposed a $90 per day penalty on that. 

That comes to $16,560. She went on to explain why. 

[AI VO] (19:20 - 19:27)

A truly egregious violation by withholding that document. And that is why I'm assessing a penalty that is at the top of the range. 

[Nixon] (19:27 - 20:47)

90 bucks. I mean, that's near the ceiling. And from my reading of the findings that she gave that makes total sense, right? 

Then we come to Turnbull's text messages. The judge found those records had been denied for 597 days, running from the day of the request all the way through to the day of that hearing. The plaintiffs argued for a very large number of violations. 

They wanted individual messages treated as individual records. And using their methodology, they requested more than $2.2 million. Judge Schaller rejected that approach. 

And let me say something here that may irritate people who want me to just scream, maximum penalty. I'm not prepared to say 2.2 million was necessarily the right number. Courts have discretion for a reason. 

Grouping records can make sense. A penalty needs to punish and deter violations without becoming arbitrary. Judge Schaller decided not to count each individual text separately. 

Instead, she grouped the missing communications into 29 text threads. Fair enough. So 29 groups, 597 days. 

Then she assigned the daily rate $3. $3 a day. 

[AI VO] (20:47 - 21:03)

I am doing it by the text thread, and I find there were 29 text threads, that the withholding, as I already indicated, is 597 days. And I am imposing a penalty, as it relates to those records, of $3 a day. 

[Nixon] (21:03 - 33:49)

29 times 597 times 3 gives us $51,939 for the second penalty. Add the $16,560 for the lot draw record, and the current PRA penalty award comes to $68,499. And that's before the separate attorney fee and cost determination. 

And look, $51,000 is not nothing, right? If somebody handed me $51,939 right now, I wouldn't be tossing it over my shoulder and walking away all grumpy about it. The aggregate number sounds significant. 

But that's not the part that troubles me. What troubles me is what the $3 a day rate communicates, I think, about destroyed digital evidence after the court's own findings in this case. I want to be extremely careful and deferential here, more careful than I usually am. 

Courts matter. Courts matter to me. In a democracy, we have to have functioning, viable, legitimate courts. 

An independent judiciary is incredibly important. Public confidence in judges, deciding cases based on evidence and law, rather than politics or public pressure, matters tremendously. Every time somebody loses the case and immediately declares the judge corrupt, partisan, or illegitimate simply because they don't like the outcome, that corrodes something we desperately need in a functioning democracy. 

And I have cases before these courts, to be clear. And so when I criticize a judicial decision, I want to be very clear about the difference between criticizing an exercise of judicial discretion and attacking the legitimacy of the judge or the court. I think that Judge Schaller did something incredibly important here. 

I think Judge Schaller is kind of a baller. She listened to government officials. She considered their explanations. 

And where she found those explanations unbelievable, she said so. She found bad faith, and she said it right to them. She found agency dishonesty. 

She said the conduct surrounding the election appeared intentional and willful, and that it wasn't properly conducted. Those are not easy things for a court to say about public officials. It takes a lot for a court to get there. 

She also ruled against the plaintiffs, where she believed the law required, right? I mean, she dismissed an early request because of the statute of limitations. She refused to use this PRA penalty, proceeding to punish election conduct that was not legally before her. 

And that's what judges are supposed to do. They're supposed to draw those legal lines, even when the larger circumstances are ugly. And even though they may want to jump into a fight, they don't, because they're not allowed to do that. 

I have a ton of respect for the way she handled it. I still think there's an issue with the $3 a day. And I think those thoughts can coexist without it being in any way disrespectful to the court. 

Respect for the courts cannot require silence about the consequences of their decisions, right? Public records acts as penalties serve, among other things, as deterrents. And I think that Washington's judiciary needs to seriously reconsider what deterrence means when the records at issue are instant messages, texts, and other digital communications that can disappear permanently. 

Judge Schaller explicitly said that the lot draw document had greater public importance than the text messages. And I understand that distinction. The lot draw document directly establishes candidate order on a ballot. 

I mean, it is unquestionably a critical election record. The court also considered Grace Harbor County's relatively small size in determining an appropriate penalty. And those are without question, legitimate considerations. 

But the texts are not restaurant recommendations between two county employees either, right? I mean, they were communications involving the very officials whose explanations about an election controversy, the court had just found to be dishonest and not credible. And the destruction of turnable side of those communications prevented the court, the requester, and the public from determining whether McLean had actually produced all of the texts. 

The court found bad faith and intentional noncompliance in connection with that problem, then valued each group at only $3 a day. I struggled to reconcile those things. That's hard. 

That's a hard one for me. Not because every Detroit text message should automatically produce a million dollar jackpot. Penalties aren't a prize wheel. 

I've said that before on this show, right? They exist to make violating the law more expensive than obeying it. That's deterrence. 

And when a court finds that government officials acted dishonestly and in bad faith, I just don't think that a $3 daily rate sends anything close to the message those findings themselves sent. In fact, digital record destruction, I think, creates a uniquely dangerous incentive problem, right? If an agency preserves a damaging record and simply withholds it, eventually someone may prove exactly what was withheld. 

The court can examine the record. A requester can highlight its significance. Judges can measure the violation. 

But if the government destroys the communications altogether,  

[Cuoio (WaTech)] 

Get it gone  

[Nixon]

Nobody knows exactly how many records existed or precisely what they said or how damaging they were. The destruction itself creates an uncertainty, an untenable uncertainty. 

And if courts respond to that uncertainty by reducing penalties because the requester cannot prove exactly what was destroyed, then successful destruction becomes cheaper than unsuccessful withholding. And that feels backwards to me. The uncertainty caused by destruction should not become a discount earned by the party responsible for creating the uncertainty. 

And this concern does not begin or end with Judge Schaller. I've seen the same basic tension in my own Public Records Act litigation and my recent case against Watek involving missing Microsoft Teams meeting chats. Judge Eggler grouped chats associated with 22 different meetings as one record for penalty purposes. 

A different case, different facts, different judge. But for me, the same underlying concern keeps hitting me in the face. We all know that our government no longer operates primarily through neat paper memoranda placed into labeled folders, right? 

I mean, people exercise public power in text, on Teams, Slack, Jabber, God forbid, Signal, meeting chats, group messages, SharePoint websites. The evidence of what government does increasingly lives inside these digital conversations. And if courts continue treating those communications as somehow less consequential, less independent, or cheaper to lose than the old paper record, then I'm concerned the law is going to create precisely the wrong incentive for people in power. 

A destroyed instant message shouldn't become cheaper precisely because destroying it makes it impossible to know what it said. I think asking the courts to grapple with this reality is part of believing courts can and should get these questions right. And now we come back to how I found out about any of this. 

I mean, I'm still kind of like loopy from it. I'm sitting in that courtroom on July 24th listening to Judge Schaller say things like agency dishonesty, bad faith, interference with an election process. I started asking around. 

As far as I could tell, nobody I knew through Washington Coalition for Open Government knew about this case. I got ahold of some people at Seattle Times, they hadn't been tracking it. Best we could determine, there had been no meaningful press coverage of these extraordinary court findings. 

That is a news desert. That's the definition of a news desert. And I don't say that as a knock on individual reporters, newsrooms have been gutted. 

Local newspapers that once had somebody physically walking into courthouses every week now have reporters covering, you know, three cities, two counties, the school board, cops, you know, Jimothy. Important things happen in public without anybody there to see them. This was one of those things. 

A judge had concluded that a county election was not properly conducted. She said conduct surrounding that election appeared intentional and willful. She called it interference with the election process. 

She found the auditor's office acted dishonestly and in bad faith in handling public records. She found one official's records had not been maintained or had been destroyed. And she found she could not trust the two central officials enough even to be confident that the surviving text production was complete. 

And somehow none of us knew about this at all. That is until the lawyer on the other side of my case forgot his jacket. I mean, think about the chain of events here. 

I filed a completely unrelated PRA lawsuit. We schedule a hearing. My case happens to land on Judge Schaller's calendar the same morning as this Eldwyn case. 

My hearing happens to be scheduled first. The defense attorney in my case happens to arrive without a coat and tie. The judge happens to care enough about courtroom protocol to send us to the back of the line. 

I happen to stay in the room. I happen to know enough about Public Records Act litigation to realize almost immediately what I'm hearing is extraordinary. And if any one of those pieces changes, I probably leave the courthouse without ever knowing Eldwyn versus Grays Harbor County even exists. 

But this episode is not ultimately about my ridiculous luck. It's about what happens when public accountability depends on luck. I said something similar in one of my recent episodes about those Department of Licensing teams chats. 

Those records survived because Governor Ferguson suspended Washington's seven-day auto delete policy only days after the conversation occurred. Had the timing been slightly different, the chats would have disappeared, and the Seattle Times story built from them might never have existed. I said then it should not have depended on luck. 

Same lesson here. Records should not survive because we're lucky. News should not reach the public because we're lucky. 

And accountability sure as hell should not depend on whether somebody remembered his necktie. I'll be watching whether the Eldwyns appeal any portion of Judge Schaller's penalty ruling. And if and when additional orders of records become available, we'll put them with the receipts for this episode at thepublicrecordsofficer.com. 

You don't have to take my word for any of this. In fact, please don't. Read the court transcripts, read Judge Schaller's findings, the pleadings, her words. 

That's the entire point of public records, right? You get to look at the evidence yourself. And when you do, ask yourself the same question I keep asking myself. 

If a court finds bad faith, legitimately finds bad faith, intentional noncompliance, agency dishonesty, uncredible explanations, missing or destroyed public communications, what penalty actually deters the next official from doing the same thing? Because somewhere in Washington right now a public employee is conducting government business in one of those places, right? Teams chats, text messages, phone number one, four or five. 

I don't know. But someday somebody may ask to see it. The law should give that employee every incentive in the world to preserve it. 

Oh, and at some point, can we please stop pretending the problem is the people asking for records? The problem is what keeps happening to the records. 

[AI VO] (33:52 - 35:34)

That's it for this episode of the Public Records Officer podcast. A quick note before you go. Some of the voices you heard on the show weren't from real people. 

Some were totally synthetic, AI generated to read from public records and legal depositions that are, yep, public. You'll also hear real human voices like live audio from state meetings and the occasional passionate rant from the show's gorgeous host. Every episode has a full transcript at thepublicrecordsofficer.com. 

It breaks down which clips came from humans and which came from our robot friends. Think of it like liner notes for digital democracy. You'll also find links to the original documents and recordings we talked about, hosted on Google Drive, free and public. 

So if you want to fact check us, go nuts. That's kind of the point. If this show got you fired up or even just mildly interested, check out the Washington Coalition for Open Government. 

They're a non-profit that fights for transparency and they've got resources if you want to help or just learn more. And hey, if you work for the state and you've seen one too many messages accidentally disappear, we'd love to hear from you, confidentially, unless you want to be famous. The Public Records Officer podcast is a creation of Nixon and Daughter Productions, powered by good coffee, better whiskey, a microphone, a legal tab, and the apparent misguided belief that government should actually be accountable to people, which is adorable, really. 

Thanks for listening. See you next time. And remember, you're not paranoid.

They really did delete it.