Alaska News

Joe Miller secretly recorded conversations, says borough court filing

Fairbanks Daily News-Miner columnist Dermot Cole reports an interesting tidbit from court documents in the long-running lawsuit involving the borough personnel records of failed Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joe Miller.

Attorneys representing the Fairbanks North Star Borough in the matter say that Miller secretly recorded conversations with borough employees, including Borough Attorney Rene Broker.

In Alaska legal circles, Miller has had a reputation of being in the habit of recording conversations with other parties, whether openly or not.

Cole reports that attorneys for the Fairbanks North Star Borough on June 13 filed a "Motion to Compel Discovery" of all records of secret audio recordings Miller made of conversations with borough employees, as well as with reporters, senior campaign staff and political advisers.

In a letter dated May 13, Greg Fisher, an attorney for the borough, said that Miller secretly recorded conversations with Borough Attorney Rene Broker and by doing so Miller "breached fiduciary duties he owed the FNSB by secretly taping another lawyer discussing FNSB Legal Department subjects and by failing to disclose those tapes (which are public records under law)."

In the June 13 motion, the borough was to recieve from Miller "A complete copy of any recording you have made of another party, party representative or witness to this litigation."

Miller was also to provide a copy of any recordings he or anyone working on his behalf made of Alaska Dispatch reporter Jill Burke "or any other reporter or journalist during the 2010 U.S. Senate campaign."

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Miller was scheduled to be deposed on July 31, but the case has been settled, and the deposition won't occur.

Read much, much more from Cole, here, and for the bonus round, read what Miller spokesman Bill Peck had to say to Cole, here.

Craig Medred

Craig Medred is a former writer for the Anchorage Daily News, Alaska Dispatch and Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2015.

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