Port Huron — When Port Huron City Manager James Freed received an email from a city council member last year, he included Mayor Anita Ashford in his response.
Ashford mistakenly thought the council member sent the email to her and accused Freed of hacking into her account to read it.
“Why are you on my emails? It does (sic) add up!” the mayor wrote in a mistake-laden email. “I have ex had several other emails doing the same. Wow! Interesting.”
After a series of similar misunderstandings, the mayor was so convinced Freed was reading her emails through her phone that she began using three phones, she told city lawyers.
But an investigation by the city attorney’s office last month didn’t find any evidence of hacking. The office examined seven instances of alleged snooping cited by Ashford.
It was just the latest skirmish in an ongoing public feud between Port Huron’s part-time mayor and full-time city manager.
The lawyers’ nine-page report said the alleged hacking was easily explained by coincidence, faulty assumptions and Ashford’s lack of familiarity with computers.
For example, she was alarmed by a privacy warning on her city computer in May and, separately, blamed Freed when she inadvertently sent a blank email to a constituent in April, according to the report.
Freed said the investigation told him what he already knew: He has never spied on the mayor.
“She made numerous false accusations,” Freed told The Detroit News. “It’s just part of her campaign to villainize the office of the city manager and myself.”
Ashford was reached on one of her three phones but said she was in a meeting and couldn’t talk. She said she wasn’t sure she would be able to chat later and failed to return additional calls.
The mayor told a Port Huron radio station that, despite the investigation and its findings, she continues to believe Freed is perusing her emails.
“It’s part of a saga that goes on and on in that area. It’s a playbook,” Ashford told WPHM-AM.
She declined to elaborate, saying her attorney was looking into the matter. The mayor didn’t say what the lawyer might do.
City manager sought to clear his name after mayor pointed finger
One thing was clear from reading the investigative report: Ashford is leery of Freed.
The enmity stretches back to her long tenure as a council member. She was part of the council when it hired Freed in 2014 but, unlike most members, views him warily.
The relations deteriorated further after Ashford became mayor in 2024 and burst into public view at council meetings with arguments, name-calling, a walkout, an attempted censure and a threatened lawsuit.
Freed said he learned from residents and council members during the past year that Ashford was accusing him of reading her emails and sending and receiving messages in her name.
“These allegations are not only defamatory, but they also suggest potential ethical and criminal conduct,” Freed wrote in a May letter to the city attorney’s office.
In the missive, Freed requested an investigation to clear his name.
Ashford told the investigators — city attorneys Todd Shoudy and Gary Fletcher — it was widely known that Freed reads everyone’s emails in the city and has been doing so for years.
She said the evidence he was reading her messages was contained in a packet she submitted to the lawyers. The 12-page document contained seven examples of alleged hacking.
When the lawyers examined the accusations, however, they fell apart one by one, according to the report. Where Ashford saw chicanery, the investigation found a benign explanation.
“There is no evidence that Mr. Freed has the advanced stealth abilities attributed to him,” the report said.
The investigation showed a pattern where Ashford’s knee-jerk response to different incidents was to suspect Freed of hacking.
When Freed was describing a railroad viaduct at a council meeting in April, Ashford became suspicious because it echoed what was written in the railroad’s email to her. But the investigation showed the email was written after the meeting.
In another incident, when Ashford forwarded an email she received in April to Sheri Faust, who is executive director of Friends of the St. Clair River, Faust said she also received the original message from “James.” Ashford assumed James was Freed and thought the city manager had entered her email and forwarded the message to Faust.
Ashford didn’t provide investigators with a copy of the original email, which would have shown Faust was referring to a different James. Ashford said the original message was deleted but, when the lawyers searched her city email account, they found it.
Mayor suspected a broader conspiracy
Freed wasn’t the only one suspected of shenanigans.
Ashford accused City Clerk Cyndee Jonseck and city IT Director Bruce Fiedler of helping Freed access her emails. The two officials keep copies of city email passwords.
Ashford told investigators that Jonseck and Fiedler exhibited suspicious behavior, but, when asked how so, she made vague assertions, according to the report. The mayor said she had witnesses but didn’t want to give their names to protect them from retribution.
Ashford said she was wary of Fiedler because of an incident where he changed her password and asked her to use it to sign in and create a new password.
Fiedler told the lawyers that Ashford and others received an email with a possible virus, so he asked all of them to change their passwords.
Fiedler and Jonseck submitted affidavits to the investigators saying they never gave Ashford’s password to Freed, nor did he ask for it.
Jonseck didn’t respond to messages left by The News, while Fiedler told the publication he was offended by Ashford’s accusations.
“I’m an honest person, and that type of allegation is very hurtful,” he said.
Fiedler retired from his city job in June in a move unrelated to the email fracas.
Sensing email surveillance, mayor shifts to text messages
Even interns have been caught in the conspiratorial intrigue.
Dechantuax Hayden, a freshman at St. Clair County Community College who was working at City Hall, sought a meeting with Ashford in March.
After sending an email, Hayden told her in a phone call he wanted to discuss a complaint against Freed, Ashford later told investigators.
When Hayden failed to show for the meeting, Ashford thought Freed read the email and contacted the intern to dissuade him from talking to the mayor.
But Hayden told investigators a different story.
He said the meeting wasn’t about Freed but about getting a job or another internship with the city.
When Ashford tried to ask Hayden why he failed to show, she didn’t contact him by email.
“Sending this text (Safer),” she wrote by text message. “Hopefully you are okay!”
An imaginary email
Ashford also accused Freed of reading imaginary messages.
She told investigators she believed she exchanged emails with a worker in the city streets division last year.
When Freed contacted her about the matter, she thought he learned about her communication with the streets worker by reading her email. Freed said he heard about it when he bumped into the worker at City Hall.
Ashford didn’t believe Freed because she thought he claimed to see the worker on a Saturday, when City Hall is closed. But Freed saw the employee on a Friday.
More importantly, the communication between Ashford and the street worker was by phone, not by email, the employee told investigators. A review of his and the mayor’s accounts found no email exchange between the two.
Freed couldn’t have read the mayor’s email because it didn’t exist.
fdonnelly@detroitnews.com
(313) 223-4186
@prima_donnelly
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Port Huron mayor suspected spying. Probe finds harmless explanation
Reporting by Francis X. Donnelly, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Francis X. Donnelly, The Detroit News | USA TODAY Network
