A judge is weighing arguments in a lawsuit alleging that Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway allowed text messages to be deleted in the face of an open records request.
The Jefferson City News-Tribune reports that attorneys for the Missouri Alliance for Freedom, a conservative nonprofit, and Galloway made closing arguments Tuesday. A Cole County judge isn't expected to rule until late September or early October.
The nonprofit's attorney, Ed Greim, says Galloway's office violated its own policies about preserving records. Part of the issue for the auditor's office is their use of iPhones with settings that automatically erased messages after 30 days, unless the settings were changed.
Galloway's chief litigation counsel says the group was given screen-shots of some text messages, as well as 45,000 pages of emails and other communications.
