Beaufort mayor wants ‘arm’s length’ probe of document gaffe as legal issues arise
In a rare move, the Beaufort City Council will meet Monday to consider hiring outside legal counsel to investigate the inadvertent release of 9,000 unredacted documents earlier this month as part of a Freedom of Information Act request.
If approved, the hire would supersede an in-house probe overseen by City Manager Scott Marshall and his team.
Monday’s meeting of the city council, requested by Mayor Phil Cromer, will be at 2:45 p.m.
Cromer told the Beaufort Gazette and Island Packet Friday that council members will discuss, in closed session, the hiring of outside legal counsel to assist the city in the investigation. The council will reconvene in public and may vote on a motion to hire attorneys. After that, Cromer said, the council will hear from the public.
Marshall said previously that the city staff had already started investigating how the documents were released. Cromer says he suggested hiring outside counsel because having city leaders in charge could taint the process in the eyes of some residents.
“We want to keep this thing completely independent and impartial,” Cromer said. “We don’t want to make it look like they are trying to cover themselves, so we took it away from them.”
Cromer says he wants to get to the bottom of the case quickly because sensitive information about the city and individuals was released.
So far, the consequences of the document breach have included a lawsuit and the appearance of a mysterious social media account that published what appeared to be some of the same information the city released.
How it started
The city notified the public Aug. 5 about the massive release of emails and attachments, which were sent to Kiel and Autumn Hollis. The Hollises had submitted a Freedom of Information Act Request regarding the search for their missing daughter in February. Their daughter was located after a few days later, but the couple was displeased with the way police handled the case.
However, the city, when it turned over the information, failed to redact sensitive information that is not public, such as social security numbers of various individuals, and information relating to ongoing litigation. The mistake sent city officials scrambling to figure out exactly who had been compromised and trying to retrieve the information from the Hollises, who still have the documents but have pledged not to make them public.
Some of the documents seemingly had no connection to the original FOIA request. The city, which has indicated a computer software program used to redact private information may be to blame, launched an investigation but Cromer says the city council wants to keep city staff at “arm’s length” from the investigation.
“Hopefully we’ll get it investigated thoroughly fairly quickly because of what’s at stake,” Cromer said.
Cromer said previously he feared the city would be susceptible to lawsuits in the wake of the release of sensitive information and one was filed on Thursday by Graham Trask in the Court of Common Pleas in Beaufort.
Trask is a prominent Beaufort property owner and real estate developer who is a board member of the Protect Beaufort Foundation. Protect Beaufort is a nonprofit formed in August 2024 after questions arose about the legality of the lease the city has with a private operator of the publicly-owned marina. The foundation opposes the privatization of public property, and is now in litigation with the city over marina management.
Trask says in the lawsuit about the documents, filed Thursday, that he demanded that Marshall immediately give him the 9,000 pages of information that were previously released to the Hollises. He said he wanted to review them to see if personal information about himself or other board members involved in group’s marina lease lawsuit against city had been compromised in the document release.
The lawsuit says Benjamin Coppage, city’s attorney, refused to immediately release the documents, saying the city would process the request in the same manner as any other. Under FOIA law, government bodies have 10 days to acknowledge they have received the request and 30 days to provide the information.
“More concerning, Mr. Coppage stated that, ‘the city’s response will not include the documents requested in their unredacted form as they contain information of a personal nature, which is exempt from disclosure.”
Marshall, the city manager, said he was aware of the lawsuit but chose not to comment. Coppage did not return a telephone call seeking comment as of 12:30 p.m. Friday.
In the lawsuit, Trask argues:
- The city’s refusal to comply with the request is illegal because the documents have already been publicly disclosed in an unredacted form.
- Trask needs to review the unredacted documents to see if his personal information was compromised.
- The city has a duty to promptly notify affected individuals of data breaches.
- Redacting documents that have already been publicly released serves “no legitimate purpose and actively prevents Plaintiff from assessing the scope of harm.”
The sensitive documents may also have made their way to social media.
An anonymous TikTok account called “Lowcountry Whispers” began poking fun at city leadership soon after it announced the document release gaffe. Over a period of days, galleries were posted in which users could swipe from document to document. The posts, set against the backdrop of old 1970s hits like the Steve Miller Band’s “Take the Money and Run,” were lighthearted but the content of the documents was serious and included what appeared to be police incident reports and correspondence between police and prosecutors.
The account later disappeared.
This story was originally published August 22, 2025 at 1:32 PM.
