COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) — During a debate between Republican candidates in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, state Sen. Matt Dolan accused businessman Bernie Moreno of shredding evidence against him in a court case.

Dolan, Moreno and Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose met Monday in a debate seen on NBC4.

“Bernie, we learned this week that we don’t know if we can trust you,” Dolan said. “Your employees trusted you to follow a court order and to not destroy documents that helped their case against you. What did you do? You shredded those documents because it helped Bernie Moreno, not the employees. This is a matter of trust.”

Dolan’s claims allude to a lawsuit filed against Moreno in 2017 by former employee Omar Adem, who worked for him at a Mercedez-Benz dealership in Burlington, Massachusetts. The lawsuit alleged that Moreno had failed to pay Adem for overtime hours as far back as 2015.

Court records from August 2022 show that Moreno said in a deposition that he received monthly reports telling him if anyone worked overtime in the dealership. However, Moreno testified that he did not retain documents from the dealership when he sold it as part of M11 Motors LLC to new owners. Moreno added that he shredded documents sometime in late 2020.

The court record did affirm Dolan’s claim that Moreno got rid of evidence.

“The inference is clear: Defendants either did not retain or shredded at least these monthly reports,” a judge wrote in the documents.

Moreno and his legal team argued in court that the missing documents “never” had salespeople on them. But the court said that Moreno’s word was not enough.

“Plaintiffs should not be forced to take Moreno’s word about the substance of these reports,” the records read and further said that Moreno had an obligation to keep such reports.

The presiding judge wrote that claims Moreno had committed wholesale destruction of relevant records were “overblown,” but a narrower claim of destruction was not. Moreno either lost or destroyed documents — which were relevant to the case and he was required to preserve — the court records said. The record also stated that Moreno knew or should have known that he was needed to keep the documents.

“The monthly reports reflecting overtime were relevant to this case, whether or not salespeople were listed in them,” the court documents read. “Thus, whether negligently or intentionally, the Defendants lost or destroyed evidence that they were required to preserve and which they knew or should have known was relevant.”

After Moreno and his legal team couldn’t produce the missing documents, Moreno and his legal team brought in an ADP report summarizing hours worked as well as time cards for Adem.

In response to Dolan’s accusations, Moreno attacked the credibility of the judge.

“The reality is … the judge is a Harvard elitist lunatic,” Moreno said.

Moreno attempted to flip the lawsuit accusations back on Dolan. He said that the Dolan family-owned Cleveland Guardians baseball team — which Moreno referred to by its previous name — has faced more lawsuits than him.

“Compare my lawsuits to the number of lawsuits that the Cleveland Indians have had,” he said. “Maybe your dad can explain to you how business works.”

Moreno urged debate viewers to read the documents. View the court records below.