There is evidence that Arkansas governor Sarah Sanders' office doctored documents and unlawfully withheld financial records that should have been made public under the Arkansas Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA.

The controversy concerns the $19,000 purchase of a lectern (or podium) by the governor's office from an out-of-state events company earlier this year, as well as Gov. Sarah Sanders' successful efforts to newly block access to certain governmental records.

Sanders recently pushed the state legislature to write a new exemption into the Arkansas FOIA in an attempt to prevent Matt Campbell, the Little Rock lawyer behind the Blue Hog Report blog, from accessing those records.

The speculation is that the $19,000 for the podium (which is only worth a few thousand dollars) actually was money used for Sanders to travel to Paris to meet with Virginia Beckett, one of Sanders' longstanding consultants and owner of D.C.-based Beckett Events LLC, which identifies itself as 'a full service events management company' and her business partner, Hannah Stone, to organize the Jan. 6 rally at the Ellipse in Washington, D.C.

In any event, governor Sanders seems to have checkmated herself. As others have observed, she releases the receipt for the podium (if there is one), which invites the FBI to come knocking with a grand jury subpoena. If the governor doesn't release the receipt, she invites the FBI to come knocking with a grand jury subpoena.

Bottom line: stupid, stupid, stupid.

arktimes.com - Whistleblower says governors office illegally altered withheld records related to podium purchase