OTTAWA — Police are pursuing a criminal charge of breach of trust against the right-hand man of former Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty in an investigation sparked by the controversy over deleted gas plant emails.

Authorities say they believe McGuinty’s former chief of staff, David Livingston, gave an outside tech expert access to 24 computers in the premier’s office — access it’s suspected was used to permanently delete information.

By allowing someone who was not an Ontario Public Service employee to alter government computers, police allege, Livingston breached the public trust.

And while just what exactly the outside expert may have done to the computers in the premier’s office is not fully known, police now have two dozen hard drives in hand and are trying to see if they can figure it out.

The case against Livingston is detailed in the “information to obtain” (ITO) Ontario Provincial Police used last month to request a search warrant for a storage facility in Mississauga, where the government hard drives were being stored.

Some of the allegations are being made public for the first time after the Citizen and other media went to court to have the police document unsealed.

The accusations have not been tested in court, but a judge has ruled it is in the public interest to make them known.

Police allege that during the transition period after McGuinty had resigned from office under a cloud of allegations over the cancellation of gas plants in Mississauga and Oakville, Livingston arranged to get special computer access so that one user would be able to access the computer profiles of the entire premier’s office.

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