Attorneys obtain ream of Sheriff Swank’s undisclosed emails with private lawyer
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Robnett attorneys received 400+ pages of undisclosed Swank–Mell communications.
- Judge’s decision on whether to dismiss lawsuit will be delayed for at least a week.
- Attorneys for Robnett said delays in the case are causing costs to grow significantly.
During a Friday court hearing in Seattle, an attorney for Pierce County Prosecutor Mary Robnett showed off a thick binder containing over 400 pages of documents sent between Sheriff Keith Swank and Joan Mell, the private lawyer attempting to represent him in his official business and political interests.
None of the documents previously had been turned over to the court by Mell, who was recently subpoenaed to submit all of her communications with Swank. In an Oct. 14 court document, she declared she had given the judge all communications responsive to the subpoena.
Some of the documents were “deeply troubling,” Robnett’s attorney, Michelle Luna, said.
“Well, that’s a problem,” King County Superior Court Judge Michael Ryan said.
For over two hours, Ryan heard arguments from attorneys for Mell and Robnett over whether he should dismiss the lawsuit alleging Mell is unlawfully invading the Prosecutor’s Office and disenfranchising Pierce County voters by holding herself out as an attorney for Swank.
Mell has written in court filings that the lawsuit is a “misguided and retaliatory attack” and that speaking on Swank’s behalf and representing his interests is protected by the First Amendment.
It seemed unlikely that Ryan would rule on whether to dismiss the case from the bench, and at the end of the hearing he said the parties involved deserved a written order explaining his conclusions. Now it will be at least another week until Ryan has all the evidence he needs to make a decision.
Over Zoom, Mell told the court the communication records Luna held were not as voluminous as the number of pages reflected. Most were attachments Swank included on emails to her.
“The issue, your honor, is not that I testified falsely under oath,” Mell said. “I absolutely believed based on the good faith efforts made by my office and myself to produce all of the communications responsive to the subpoena, that my office and I had done the collaborative work to accomplish that. Some of the limitations were time and talent.”
The emails and texts Mell has submitted have not been made public, and Ryan has so far ruled they are for “attorney’s eyes only.” However, Luna generally described the binder of new records as covering further communications between Swank and Mell between May 12 and Aug. 7.
Luna said she still doesn’t think everything is there.
“I think we’re going to need some proffer of what search terms were used, what servers, what email addresses — in order to satisfy somehow that we have everything — before final disposition on this ruling,” Luna said.
Mell said she wanted to be fully transparent with the court. What happened, she said, was that digital production of her communications with Swank were printed at her Tacoma-area office, and she took copies to her law office in Montana. There, the documents were prepared for paper production to the court, according to Mell, and some didn’t match the digital production.
“My error, in the timeframe that I had, was not taking what you saw and going back to the original natives and comparing it,” Mell said. “So that’s where the pages were missed.”
After some tense back and forth between Ryan and Mell, the judge said he would accept Mell’s explanation of why things weren’t provided to him. But his patience appears to be waning.
“Do you see the frustration that I’m starting to develop with what I see, as you know, a lack of attention to detail with these little things?” Ryan said.
Financial costs grow as delays continue
Before Luna presented the binder, Ryan questioned why there had been holdups in this case, which Luna said had delayed voters’ right to oust Mell from representing Swank in his official capacity as sheriff. .
Perhaps chief among the setbacks was related to the central issue Ryan was considering Friday, a motion to dismiss the case that Mell brought under Washington’s Uniform Public Expression Act (UPEPA), a law designed to protect free speech from the threat of lawsuits.
In July, Mell invoked that law in an email to Robnett, which effectively paused the court proceedings.
“This e-mail serves to meet the notice requirements of RCW 4.105.020 for filing a special motion for expedited relief for SLAPP protection and an award of attorney’s fees and costs,” Mell wrote in part. “I will be filing as well under RCW 4.24.510 to include a request for the $10,000.00 penalty, fees and costs.”
The law allowed Mell up to 60 days from that notice to file her dismissal motion while court proceedings remained on hold, although there are exceptions for actions related to the UPEPA motion. In September, Ryan determined that the law’s stay on the discovery process was unconstitutional, ordering limited discovery that led to Mell’s subpoena.
Attorneys for Mell strongly disagreed with the idea that Mell brought the motion for the purpose of delaying the case.
“If it was frivolous or not substantially justified, they wouldn’t have taken 36-plus pages to respond to it,” said Eric Stahl, an attorney with the Seattle-based law firm Davis Wright Tremaine who is representing Mell.“We wouldn’t have been here for three hours discussing the merits.”
Attorneys for Robnett have pointed out another delay. Mell at first resisted the subpoena to turn over her communications with Swank, going to the Washington State Supreme Court and claiming that Ryan didn’t have jurisdiction or acted beyond it by ordering her to submit her emails and texts with Swank to the court. Supreme Court Commissioner Michael E. Johnson denied Mell’s petition and called it “deeply flawed.”
“Delay happens in the courts all the time, but sometimes delay is tactical, and it felt like there were a lot of tactics going on along the way,” Luna said in court Friday.
Ryan went over some of the delays with Luna, including Mell’s petition to the State Supreme Court. Luna characterized it as improper.
“All of that has not just delayed the case, it’s significantly driven up the costs and hours,” Luna said.
Robnett could recoup those costs if she succeeds in her lawsuit against Mell. Robnett’s attorneys have asked to be awarded actual costs, attorneys fees and expenses.
This story was originally published November 1, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
