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Records: major outage
Exhibit 03 · Live Request 25-123 Filed 06.06.25 · 06:27 Closed "fulfilled" 12.08.25 · 16:04
Community TransHIT / The Records / 03

The
Zero

Community Transit told me there were no Teams messages. Fifty-four minutes earlier, it uploaded one to my request.

Staff only
Rachel Text.PNG
Recreation · Drag to inspect
Object
Rachel Text.PNG
Size
84,214 bytes
SHA-256
cf67779ea7be140b…49092f
Uploaded
07.15.25 · 10:53 am
Statement
"There were no Teams internal comms messages." · 11:47 am
Released
10.07.25, as "Rachel WoodsMike Berman Teams.PNG"
Withheld
84 days
Edition
1 of 1. Same file, new name.
Expected response: five business days.
01 / 05

Fifty-four minutes

July 15, 202510:53
In the file · Staff Only
10:53 am · Document addedRachel Text.PNG
10:54 am · NoteTeams Chat: Attached is the Teams chat between you and me. There was a chat with me and De, but that contained only transitory information. … A Microsoft 365 Exchange redirect rule was put in place to redirect any messages coming from or about Henk Meyers to any CT employees to both my mailbox and a shared mailbox with Transit Security. These were not distributed to any employees and were not acted upon. Our perimeter email defense system was then accessed to extract the original email for evidentiary purposes.
Sent to me
11:47 am · Message to requesterA search for records is now complete. There were no Teams internal comms messages. … There are no records that are responsive to this part of the request. However, the Senior Manager of Technology Infrastructure provided this statement: A Microsoft 365 Exchange redirect rule was put in place to redirect any messages coming from or about Henk Meyers to any CT employees to both my mailbox and a shared mailbox with Transit Security.
Same morning. Same file. Same person.
Scroll to advance the clockSource: CT request timeline, p. 11–12
02 / 05

What got cut

Berman's statement, quoted to me with two sentences missing
Berman to Woods · July 10, 2025 A Microsoft 365 Exchange redirect rule was put in place to redirect any messages coming from or about Henk Meyers to any CT employees to both my mailbox and a shared mailbox with Transit Security. These were not distributed to any employees and were not acted upon. Our perimeter email defense system was then accessed to extract the original email for evidentiary purposes.

Press and hold to see the two sentences Community Transit left out of the version it sent me.

Not distributed.
Not acted upon.
Extracted for evidence.

Those are the sentences that say the messages never reached anyone and that the originals were pulled and kept. They were in the internal note at 10:54. They weren't in what I got at 11:47.

03 / 05

The search

Itemized from CT's own log

Part 1 of my request asked for emails referencing me. Community Transit searched for emails between three pairs of people.

The search criteria came out of a ten-minute call with the IT Director the request was about. The part about the email redirect rule went to the man who built it. His mailbox was never searched.

The total was 20 hours and 45 minutes of staff time, and zero Teams messages.

COMMUNITY TRANSIT
PUBLIC DISCLOSURE PROGRAM
REQUEST #25-123
CRITERIA: IT DIRECTOR0:10
PART 4 → RULE AUTHOR✓
SEARCH MODE"BETWEEN"
BERMAN MAILBOXSKIPPED
SECURITY SHARED MBXSKIPPED
"EVIDENCE FOLDER"SKIPPED
DE CHATTRANSITORY
SCREENSHOT 10:53IGNORED
STAFF TIME20:45
TEAMS MESSAGES0
STATUS: FULFILLED
THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE
CF67779EA7BE140B66E1C8E55CED0C70
04 / 05

The chat he kept

Two works by the same artist, 24 days apart
I do. I have email in both my sent and deleted as well as Teams chat between me and you, and me and De Tapia.
"I Do"June 16, 2025Mike BermanEmail, in reply to "please reply if you have any of these records."
There was a chat with me and De, but that contained only transitory information.
"Transitory"July 10, 2025Mike BermanEmail, in reply to "I am ready to collect… Teams chat."
0times the records officer looked at the chat
0exemptions cited for keeping it
0withholding log entries
05 / 05

Thirty days

Try the retention policy. The clock runs fast so you don't have to wait like I did.
Teams · ChatDay 00
  • 06.06.25I file the request. A requested record can't be destroyed until the request is resolved (RCW 42.56.100).
  • 06.16.25Berman says he has the Teams chat with the IT Director.
  • 07.10.25He calls it "transitory." His screenshot of another chat already reads "We've deleted older messages due to your org's retention policy."
  • 07.31.25"Teams Chat 30 Day Retain & Delete" is created. My request is still open.
  • 11.10.25I'm told Teams "has an automatic 30-day retention period."
  • 12.18.25The policy is modified, fifteen days after my federal complaint. Nobody has said what changed.
Notes

Sources

  1. Community Transit NextRequest timeline for Request 25-123, pp. 11–12, 22, 25, 27–28. Produced by the agency.
  2. Berman–Woods emails of June 16 and July 10, 2025, with Woods' July 9 email quoted inside. Produced by the agency under Request 25-168.
  3. "Rachel Text.PNG" (attachment to the July 10 email) and "Rachel WoodsMike Berman Teams.PNG" (released October 7, 2025): identical SHA-256, cf67779ea7be140b66e1c8e55ced0c709f8dec59ec92ee06ec606b194449092f.
  4. Teams retention policy exports produced under Requests 26-250, 26-267 and 26-279.

What I'm not claiming

That the chat was deleted. It was identified, then withheld. Whether it still exists is a question they haven't answered.

That email headers were stripped. They weren't. The ones without headers are the sender's own sent copies, which normally don't carry them.

Why they did any of this. The records show they knew. They don't say why.