Email Records: Florida Bar HR Investigates Employee for Racial Abuse
GnvInfo has obtained the email records from the Florida Bar Department of Human Resources (HR)'s internal investigation into an employee for sending racist messages to a Black student athlete.
Kade McClendon was employed as a computer technician with the Florida Bar for over two years. Earlier this month, he was terminated after Miami Hurricanes defensive lineman Damon Wilson II received racist messages from McClendon's account on Instagram. The messages came soon after the Hurricanes defeated Florida State University, a school that McClendon attended.
Wilson shared the messages and they received a large amount of attention on social media and news outlets. The messages contain threats of sexual violence and several slurs, including multiple uses of the n-word. A screenshot can be accessed at the bottom of this page but viewer discretion is advised.
The records show that McClendon contacted HR at 11:29 p.m. on the same day the messages were shared, claiming that he was victim to a "severe personal cybersecurity breach." He said that the messages going public have led to "third parties" "targeting" his relatives with "harassing messages."
A Florida Bar spokesperson verified that McClendon had no disciplinary history prior to this incident, a point he raised in his email.
After the Florida Bar started their internal investigation, McClendon again denied sending the messages himself and alleged that his account was hacked.
"We received a call from my girlfriend’s sister asking if we had seen what was going around online," McClendon told HR Director Francesca Ciaccio-Freeman.
McClendon continued, "We said we hadn’t and so we were then sent a screenshot of what was happening. While the images circulating online have my original name and photo, I did not send the messages. The first time I opened my Instagram after finding out, my profile picture was gone, and my name and username had already been changed without my consent. I reported my account being hacked as I was deactivating it. There was a link at the end of the steps where I could do it and that’s what I pressed. Afterwards I proceeded with deactivating my account."
McClendon went on to say, "I understand that it is my responsibility to provide evidence for this. The attached screenshots show my usage on instagram throughout the day, as well as an error message saying my main device is no longer recognized, meaning other stuff has been changed since our initial phone call. I would also like to note that a reason for me not receiving emails could be related to my email address getting changed and I not noticing. I have also done research into getting a digital forensics company to scan my phone. I have not consulted with one yet but during the research I found that they could take 14-30 days to complete it which would be outside the given window. I would be willing to hire someone and see what they can find if The Bar is willing to give me the time to do so."
The screenshots attached by McClendon do not prove his account was hacked, but that he had low account activity on that specific device on the day of the incident and that his device was not recognized when he tried to log in. The screenshots do not rule out potential account activity on other devices, and a login error does not automatically equate to the account being compromised.
Ciaccio-Freeman responded by telling McClendon he is on administrative leave and asked for "any evidence supporting" his account being hacked.
McClendon went on to tell Ciaccio-Freeman, "I consulted with an attorney and when explaining the situation the attorney mentioned that because I am locked out of my instagram account (screenshot provided) that I likely will be unable to get any information/evidence from Instagram without a subpoena. I am very sorry I cannot provide more. I want to be able to provide more, I just don’t have a way to or know how else to recover any information."
According to a summary of the investigation, "Kade stated that he did not send direct messages from his Instagram account to Damon Wilson. He further stated that he believed his Instagram account had been compromised. He indicated that he was unaware of who would have hacked into his account. Kade did not provide evidence to substantiate that his account had been compromised or accessed by an unauthorized user."
The records provided also contain a memorandum in support of McClendon's termination.
HR's request to terminate McClendon was quickly approved by Florida Bar Executive Director Joshua E. Doyle.
The Florida Bar provided the records free of charge, but consider donating to GnvInfo to cover fees for other records that generally cost money such as body-camera videos, court hearing videos, internal investigations and more.
