TOMS RIVER, NJ – A ‘state detective’ of unknown origin served Ocean County Commissioner Virginia Haines prior to last Wednesday’s regularly scheduled agenda workshop meeting. Those papers were court papers regarding an investigation into a series of reportedly nefarious events that took place in the hours after George R. Gilmore defeated Sheriff Michael Mastronardy in the Ocean County GOP Chairman election.
Now, Haines is being accused by GOP attorney John Carbone that she could be in violation of state record tampering laws.
Last week, it became known that Haines is also being sued for covering up alleged sexual harassment by Ocean County Commissioner Joe Vicari.
The court document requests the return of all Ocean County GOP documents, emails and property that was removed or deleted from servers in the hours after Mastronardy’s defeat from the Ocean County GOP headquarters.
Haines, along with former Ocean County GOP Executive Director Pat Lane and her husband used a pickup truck to transport unknown property from the GOP headquarters in the late hours of the night after the election.
According to the Asbury Park Press, that letter requests “to turn over and surrender the property, premises, emails, electronic records, records and documents of the Ocean County Republican Organization and affiliated entities.”
Gilmore said the deletion of GOP emails was similar to Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails.
According to the Asbury Park Press, Haines confirmed she was served but shrugged off the allegations, saying she did nothing improper and did not know anything about deleted emails.
Now, Haines said she was removing former GOP Chairman Holman’s large liquor collection that was stored in the headquarters, but Gilmore said filing cabinets, drawers and GOP records were also cleared out in the late-night raid on the headquarters.
Gilmore said Google is working with his team to recover the deleted emails. Haines and Holman also raided the Ocean County GOP bank account, sending approximately $16,000 in funds to her own campaign account and that of Sheriff Michael Mastronardy. They left the county organization with just $1,900 left in their bank account.
Gilmore said Lane has since turned over deleted emails, but many others remained missing, alluding she cherry-picked what to turn over after being served.