Attorneys for McHenry County Sheriff Keith Nygren are accusing a former deputy of perjury and say a federal lawsuit he filed should be tossed as a result.
Zane Seipler is suing Nygren and several other members of the sheriff's department, alleging that he was fired for blowing the whistle on racial profiling.
As part of the lawsuit, Seipler received confidential documents that were under court order not to be revealed, but attorneys for the sheriff said Seipler posted them on an anonymous blog.
"The Real MCSO Exposed" website since has been removed.
"The documents were highly confidential and contained personal information about third-party officers, causing them embarrassment and damage to their reputations," attorney Elizabeth K. Barton wrote in the court filing.
Seipler submitted an affidavit saying that he did not know who owns the website, has not knowingly had a conversation with the owner, and did not disseminate the documents.
But Jim Sotos, also an attorney representing the sheriff, said that a subpoena to Google revealed that Seipler's personal email address was listed as a secondary email for the blog and that the IP addresses matched.
Attorneys for the sheriff said Seipler "willfully lied" to the court and that it was a "stunning display of brazen misconduct."
"[I]nstead of admitting to this abhorrent behavior, Plaintiff submitted a false affidavit to this Court, which he signed under penalty of perjury, stating that he had no knowledge of the blog's author or how the documents appeared on the blog," they wrote.
They are asking that the case be dismissed with prejudice so that it cannot be refiled.
An attorney for Seipler was unavailable for comment, but in previous court documents suggested that Nygren and the other administrators named "have lost control of their own clients."
"Sheriff employees, unhappy with the tyranny of a Sheriff who lies to stay in office, has so many ‘defectors' that people are willing to put departmental documents into the public view to expose the misconduct of the Sheriff and his staff," Blake Horwitz wrote.
Nygren fired Seipler for writing traffic tickets to passengers, rather than drivers who did not have valid licenses. Seipler successfully fought that firing, although Nygren still is appealing.
Seipler also has a pending petition in which he asks for a special prosecutor to investigate Nygren, whom he says has been using a seven-point star for both political and official purposes.
By Sarah Sutschek, ssutschek@shawmedia.com
Source: Northwest Herald
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