On March 19, Long-time Sheboygan City Attorney Charles Adams resigned his position. As WHBL has been reporting, this happened 2 days after the Common Council met in a special closed session to hear details about an investigation regarding possible misconduct in public office regarding former City Attorney Adams. The investigation was conducted last year by the Fond du Lac Police Department, who was recruited by Sheboygan Police. WHBL News has obtained a copy of that 127 page report – much of it focused on the City Attorney having full and complete access to “Data Cove” to search through the emails of any city employees.
Most government agencies utilize a program called “Data Cove” or a similar archiving tool that’s used to search emails, and it’s primarily used to fulfil open records requests for citizens. This system was first “initiated” in the city on May 18, 2021. This tool allows authorized users to enter “keywords” that will scan all emails in the email servers, and show the results. In addition to searching for keywords on the email servers, it includes the ability to download and read the actual emails that are responsive to those keywords.
At the time these searches were conducted, City Attorney Charles Adams and Assistant City Attorney Liz Majerus had full access to the Data Cove system. That access was revoked when Matthew Greenwood took over the City’s IT Department, following the departure of Eric Bushman. Currently, only the IT director has full access to the “Data Cove” system, and all open records requests that involve IT are filtered through him.
There were plenty of legitimate searches that lined up with Open Records requests, but an audit log provided to investigators uncovers some of the more questionable searches conducted by the former City Attorney that began in March of 2022. The 127-page investigative report into Attorney Adams revealed a number of search terms that investigators determined were not part of any open records requests, and were perhaps used for political purposes, or for personal gain.
One of the search terms was Sheboygan citizen Aaron Guenther, who had been very vocal about things happening withing Sheboygan’s government, and had made a number of open records requests beginning around the time that former City Administrator Todd Wolf was placed on leave, and ultimately fired. Guenther also ran against Barb Felde for a seat on the common council (District 1) in April of 2023. The report states that between 30 and 40 emails related to Guenther were viewed by Attorney Adams, who was apparently searching to discover everyone who was communicating with Guenther.
When questioned, Adams told the detectives that he believed that Guenther was providing information to the City’s Council and making multiple requests concerning the litigation that resulted over Wolf’s firing. Adams said that as the City’s attorney he would have needed to know that because they believed he was acting as a “stalking horse” for the attorneys of Chad Pelishek and Todd Wolf.
Adams also admitted during his interview that he may have done searches on Russ Otten, who was chair of the Sheboygan County Republican Party at the time. The Data Cove audit also showed Adams ran searches for “Take Back” – and “Take Back Sheboygan” in reference to a website called “Take Back Sheboygan County” a website that regularly posts stories highlighting happenings in city and county government, including the Mayor’s office, City Council, school board, etc.
Former Attorney Adams also conducted numerous searches for Sheboygan Police Lt. Bill Adams – who is Charles’ cousin, around the time that there was an ongoing internal investigation into him at the SPD. The report says there were suspicions that Charles was viewing emails of the Chief and other City employees to learn about the investigation into Bill in order to potentially benefit him during his internal investigation. One of the detectives points out during an interview on August 22nd that those are all Police Department emails. Former Attorney Adams told the investigator he was looking into communications regarding winter parking and towing within the City. Investigators point out that winter parking and towing wouldn’t be an open records request. During this same time, Adams also included the search term Christopher Domagalski, who was the City of Sheboygan Police Chief.
Another search term used by Former Attorney Adams was Casey Bradley – who is the current City Administrator. The search included terms with the text Adams, and City Attorney on April 18th, 2024 – Adams tells the investigator he was curious about a “Statement of Authority” that was being worked on for the city – something the City Attorney should have had no knowledge of.
Adams also repeatedly ran searches for “Charles Adams, Micah Adams, and any text Adams” presumably to see who was communicating about the former City Attorney and his son Micah, who worked in the IT Department. These were not part of any open records requests. On page 29 of the report, investigators say Attorney Adams viewed a wide variety of emails pertaining to many different topics and various individuals in the Data Cove system. Many emails contained information that would be considered attorney-client privileged information between the people in the emails. During the August 22nd interview with attorney Adams, the detective asks if he should be able to go into any employee’s email to see what they are doing and if that would be a violation. Adams responded saying it wouldn’t be a “legal” violation.
The final page of the document states that over the time of this investigation, the detectives were in contact with Sheboygan District Attorney Joel Urmanski. During their final meeting in November of 2024, detectives indicated that they would be recommending a charge of Misconduct in office to the Sheboygan District Attorney’s Office for review. However, Adams left office two days after the Committee of the Whole reviewed the investigation, a move that was said by Adams to be “in the mutual interest of both parties.”
**We received several requests to release the document, however it is our company policy to not release such a document to the public or other entities, and we also chose to leave out names of individuals not directly involved out of fairness and privacy concerns. It’s our job to not only cover the news, but also to do it in an ethical manner.**
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