Joyce Craig’s Office DID Report Email from Harmony Montgomery’s Mother to Police
Manchester Mayor Targeted by Political Hit Job Linked to Chris Sununu & Joe Kelly Levasseur — OPINION
MANCHESTER, NH — Articles in the New Hampshire Journal claiming that Mayor Joyce Craig’s office rebuffed a request by Crystal Sorey, Montgomery’s mother, for help in finding her lost child and intimating that there was some kind of cover up of emails between the Mayor’s Office and Sorey are widely seen by political insiders as hit pieces exploiting the child’s death to smear Joyce Craig.
That the smear is based on a demonstrable falsehood underscores the feeling that the articles were a cynical political stratagem engineered by Republicans seeking to hurt Craig politically.
Mayor Craig is not running for a fourth term but is running an exploratory campaign for governor.
Manchester Police Chief Allen Aldenberg was not pleased with the broadcasting of falsehoods about how the Mayor’s Office and the Manchester Police Department handled the inquiries from Harmony Montgomery’s mother. ManchesterInkLink quoted Aldenberg:
“If they want to put some little girl into the middle of a political game, then we’re worse off in our society than I thought. That a little girl is somehow a political pawn, it’s disgusting to me. I‘m not protecting the mayor or her office when I say that; I’m protecting the sanctity of this investigation and the memory of a little girl.”
Joe Kelly Levasseur
The most likely candidate for creator of this fake news is Manchester Alderman Joe Kelly Levasseur. Posting on his Facebook page last week, Levasseur said that he was contacting Governor Sununu and the Attorney General over the failure of the City’s information technology department to honor a Right to Know request for emails between Crystal Sorey and Joyce Craig’s office and then, after being contacted by an attorney, claiming that no emails could be found.
In fact, the Journal had a copy of the emails, but did not reveal the source for the documents. Implicit in the Journal’s coverage and Levasseur’s attack is the non-existence of said emails on City’s server. How did they disappear? Were the deleted, and by whom and for what reason.
Levasseur seemed to be implying there was a coverup by the Mayor’s Office.
Sununu used Levasseur’s communication as a platform to attack Mayor Craig in the second Journal article, where he was extensively quoted. Jay Ruais, the Salem native who moved to Manchester around the time that news of Harmony Montgomery’s disappearance first surfaced, also was quick to pile on.
Speaking to the Journal, Ruais said “When a person reaches out in crisis, every effort should be made to address their concerns, follow up, and assist in making appropriate connections while using the power of the office to make a difference.”
In fact, the public record shows that is exactly what Mayor Joyce Craig’s office did.
The Facts
Chief Aldenberg was incredulous over the charges made in the Journal articles, as the matter of how the Manchester Police Department was informed of Harmony Montgomery’s disappearance and the role of Mayor Craig’s Office in passing on her mother’s request has been a matter of public record for over 18 months.
A ManchesterInkLink article that ran on January 3, 2022 revealed that Mayor Craig’s office passed on the email to the Manchester Police Department. The article used information from an MPD press conference held on Dec. 31, 2021, in which Harmony was declared a missing child and a reward for information was made.
In fact, the mother declared that nothing had been done to address her concerns until she called the police and called the mayor.
“NEW HAMPSHIRE DCYF FAILED MY DAUGHTER!!! MYSELF & HER FAMILY HAVE FILED DOZENS OF REPORTS OF ABUSE & NEGLECT & NOTHING WAS DONE UNTIL I CALLED POLICE & WROTE A LETTER TO THE NH MAYOR!!!! This is ALL I WILL SAY UNTIL I AM ALLOWED TO SAY MORE CUZ I WILL NOT HINDER MY DAUGHTERS INVESTIGATION!!!!!”
The public record available for 18 months shows that Crystal Sorey contacted the MPD on November 18, 2021. In the recent ManchesterInkLink article, Aldenberg says that that call is what initiated an investigation into the child, which included the MPD contacting New Hampshire Division for Children, Youth and Families. He claims that it is the only phone call she made to the MPD, based on a records search.
A timeline of the case reveals that on December 27, 2021, the DCYF reported back to the MPD that they did not know the whereabouts of Harmony Montgomery. The MPD must have told Sorey the news, as two days later she contacted Mayor Craig’s office via the City website two days later.
An internal search by the MPD revealed that a communication by Crystal Sorey made through the City website was made on Dec. 29, 2021 at 2:41 p.m. A member of the Mayor’s Office responded to Sorey two hours later. The Mayor’s Office then forwarded Sorey’s email to the Manchester Police Department, which then ramped up the investigation.
This has all been a part of the public record since the New Year’s Eve, 2021 press conference held by the Manchester Police Department. These are the facts that Chris Sununu, Joe Kelly Levasseur and Jay Ruais ignored, acting under the cover of Levasseur’s attack on the City’s IT Department.
A question a reasonable person may ask is whether the parties involved, including Joe Kelly Levasseur, already knew that the emails had been deleted from the City web server before the RTK request was made, and whether Levasseur was the source of the email copies the Journal printed.
