Investigator Sally Miller corresponded by email on multiple occasions with Harbours homeowner, Kathy Quiggins, who did not support the Indiana Office of the Attorney General’s (OAG’s) investigation. Many of these emails were forwarded to the Defendants by Ms. Quiggins. Instead of receiving them from Ms. Quiggins, they should have been part of the OAG’s respo
nse to the Defendants’ request for discovery.
[NOTE: Most of the emails linked in this posting were not formatted and condensed to be easily read and understood. That effort is spent on email summaries on this website that are presented for a particular person where content is the focus. In this posting, it’s more important that emails be viewed exactly as they were sent to the OAG in quantity and scale. If the content is unclear, a better review will be possible when emails are summarized in one file elsewhere under the name of the person sending them.]
Kathy Quiggins’ primary point-of-contact with the OAG appeared to be Sally Miller, and most of their contacts took place in 2013. Ms. Quiggins was very troubled by the investigation and lawsuit as was her late husband, Ken, who served on the Board of Directors from 2007 to 2011 including a term as President. She emailed the OAG to try to educate them on what was really going on at The Harbours and to voice her disapproval of the process they were following and the individuals from whom the OAG was getting its information. Ms. Quiggins felt that the OAG was getting too much information—and bad information—from Harbours complainants and their friends. Sally Miller acknowledged Kathy’s point-of-view and the frequency of her contacts on p. 33 of Sally’s deposition (LINK) .
One of these emails, dated April 22, 2013, contained the following remark from Sally Miller to Kathy Quiggins:
“As far as my responding to emails and calls from Sheila Rudder and Kathy Bupp, neither of these two ladies call me or email me on a weekly basis…”
Ms. Quiggins had evidently singled out these two people as having too much influence with the OAG and Sally Miller. The full text of the email is shown on page 1 of this linked document:
Sally Miller Email of 4-22-2013 to Kathy Quiggins
A year later, the OAG would forward 956 emails to the Defendants in response to their discovery request. Included were many emails sent by Kathy Bupp or Sheila Rudder during the two months prior to Sally Miller’s remark above. On 32 of the emails, Sally Miller was personally copied. These emails are listed and indexed on page 2 of the linked file.
A calendar graphic is on page 3 which shows the distribution of emails that Ms. Miller received over the 68 days prior to the date of her comment to Kathy Quiggins that she didn’t receive contacts from Sheila Rudder and Kathy Bupp “on a weekly basis”. And the rest of the file starting on page 4 is more than one hundred pages of emails that Sally Miller did in fact receive from Kathy Bupp and Sheila Rudder just prior to Sally’s comment to Ms. Quiggins.
Deposition Reference
On pp. 71-72 of Sally Miller’s deposition (LINK) taken on February 6, 2015, the following question and answer are recorded:
Clay Culotta (attorney): “How often did you — how frequently or how often did you get e-mails from Kathy Bupp?”
Sally Miller: “I would say at five-year period less than ten. That’s not exactly. I’m not sure, but that’s a guesstimate.”
In the linked email file above, Sally Miller received 15 emails from Kathy Bupp in March 2013 alone. All of the emails forwarded by the OAG attributed to Ms. Bupp haven’t been completely processed for upload. But over a 1-1/2 year period (9/26/2012 – 2/27/2014) prior to Sally Miller’s deposition, there were at least fifty emails sent to Ms. Miller by Kathy Bupp. And these are just the emails that we know about.
Sally Miller could probably parse words on contradictions in her testimony and other documented evidence. She could obviously say she forgot about or seriously underestimated the number of emails. She could say there’s no evidence that she personally opened emails from Kathy Bupp even though the OAG forwarded them. She could also try to embellish what she meant by “weekly basis“. But it’s unlikely that there’s any reasonable explanation she could offer.
Additional Email and Inconsistencies
On April 30, 2013—barely a week after the email detailed above between Sally Miller and Kathy Quiggins—another email exchange took place between these two people that again addressed the OAG’s frequency of contacts with Harbours residents. A similar file was composed and is linked here:
Sally Miller Email of 4-30-2013 to Kathy Quiggins
In the email on pp. 1-2 of the file, Ms. Miller states to Ms. Quiggins:
“You are the only person who contacts me on a regular basis. I don’t understand it at all.”
Sally Miller’s remark was in reference to the accompanying message shown in its entirety from Kathy Quiggins in which she criticized the OAG and Ms. Miller for listening to people whom Ms. Quiggins believed were misleading the OAG. Here are a few of Kathy’s comments to Sally in that message:
“…Ms. Rudder and many of her cohorts had spent the last month running our halls, beating on doors, making phone calls, harassing residents to vote the way they wanted them to. Can you not see the thought process here? Can you not see how one sided and unfair their thinking is? I would think that alone is enough to see how these people will use anything including your office to get their way. I am sorry but I simply cannot understand how you do not see how serious and wrong that is and try to put a stop to it…”
“…I was wondering if it would be possible for you and whoever else who needs to be included to perhaps meet with myself and my husband and a few others for lunch or dinner in a public restaurant to discuss some of the concerns we have, as you did with the Rudder, Cantrell, Haley, Bupp group? It would certainly seem that if that was acceptable for them it would also be for us…”
“…I felt you needed to be made aware of this problem as it is serious and should not be happening and certainly seems to make people think the bragging by [Complainants and their friends] that they have connections and have your office in their pocket seem all the more possible…”
Sally Miller was disputing the allegation that Harbours residents identified by Kathy Quiggins were contacting her and the OAG. Starting on page 3 of this attached file, 49 emails are indexed and shown in their entirety that the OAG received during the month prior to Ms. Miller’s “you are the only person” remark to Ms. Quiggins above. They all involve current Harbours residents. The OAG was evidently blind copied on some of these emails. But Sally Miller was either the author or direct recipient on 38 of them.
Why the Dishonesty?
It’s now documented that, on multiple occasions, OAG Investigator Sally Miller was less than truthful about her communications with Harbours residents. The question is “why?” Everyone knew that the OAG had been contacted by the Complainants, and there shouldn’t have been any issues admitting to those contacts. Instead, the issue is about what the OAG was suspected of, favoritism and bias. Here’s an example of another email that Sally Miller received alleging favoritism:
Sally Miller Email of 7-14-2014 to Former Asst. Property Manager
The process of denial is thus complete: Ms. Miller denied a relationship as well as the existence of evidence underlying a relationship. She was perhaps wrongly accused in the assistant’s email of having “friends” at The Harbours. But why did Sally Miller single out that comment? Among the other remarks by the assistant, why did she go out of her way denying that one? Relationships shouldn’t matter to the OAG’s investigation—unless they did.
It’s clear that people at The Harbours who stood in opposition to the Complainants felt there was bias and unfairness. It’s the reason that Ms. Miller was questioned in that area during her deposition. Sensing that, Sally Miller chose to deny that potentially incriminating contacts were taking place. At the same time, she probably miscalculated that evidence like this could be put together undermining her denials.
Of course, this begs the larger questions of what were the OAG’s motives, and what would stand in their way of achieving them? Certainly those questions exist if it’s possible for the OAG to be less than forthright answering questions and for truth to be a casualty…
Harbours Lawsuit 