A group of suburban Philadelphia parents who for nearly a year have been fighting for transparency over their county's restrictive school-reopening guidance believe they've uncovered a digital fingerprint that proves the guidance was authored not by the local health director, but by a Democratic political operative who has accused them of having "partisan goals."

The new metadata evidence comes as government leaders in Bucks County, Pa. continue to pursue multiple lawsuits against two local moms to block them from receiving emails and documents they've requested as part of their fight. The moms, Megan Brock and Jamie Walker, believe the documents may show that county officials overrode their own health director last summer to implement more restrictive school-reopening guidance favored by Governor Tom Wolf's Democratic administration. National Review reported on the lawsuits in July.

Jamie Walker and Megan Brock, parents in Bucks County, Pa.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, Bucks County's health director, Dr. David Damsker, had been a strong advocate for in-person learning. School-reopening guidance he released on August 15, 2021, during the Delta wave of the virus, was less stringent than guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state health department.

Eight days later, on August 23, the state's then-acting health secretary, Alison Beam, sent a letter to Bucks commissioners taking issue with Damsker's guidance, which she called alarming. She called on Bucks to come into line with the CDC and the state. Later that day, the county bent to Beam's request, and issued new guidance, with more restrictive rules about masks, quarantining, and testing.

Brock, Walker, and others were skeptical that Damsker approved of the new guidance, considering that his guidance has often conflicted with state and federal messaging. County leaders have alleged that Damsker wrote the guidance, "with assistance from staff." Brock and Walker have engaged in a nearly year-long battle with the county to discover if that is true, and if not, who the real author is.

They believe they now know the answer. Metadata embedded in the document – a sort of digital fingerprint – indicates the county's reissued school reopening guidance was not authored by Damsker, but was instead written on the computer of Eric Nagy, the county's director of policy and communications.

Before he went to work with Bucks County, Nagy was a political operative in Pennsylvania, the former executive director of the local Democratic committee, and a former campaign manager for at least ten Democratic political campaigns, according to his LinkedIn account. Nagy was previously the campaign manager for both Diane Ellis-Marseglia and Bob Harvie, the two Democrat commissioners on the three-member board, according to a local news report.

Walker called the revelation that the August 23 guidance was authored on Nagy's computer "the smoking gun."

"They let a political operative make health guidance for our children," she said. "It's wrong. It's not what public health should be."

In a one-sentence email to National Review, Nagy explained his involvement by saying, "In my role with the County, I am responsible for, and routinely involved with, reviewing and disseminating information to the public."

Brock, Walker, and local dad Josh Hogan had intended to confront commissioners with the metadata during the public comment period at Wednesday's commission meeting, but commissioners did not allow Brock and Hogan to speak, claiming they had run out of time. However, commissioners did allow a local Democratic committeewoman who missed her speaking slot to come back at a later time to speak.

Commissioners Ellis-Marseglia, Harvie, and Gene Girolamo did not respond to emails, text messages, and phone calls from National Review after the meeting.

Hogan said he stumbled upon the metadata details over the summer while he and Brock were reviewing county documents. He said Brock had noticed that Damsker's letters were issued on outdated letterhead, and they thought that might help them ferret out the author of the updated guidance.

"We're looking at that with a magnifying glass comparing these headers, and I'm like, you know what, let me just see if I can see anything about it in the metadata," Hogan recalled. "So, I go and just open it in a text file, and look, and boof, his name is right there in big, bold letters."

The updated health guidance is one of more than a dozen documents on the county's website, in a digital health department folder labeled "Coronavirus (COVID-19) Information." Almost all of the documents were authored by current or former members of the county or state health department, according to their metadata. One, a PDF describing a "close contact," was authored by Harvie, the commissioner. Nagy is listed as the author of the updated guidance.

During their fight to uncover the author of the updated guidance, the county's Democratic commissioners have repeatedly called Brock and Walker liars, and accused them of promoting a conspiracy theory and engaging in a political "stunt." A local Democratic club has called them "right-wing extremists and conspiracy nuts." At one point, the county blocked Brock from calling any government telephone lines. The county said it was an accident.

In July, National Review emailed Nagy asking, in part, who authored the updated guidance, the process for updating the guidance, and if Damsker had signed off on the changes. He replied that "the County has answered these questions ad nauseum for months." However, he didn't say who answered the questions or when the questions were answered, or point out a specific public meeting. A review of commission meetings over the last few months did not find evidence that Nagy's claim is true. In the email, Nagy didn't acknowledge any personal role in authoring the school reopening guidance.

In his email, Nagy urged National Review to "examine the plainly stated partisan goals" of Brock and Walker. Brock and Walker acknowledge they were prominent local activists in the school-reopening fight, and the fight over mandatory masking. Brock, a small-business owner, is a newly elected Republican committeewoman in her municipality.

Nagy was hired by the county in January 2020, at a salary of about $83,000, according to a story in the local Bucks County Courier Times. When he was hired, Patricia Poprik, the local GOP chair, issued a press release questioning the move.

"We are witnessing a blatant attempt by the Democratic County Commissioners to run a taxpayer-funded political operation out of the courthouse," she wrote. "The hiring of a highly-partisan political operative as some type of 'special projects coordinator' should be deeply concerning to every taxpayer in Bucks County."

Ellis-Marseglia defended the hire, telling the paper, "We always needed somebody like this."

"It's not a political job. He can't be involved in politics," she said.

While the updated school reopening guidance appears to have been authored by Nagy, or at least written on his computer, it's still not clear if Damsker officially approved the changes. Damsker has not addressed the controversy. Attempts by National Review to reach him were unsuccessful. "The question was, how much input did he have?" Hogan said.

Emails obtained by Brock show that a state official first reached out to Ellis-Marseglia around 10 a.m. on August 23, 2021, and the letter from Beam to county commissioners was sent later that morning. Ellis-Mareglia forwarded it to the county's chief operating officer, Margaret McKevitt, at 12:30 p.m. It wasn't until after 2 p.m. that McKevitt sent it to Damsker.

Just after 4 p.m. that day, McKevitt sent Nagy a link to CDC school guidance, emails show. The metadata on the reopening guidance indicates the file was created on Nagy's computer at 9:38 p.m. Ten minutes later, at 9:48 p.m., McKevitt sent out the revised guidance, copying commissioners, Damsker, and other county officials.

Brock said she's found no documentation from Damsker providing feedback about the proposed changes or signing off on the updated guidance. She believes the evidence indicates that Damsker was not behind the new guidance, and she worries that he may have been pressured by county officials to quietly go along with it. At the time, local Democrats were calling on Ellis-Marseglia and Harvie to fire Damsker.

"We have a lot of evidence that points the other way, he wasn't involved in any of the discussion," Brock said of Damsker. "Why would the Pennsylvania Department of Health be reaching out to politicians about school guidance instead of the actual health director?"

Parent activists who led the fight last year to reopen Pennsylvania schools believe the Bucks County case is just one example of a statewide pressure campaign by Wolf's administration to coerce school districts into following their restrictive guidance on quarantining and masking, rolling over legislative roadblocks and local officials with a different view.

After the guidance changed, at least one Bucks County superintendent pushed back. In an email the following morning, Rob McGee, superintendent of the Neshaminy School District, said the updated guidance "sets Neshaminy back to conditions less flexible and conducive to quality education than last year." He worried his district might not be able to open schools on time.

Brock said many Pennsylvania counties don't have a local health director, and those that didn't struggled to get personalized advice from state health officials. Bucks school leaders, on the other hand, had a resource in Damsker, who they could call if they with pandemic-related questions. Ahead of the 2021-22 school year, Brock said Damsker worked closely with school leaders to prepare for reopening, but that changed after the guidance controversy.

"Everyone lost contact with him," she said. "It went from the school boards and the school districts having this incredible resource of knowing, if they had a question, they had a certified public-health expert they could ask, to now all that had were politicians. That's dangerous."

Hogan said they still need to know who approved of the guidance changes. And, he said, their fight with the county shows the need for more government transparency.

"Obviously, we're all extremely frustrated because politics is not supposed to do this," he said. "We have to be able to fix it to make sure it can never happen again."