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Diaz says she threw thumb drive away

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copyright the Chronicle August 2, 2017

 

by Elizabeth Trail

 

NEWPORT — Former Coventry Town Clerk and Treasurer Cynthia Diaz said in court on Tuesday that she has destroyed at least one thumb drive, possibly the one the select board and auditor Jeff Graham have been looking for.

Ms. Diaz was in Orleans Superior Court for yet another hearing in the civil suit that the town filed against her last December. The suit asked, among other things, for the return of town records in Ms. Diaz’ possession.

“I was no longer in office, I didn’t need it any more,” Ms. Diaz told Judge Robert Bent when he asked about the fate of the removable computer storage that she is alleged to have used to carry work back and forth from the Coventry town office to her home computer.

“I threw it away,” Ms. Diaz said. “It was mine, and I was no longer employed by the town.”

“Generally in litigation, we don’t destroy documents,” Judge Bent told her. “It leads to questions … it shifts the question to the person who destroyed it.”

Initially, it didn’t sound like Ms. Diaz was talking about the same drive that the select board has been hunting for the past year or more.

Ms. Diaz said that all she had on the drive was an Excel spreadsheet and the template she used to create receipts, adding that she overwrote the information as she recorded new transactions that came through the office.

“It wasn’t a running spreadsheet,” she said.

Judge Bent interrupted her to put her under oath.

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