PSC leadership tried to ‘scrub’ email, ‘destroy evidence’
Keila Szpaller
(Daily Montanan) Montana Public Service Commission leadership tried to “scrub” an email that could be evidence in a lawsuit against it and fired the agency’s human resources director in retaliation, a federal court document says.
A PSC spokesperson said the agency was still reviewing the document and did not have comment Thursday.
Commissioner Brad Molnar made the allegations Thursday as part of a lawsuit he filed earlier this month against PSC President Jeff Welborn, Vice President Jennifer Fielder, and Commissioner Annie Bukacek.
In July 2025, Molnar announced he was under investigation for professional misconduct. He denied the claims.
Earlier this month, the PSC voted to adopt a report that found Molnar was guilty of the allegations, including unwelcome sex-based comments, and its recommendations that he be barred from the building and apologize.
Instead, Molnar filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Helena against the three commissioners who supported the report, alleging First Amendment retaliation. He is asking to return to the workplace.
Last week, Welborn, on behalf of the PSC and based on a report recommendation, asked Gov. Greg Gianforte to suspend Molnar for a year. That request is pending.
In the motion Thursday, Molnar called for an expedited court process, alleging the PSC is willing to “destroy evidence” and already retaliated against the HR director after she refused to characterize allegations against him as “sexual harassment.”
In the court filing, Molnar and his lawyer, Matthew Monforton, are asking for the email in question to be produced in full, and for permission to depose the former HR director, dismissed around May 4.
“This evidence goes directly to whether Defendants acted with the retaliatory and bad-faith intent that Commissioner Molnar’s preliminary injunction motion (to return to work in person and be restored to equal status as other commissioners) places at the center of this case,” the court document said.
In an earlier email, PSC spokesperson Jamey Petersen said the Commission and “response team,” an internal team that investigated Molnar, “strongly disagree” with the characterizations Molnar made in the lawsuit and believe it omits or minimizes findings.
The report found PSC leadership had warned Molnar and tried to help him correct his behavior, but he responded with “belligerence and defiance.” It said he retaliated against those who filed reports about his behavior.
The brief Thursday argues the full email and deposition from the former HR director would be important pieces of evidence in gauging the “credibility and motivation of defendants’ purported justifications for barring” Molnar from working in person at “Montana’s most powerful regulatory agency.”
But it said a delay risks copies of the email will be compromised or destroyed.
The court document outlines a “deeply troubling email chain,” the general contents of which were provided to Molnar.
The court document alleges that Fielder in the email said Molnar “would be no more able to defend his conduct than a named PSC employee had been able to defend himself against allegations of alcoholism.” However, it also said neither Molnar nor Monforton has seen the unredacted email.
But the court filing said the contents reflect Fielder and Welborn considered the outcome of Molnar’s disciplinary hearing “a foregone conclusion” weeks before formal charges were leveled or the hearing took place.
The court filing said the email chain was distributed to multiple PSC staff members, and later, “PSC leadership” sought to have it “scrubbed” from all employee inboxes, and one staff member witnessed it “vanish” while he was reading it.
Molnar filed a records request for the March 20 email.
Instead of receiving the complete email, he received a report that confirmed Welborn had “initiated a recall of the message entitled ‘Re: Media Interactions and Access in PSC Workspaces,’” a redacted copy of the email, and an assertion the email was withheld based on privacy, the court filing said.
“The PSC’s asserted privacy privilege cannot override Commissioner Molnar’s need for this evidence in federal civil rights litigation, nor can it justify withholding communications that go to the heart of whether the disciplinary proceeding against him was predetermined and retaliatory,” the court filing said.
The court filing also describes the termination of the HR director. It said the director’s refusal to characterize some of Molnar’s actions as “sexual harassment,” having found they did not meet that legal standard, were one of the stated grounds for her termination.
It said she texted Molnar the following the same day she was terminated: “Received my investigation report. They should be ashamed. Same with my termination[,] it is so retaliatory.”
“(The former HR director’s) termination — resulting from her refusal to provide the characterization defendants needed to justify their planned disciplinary action — is direct evidence of Defendants’ bad faith and retaliatory motive,” the court filing said. “Her deposition is critical to Commissioner Molnar’s preliminary injunction motion.”