This Friday 11/8 at 11:30am is a hearing for Steve Leighton vs. Sarah Merker, but this hearing is specific to the Martin County BOCC and Mr. Leighton’s accusation of their role in this case.
Mr. Leighton is suing Ms. Merker for her role in running the Martin County Watchdog Facebook page. He is accusing her of defamation / libel. In a since-deleted Facebook live video, he also accused her of harassment and cyberbullying. That video was shared by Kimberly Guilfoyle (Donald Trump Jr.’s girlfriend) before being removed, presumably by Mr. Leighton. I have been told the video has been preserved for evidence or proof in this case.
One of Mr. Leighton’s accusations is that Ms. Merker used her father’s access as a County employee to get information about Mr. Leighton in an effort to make “false Facebook posts” (as claimed in his complaint) about him.
He has stated that Ms. Merker used (abused) her dad‘s position as a County employee to access restricted County documents. I was not able to find the documents to which he is referring in either the original complaint filed on 02/21/2023 or the 59-page Amended Complaint and Demand for Jury Trial filed 8/1/2024.
TCPalm: Libel case involving Martin County corruption website ensnares the county's IT director
TCPalm’s Blake Fontenay wrote an article about this case on November 2, 2023. The article talked about the case and about Mr. Merker being placed on administrative leave from his job at the County while an outside company, Sylint, processed the records request.
Re-reading Mr. Fontenay’s article now and comparing it to the amended documents filed with the Martin County Clerk, there are a few inconsistencies.
For example, in the November 2023 article, Mr. Fontenay wrote “Leighton is a former Martin County deputy sheriff and chief of staff for U.S. Rep. Brian Mast.”
But according to Mr. Leighton’s amended complaint filed months later, it is written that “Mr. Leighton, a former detective, is employed as a part-time law enforcement officer with the MCSO.” So is he a current or former officer with the MCSO?
Regarding the outcome of the investigation in to Mr. Merker’s activities, there was a mention in the article stating “there is no inference of wrongdoing” referring to Mr. Merker’s alleged participation.
Since this article, there has been no follow-up including no formal acknowledgement of the final results of the investigation which confirmed that Mr. Merker was found to not have abused his position at the County. Therefore it can also be said that the allegations against Ms. Merker are not true or correct.
Interestingly, Mr. Fontenay closed his article with, “However, I haven’t independently checked out those claims because I tend to focus on my own reporting work and the feedback I receive from it. But if the local political rumor mill needed any more grist, now it has it.”
And then the whole story including court filings just kind of… stopped… for about nine months until Mr. Leighton decided to file his amended complaint on August 1, 2024.
What prompted the amended complaint? It’s here where the County is seemingly invited – even if they didn’t want to be – to be a part of the process.
The County's Alleged Involvement
Mr. Leighton’s accusation that Ms. Merker accessed her father’s computer to search for these elusive documents is at the crux of Mr. Leighton’s case and is needed to bolster and prove his case alleging the “conspiracy to defame” him. His request for public records needed to prove this accusation prompted the County to hire an independent company, Sylint, to do the public records request – at the expense of taxpayers.
While Sylint conducted their review, Mr. Merker was placed on paid administrative leave. Blake Fontenay’s article stated “the county received a legal request to preserve certain information contained on its servers. As a result of that request, Merker said he was placed on leave until further notice.”
The independent company cybersecurity company, Sylint, cleared Mr. Merker, and by default, Ms. Merker of any wrongdoing.
So why is the County going to court?
The hearing Friday morning is for the judge to hear a Motion for Protective Order.
The motion was filed by the County after Mr. Leighton subpoenaed the work product created by Sylint. Mr. Leighton is basically accusing the County of not being truthful when they said “there is no inference of wrongdoing” as stated in the Blake Fontenay article.
To be clear, the County is claiming they only hired the forensic investigation because they were threatened with this lawsuit. The County’s argument for their protective order against Leighton is that the product is protected by attorney – client confidentiality.
Statements and allegations made in Mr. Leighton’s amended complaint filed August 1st are contradicted by these consistent claims from the County.
The subpoena itself also brings into question the validity of Mr. Leighton’s claims, seeing as he did not have access to the product of the investigation.
Leighton specifically alleges, “on information and belief, various Martin County officials became alarmed by documents and information on which certain ‘Martin County Corruption Exposed’ / ‘Martin County Watchdog’ Facebook posts relied, believing that some of these records included internal or confidential taxpayer information not available as public records.”
Who are the alleged “various Martin County officials” who were so alarmed about these posts and activity that allegedly included “confidential taxpayer information?”
The next claim by Mr. Leighton and his attorneys says, “On information and belief, upon becoming aware that Ms. Merker was behind the false Facebook pages and posts, these Martin County officials began to suspect that Ms. Merker was using her father’s access to internal County documents and information to serve as the basis for her false Facebook posts, and as a result, Martin County began a formal investigation of Mr. Merker and reassigned him (temporarily or permanently) to a position where he could no longer access such confidential records.”
The internal/confidential records are not identified. Neither are the officials he’s claiming ordered this investigation.
At this point it is not clear who ordered the investigation to address the accusations by Mr. Leighton accusing Ms. Merker of using her father’s work computer and access, an allegation that has been proven false.
Was it in an abundance of caution by the higher ups at the County? Was it a commissioner or staff who was doing Mr. Leighton a favor by instigating this? Who requested this investigation be done as stated in the legal complaint filed with the courts?
Perhaps some of these questions will be answered at the hearing on Friday.
What's next?
The County filed documents to back up their claims of ordering this investigation under the threat of litigation. This includes demand letters sent from Mr. Leighton’s attorneys to the County as well as demand letters sent to Crary Buchanan, Ms. Merker’s former employer.
One question is what fees have been incurred at the expense of taxpayers as a result of the County defending themselves against Mr. Leighton? His position is that the County doesn’t have a right to a protective order because they are not currently a party to this lawsuit. Does he plan on adding them to the lawsuit as a party in his defamation claim?
It should be noted that this case was previously dismissed before Mr. Leighton insisted on re-filing in August.
For those interested, the hearing can only be attended in person as the judge, The Honorable Elizabeth Metzger, does not have Zoom in her courtroom. As stated at the beginning of this article, it is scheduled for this Friday at 11:30am at the Martin County Courthouse on the 3rd floor.
We will be there to watch the proceeding and report back to you the outcome of the hearing.
This is another example of why this site was established and why content with context and follow-up is so important.
MC Press will be reaching out to all parties (and non-parties) involved to ask for statements regarding Friday’s proceedings.
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