My head is spinning.  SPINNING.  The ridiculous, slanted, one-sided editorials are getting to be a bit much.  I know molly and others are going to say "Casual, just ignore it.  It's really better this way."  The fact is, I can't ignore it.  To be honest, I don't write what I do here for the people on this board.  You folks all see through the crap, see through his transparent attempts to further his agenda.  However, if what I write can help one person who has believed his twisted words for too long, and that person sees through his tactics and votes for a better Wareham in April, then my efforts will have been worth it.

I don't have the energy to review everything he said tonight, but I'll try to get to it tomorrow.  With this being an editorial, he uses many of his standard tricks, and misleads more than in the "news" articles.  I'll pick out some of the egregious examples tonight, then read it again on the train tomorrow.  The entire post is written without any consideration of the fact that maybe, just maybe, there was something illegal about how the audit was conducted.  If one considers that option, then all of Slager's questions are quickly and easily answered.

The actions taken by the district attorney’s office over the past two months are simply mind-boggling. After town officials in Wareham began an audit of town-owned computers after being informed of allegations of corruption, the district attorney’s office stepped in and put the investigation on ice.

As I've already discussed, the actions were perfectly reasonable.  I don't understand why Slager can look at an investigation by the BOS where no information is given about targets, costs, scope, or anything else, and say "this is necessary to clean up the corruption in Wareham!"  However, when the DA investigates the audit for potential violations it "makes (his) blood run cold".  I've pointed out repeated examples of his hypocrisy, but this one is truly epic.  The investigation wasn't put on ice.  Evidence was seized, and a grand jury was convened, likely to investigate the possibility of corruption and/or illegal activities within the Board and the consulting agency.

No court order.

....because one wasn't needed to seize the evidence.  It's perfectly within the DA's rights to seize the audit materials with an administrative warrant.

No advanced warning to town officials.

....most likely because they are the targets of the investigation, and the DA didn't want to tip them off that the investigation was coming.  Again, completely hypocritical as he defended the town's investigation of its employees occurring with no warning, and on a forced furlough day to boot.

A grand jury was then convened for an unstated purpose.

Grand jury proceedings are confidential.  Not only do they not have to say why it's convened, but they can't

None of the targets of the town’s investigation into alleged corruption has apparently been called to testify.

This seems to be the easiest question to answer.  If the DA is looking into the audit itself, there's no reason to have any of the audit targets testify.  The targets know nothing about how the audit was being conducted, who it was targeting, why it was targeting them, etc.  This is because the board and the ITA never shared any of that information.  Assuming that the grand jury is investigating practices around the audit itself, they would seem to have gotten the right people in Sauvageau, Sanguinet, Underhill, and the consultant.  I really have no idea why Slager's upset about this.  It makes perfect sense.

No, every last computer disk was taken without a single legal justification for doing so.

The accurate version of this sentence is "No, every last computer disk was taken without a single legal justification that I am aware of for doing so."  Obviously, nobody knows what went on in the grand jury, so nobody knows what the justification was.  Anything Slager says to the contrary is mere speculation.

How could the DA launch its own investigation if nobody there had any clue whom they should be investigating?

Again, Slager appears to be refusing to consider the fact that the very act of conducting the audit is what is under investigation.  Assuming this is the case, it doesn't matter if the report was written or not, or how much of it was reviewed.

We believe (the email source) to be rock solid. We have reported this to the Attorney General’s office.

Who wants to take bets that nothing comes out of this report to the AG?  Does anybody have a count of the number of legal threats/filings/accusations Slager has made that have resulted in bupkus?  I can only imagine how long that list is.

If the DA’s office believed the town was trampling on their jurisdiction in some way, why didn’t somebody contact Sanguinet of the selectmen and say so? If the DA’s office thought the information revealed by the computer audit firm wouldn’t stand up in court if the town released the findings publicly, why didn’t somebody just tell Sanguinet and the selectmen to wait until the DA could review the findings first?

If the DA thought that there were significant legal violations in how the audit was conducted, who it targeted, why it targeted those people, and more, then why didn't they seize the evidence and convene a grand jury to investiga......oh, wait.  They did.  Again, Slager refuses to consider this option, likely because it is wildly contradictory to his editorial position.

Nothing that has transpired makes much sense.

I agree that much of what has transpired is wildly contradictory to Slager's view of the world.  However, it makes perfect sense when one considers the full range of possibilities.  I'm sure there are many other possibilities about the investigation that I haven't considered, but would also explain the current situation.

If the town officials involved in conducting this audit are being investigated for some sort of impropriety relating to the audit, as the hatebloggers claim, why weren’t they simply called in for questioning by the DA?

I come up with two reasons without much thought: (1) The DA was concerned about destruction or other modifications of evidence and/or (2) the "impropriety" in question is bad enough that they skipped straight to the grand jury.  I'm sure there are other reasons, but why would Slager let facts and reason get in the way of a good story?

Why convene a grand jury?

"To determine whether there is enough evidence for a trial", according to Wikipedia.

Why would the DA believe the audit itself needed to be investigated?

Probably because they received dozens of complaints about the audit and concerns about its legality.  Again, Slager asks questions that he must already know the answer to, but asks them in such a way that attempts to create a new controversy, and make the DA look bad.  If he doesn't know the answer to these questions already, then....well then I don't even know what to say.

The Department of Revenue also directly answered the concerns of the assessor’s office, ruling that documents in that office were public records and subject to review by other town officials. Why wouldn’t the DA return those records to the town following that ruling? Why would they refuse to return at least some of the evidence?

Man, after finally getting this right in his "news" article earlier today, Slager drops the ball on the DOR letter again.  Either he really doesn't understand what the letter said, or he is intentionally spinning it contrary to the spirit of the letter.  The DOR basically said "We don't have a problem with what you're doing".  That is not the same as "What you're doing is completely legal".  Again, there are a bunch of different laws that could be applicable here.  The DOR issue is a small slice of the pie, but they are NOT the ruling authority on the issue.  There is no reason for the DA to return any of the evidence until THEY are complete with THEIR investigation.  This is just another attempt at spin, but it's easy to see through it, once you know what you're looking for.

In the business world computer audits are conducted every day.  Is the DA saying Wareham officials cannot check to see what town employees are doing on town-owned computers?

Yes, and these audits follow a protocol which I've previously described, and the town seems to have ignored.  They have a defined scope, which this audit didn't have.  They have valid reasons for occurring, which if this audit had, they were never released.  In short, there are many, many things that differentiate this audit from those that occur in the business world every day, and all of them were mishandled by the board and the ITA.

Opponents of the current administration have consistently called this audit a witch hunt. What the DA’s office is doing actually is a witch hunt, if this truly is an investigation at all.

So the Town performs an audit of just about everybody in the town, looking for who-knows-what, for who-knows-why (the only reason I've seen come out publicly is to target bloggers...maybe there are other reasons, but I haven't seen them), and Slager thinks that's not a witch hunt?  Then, the DA seizes the material, and specifically interviews the 4 people closest to the investigation, and THIS is a witch hunt?  Again with the hypocrisy.

These folks had no way of knowing what the town was investigating. They never bothered to ask.

Isn't "asking" what they do when people testify before the grand jury?  And how come Slager doesn't consider the fact that maybe the DA had a source, so they already knew?  Slager's not the only one with "sources"

If the DA’s office thought they had probably cause that some crime was committed during the process of the audit, why wasn’t anyone charged?

I will repeat it again, just because Slager appears to not get it.  GRAND JURIES ARE CONVENED TO DETERMINE IF THERE IS ENOUGH EVIDENCE TO CHARGE SOMEONE WITH A CRIME.  So the question "why wasn't anyone charged" is completely invalid - there is still very much the opportunity to charge people, should the grand jury decide that to be the appropriate action.  It's absolutely ridiculous that he's writing this stuff - the twisting, the spin, and the blatant ignoring of any options that the Board might be in the wrong here is just incredible.

Either it is legal for a town to conduct an audit of its computers or it isn’t. That hardly seems like an issue a grand jury needs to decide.

There are boatloads of laws that could cover these issues.  Various state and federal data protection laws.  Employment laws.  Heck, the fourth amendment.  The issue is nowhere near as cut and dry as Slager makes it out to be.  He's also disingenuous about the purpose of a grand jury.  It's not to decide the legality of the audit.  Again, and for the last time, grand juries are convened to determine if there is enough evidence to bring a case to trial.  If there's a question about the evidence, then it is definitely an issue for the grand jury.

The reason for all this is clear, at least from this perspective.

Of course it is Rob.  No matter what, the reason was always going to be clear from your perspective.  It's easy to make that perspective clear, when one ignores any options that are counter to the editorial agenda of one's publication.

The results of the audit should have been announced publicly at least a month ago. But somebody wanted to bury it and they figured out a way to do it.

Either that, or there was a significant violation of the law, to the point that a grand jury had to be convened to investigate it.  You know, either one.  Could be either.  It's probably the vast right-wing conspiracy, though.  You're probably right.

If the makeup of the board changes, this whole thing just goes away.

I disagree.  If the makeup of the board changes, the former board members still get investigated for whatever it is the grand jury is looking at, and face the legal reprocussions that come along with whatever the decision is.  The new board, then, would move forward in a better direction for Wareham.

Somebody needs to answer for what has been done to Wareham. The bad guys cannot be allowed to win.

And this is why I'm glad that someone is finally looking into what the board was trying to do!  I'm glad we agree on something!