In his ethics complaint against Huckabee, Parsons said Huckabee should not have destroyed state records because citizens have a right to know the information contained on the drives.

According to Beebe spokesman Matt DeCample, the new administration had to use $335,000 from the governor's operating budget to purchase new computers as well as new hard drives. Currently, the governor's office has 22 refurbished computers with new hard drives, 27 new desktop computers and 22 new laptops.

"We were taken a little by surprise that he went to the extreme lengths that he did to crush the hard drives without informing anyone ahead of time and without proper authority," said Arkansas Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, (D-Crossett), last week. "This is typical for what we've experienced the last 10 years out of Mr. Huckabee. It sort of reminds me a lot of what [President Richard] Nixon did before he left office - trying to erase tapes."

Jeffress said Jegley is now trying to determine whether Huckabee's actions violated any state laws. But information included in a PowerPoint presentation on the state Attorney General's Web site says: "Tampering with a public records (sic) is a [Class D] felony." A Class D felony in Arkansas is punishable by up to six years in prison. The problem, according to Johnson, is how to determine if the records on the hard drives that were destroyed were, in fact, public documents.

Gabe Holmstrom, a spokesman for the Arkansas attorney general, said his office is also reviewing the situation to determine whether any laws were broken.