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Washington County officials considering lawsuit against Clerk of Courts Brenda Davis

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Brenda Davis

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Mike Jones/Observer-Reporter

Washington County Commission Chairwoman Diana Irey Vaughan gives a statement during Thursday’s meeting in which she said county officials are considering taking legal action against Clerk of Courts Brenda Davis.

Washington County officials are considering taking legal action against Clerk of Courts Brenda Davis after she posted on social media a manipulated comment attributed to Commission Chairwoman Diana Irey Vaughan that was significantly altered from how it appeared in a story in Thursday’s edition of the Observer-Reporter newspaper.

Irey Vaughan read a lengthy statement following public comment at Thursday’s commissioners meeting in which she blasted Davis for lifting an entire news article about a recently filed lawsuit against the county, and manipulated certain sections to change the meaning of the story.

“It is unconscionable for Ms. Davis to be discussing litigation involving the county and the warden on her Facebook page,” Irey Vaughan said during her public statement at the commissioners meeting. “The lawsuit has nothing to do with her at all. She knows nothing about the facts of the matter and is not involved. Her inaccurate quote by me is a clear, deliberate attempt to place the county, the warden and myself in a false light with the citizens of Washington County, and she is clearly doing so for political gains.”

Irey Vaughan indicated the commissioners were speaking to their county attorneys, and could ultimately file a lawsuit against Davis over the matter.

“I will be consulting with my own legal counsel to possibly pursue litigation to put a stop to this type of outrageous behavior,” Irey Vaughan said in her statement.

The issue centered around social media posts Davis put on her personal and campaign Facebook pages in which she copy-and-pasted the entire story from the Observer-Reporter’s website about a lawsuit filed Monday by a Peters Township attorney against the county’s prison board, jail warden and telecommunications contractor over accusations that his phone conversations with clients were recorded. However, Davis made significant alterations to certain sections, including a quote in the story attributed to Irey Vaughan, who denied the allegations made in the lawsuit.

“All policies and procedures were followed. There is no wrong-doing on behalf of Washington County,” Irey Vaughan told the newspaper for Thursday’s story. “This is nothing more than theatrics and meritless nonsense.”

But the post by Davis at 6:35 a.m. Thursday deleted and added several words in Irey Vaughan’s comment to erroneously state that “no policies and procedures were followed” and that “there is wrong-doing on behalf of Washington County,” according to the manipulated quote.

“Ms. Davis informed her Facebook followers that I said the opposite – that no policies and procedures were followed and that there is wrongdoing on the part of the county,” Irey Vaughan said in her public statement she read at Thursday’s commissioners meeting. “Her inference is that I believe the lawsuit has merit. Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Davis edited that portion of her Facebook post nearly two hours later and deleted the fabricated quote, but it had already been shared and “liked” several times at that point. Other portions of the post attributed to the newspaper were also inaccurate, including the deletion of the word “no” in one sentence to make it appear that District Attorney Jason Walsh had control over phone recordings at the jail, which is not correct. Another change was to the first sentence of the story in which Davis added the surnames of the three county commissioners, but misspelled Commissioner Larry Maggi’s name as “Maggie.”

Davis wrote a “disclosure/disclaimer” at the top that “The OR website gave me a hard time copying the article from Observer Reporter page below is what it would allow me to copy/paste/edit as best as I could with all the trouble.”

However, the changes to the newspaper’s article appear to be purposely altered to manipulate the information presented to readers of the story. The newspaper issued a statement Thursday that it was considering all options in response to the Facebook posts by Davis.

“The Observer-Reporter is conferring with its legal counsel on how to move forward with Ms. Davis’ copyright infringement and misrepresentation of facts,” the newspaper said in its statement.

Davis was not at her office in the courthouse when a reporter visited around 3:30 p.m. Thursday, and she did not return a phone message requesting comment on the matter. The two Facebook posts remained online as of Thursday night.

It’s unclear why Davis is interested in the lawsuit or her connection to Jeffrey Wertz, the attorney who filed the lawsuit against the county.

Earlier this year, Davis inexplicably sealed information in one of Wertz’s criminal defense cases and refused to allow the district attorney’s office to review it. A court order on April 11 allowed the district attorney’s staff to retrieve the information in the file since Davis has no power to seal any court information in her role as clerk of courts. It was not known why she attempted to seal information within a criminal docket, which can only be done by a judge.

Davis was first elected clerk of courts in 2019, and she has spent most of her first term sparring with county and courthouse officials. In 2021, she waived many of the duties in her office, prompting county officials to reassign most of her staff to other departments to handle the workload elsewhere.

Most notably, she spent 15 days in the Washington County jail last August after she was held in contempt of court by President Judge John DiSalle over her behavior while trying to block juvenile records from being transferred from her office in November 2021. She also was under investigation last year by the state Attorney General’s office over accusations that she manipulated her office staff’s timecards to pay them overtime when they weren’t working, although it’s unknown where that inquiry currently stands.

Davis is running for reelection and is facing challenger Ray Phillips in the Republican primary on May 16. The winner will likely face Democrat Bobby Dellorso in the general election this fall.

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