State Auditor Diana DiZoglio’s office is embroiled in a lawsuit with a former employee who claims he was forced to resign amid threats to his life but attorneys for the state say sexually harassed a coworker, court documents show.

At the heart of the dispute is a Sept. 27, 2024 meeting between the employee, Kehinde Olatunji Adedeji, and two officials from DiZoglio’s office, General Counsel Michael Leung-Tat and Executive Deputy State Auditor Stephen Lisauskas, that ended with Adedeji’s departure.

In court documents filed in Suffolk County Civil Court, Adedeji alleges he was coerced into resigning his position as an auditor because he suspected the two officials “may kill me on that day in the office at One Ashburton Place.”

“Against my wish, I resigned my employment to avoid bloodshed of me, an innocent person — I was forced to resign on Friday, Sept. 27, 2024,” Adedji, who is representing himself in court, wrote in initial court documents filed Oct. 30, 2024.

But Assistant Attorney General Shweta Mahajan Sethi, who is representing DiZoglio’s office, said the meeting was the culmination of “troubling behavior” that started shortly after Adedeji was hired as an auditor in October 2023.

Leung-Tat and Lisauskas met with Adedeji to discuss his future employment after Adedeji was accused of a litany of misconduct.

That includes posting recordings of coworkers on social media without permission, pressuring female interns to connect with him on social media, attempting to use his position to influence law enforcement officers, running a side business, and sexually harassing a colleague in the men’s bathroom, Sethi wrote in court documents. Adedeji has denied the allegations.

Even before the meeting started, Sethi said in court documents, Adedeji asked to bring his attorney to “avoid [a] bloody physical fight” and “made threats to retaliate against the employee who reported the bathroom incident and those who investigated the incident.”

“Nevertheless, during the Sept. 27th meeting, Leung-Tat and Lisauskas engaged with [Adedeji], explaining possible avenues forward, including resignation, and potential termination,” Sethi wrote in court documents. “Despite assurances that [Adedeji] had time to consider his options, [Adedeji] demanded a scrap of paper so he could immediately resign.”

In his own court documents, Adedeji recounts a different version of the meeting. Leung-Tat held an “already typed letter of termination” while Lisauskas held a “plain sheet of paper,” Adedeji wrote in court filings.

“[Leung-Tat] echoed thus, ‘You have the options to resign your employment right now or we get your employment terminated.’ He further stated ‘If you resign, it is easy for you to still work with other government agencies in Massachusetts but if we terminate your employment, you can never work for any government agency in Massachusetts.’”

Adedeji said he explained to Leung-Tat and Lisauskas that the office environment is “an intellectual and professional work setting,” everyone works hard to get audit reports ready, and there was “no reason to create a smoke where there was no fire.”

“They just wanted to create problems where there was no problem,” Adedeji wrote in court documents.

Sethi, the lawyer representing the State Auditor’s Office, said that after Adedeji resigned, he continued to contact the office, including sending emails directly to DiZoglio.

Adedeji also sent emails to other employees that used language they “found increasingly threatening such as telling Leung-Tat that ‘[l]ies against [the plaintiff] could carry generational consequences,’ which OSA employees understood as a threat to Leung-Tat’s children,” according to Sethi.

The Office of the State Auditor issued a no trespass order against Adedeji on Oct. 22, 2024, Sethi wrote in court documents.

Adedeji asked a judge to immediately reinstate his employment, pay him lost wages up to the time of his reinstatement, and compensate him $500,000 for “forced termination, harassments, hates, lies, slanders, discriminations, and defamations,” according to court documents. He has also filed a similar case in federal court, records show.

In a November ruling, Suffolk County Associate Justice David Deakin denied an emergency order from Adedeji that asked the court to force the Auditor’s Office to allow him to continue working while the case played out in court and pay lost wages up to that date.

Deakin said even though documents and evidence submitted by the State Auditor’s Office did not establish that it would win the case, it did “persuade me that Mr. Adedeji has not established a likelihood that he will succeed on his claims.”

“That is particularly true because, aside from his own denials, Mr. Adedeji has adduced no evidence to contradict the material submitted by the State Auditor’s Office. Further, the heated language in emails from Mr. Adedeji to personnel at the State Auditor’s Office … suggests a degree of intemperance on Mr. Adedeji’s part that is consistent with some of the office’s allegations of misconduct against him,” Deakin wrote in his ruling.

Adedeji appealed Deakin’s ruling this week, arguing in a court document that he made no “secret recording” of other staff at any time, he reserves the “right to be angry without being violent,” and there is no evidence of sexual harassment.

Lawyers representing the State Auditor’s Office filed a motion to dismiss the case in late December which Adedeji opposed, according to court records.

A spokesperson for the Attorney General’s Office declined to comment on the case and referred the Herald to court documents.

In an email to the Herald, Leung-Tat acknowledged that Adedeji previously worked for the State Auditor’s Office for a “short time” and resigned in 2024.

“He filed with the courts a request to be reinstated, and a judge denied his request for an emergency order. Our office has filed a motion to dismiss and looks forward to its resolution, however, as this is a personnel matter, we are unable to comment further,” Leung-Tat said.

In an emailed statement, Adedeji asked the Herald “not to publish any story” about the case because the matter was already “before a competent court of justice” and “all the allegations were false.”

“I never sexually harassed anyone in the restroom neither did I contact any intern. Let the intern provide the means by which I contacted her — Call, text or voicemail and the message sent to him or her. I am 100% sure there was none,” Adedeji said in the email.

In a Sept. 24, 2024 letter to Adedeji, Leung-Tat and Human Resources Director Rhonda Edwards said the State Auditor’s Office “became aware” in June 2024 of a conversation Adedeji allegedly had with another employee in the men’s restroom.

After being asked how his weekend was, Adedeji allegedly described his sex life to the employee, according to the letter, which was included in court documents. Adedeji was interviewed as part of an investigation into the incident, according to the letter.

“When asked if you stated ‘I (expletive)-ed her so good’ to the OSA employee when describing your sexual activity, you stated to Human Resources that, ‘I can’t remember, maybe I said something or maybe they said something. People just say all kinds of things in that bathroom,’” the letter said.

In the letter to Adedeji, Leung-Tat and Edwards said Adedeji also told them that in the men’s bathroom people “talk like boys.”

“You also explained that when employees get into the bathroom they talk about all types of ‘naughty stuff, we guys, we deal like boys inside that bathroom,’” the letter said.

In a separate court filing, Adedeji said there is no evidence of sexual harassment against “anyone by me” at the State Auditor’s Office.

“All the noise about sexual harassment were false. They were just ‘small talk’ or ‘boys talk’ in the restroom. Pardon me. Sometimes I use the bathroom and restroom interchangeably just as I use restaurant, canteen, and cafeteria interchangeably,” Adedeji wrote in the court filing.