PIKESVILLE, Md. — Former Pikesville high school principal Eric Eiswert says his employer, the Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS), essentially hung him out to dry.
When an audio clip went viral last January, allegedly of Eiswert making racist and anti-semitic remarks about his staff and students, he was immediately placed on leave. The comments were swiftly condemned by elected officials, activists, and countless people on social media. Calls for his firing, and assassinations of his character, were fierce. His lawyers say he even faced threats of violence.
At the time, Superintendent Myriam Rogers called the comments “deeply disturbing” but said they hadn't yet verified the authenticity of the recording.
It wasn't until months later that police said:
"We now have conclusive evidence that the recording was not authentic,” Chief Robert McCullough told reporters at an April 26 press conference.
Baltimore County Police arrested Pikesville athletic director Dazhon Darien, and said he used AI to create a fake audio clip, then sent it around. Police said it was retaliation against Eiswert for launching an investigation into Darien's alleged mishandling of school funds, and later ending his contract.
Eiswert’s name was cleared. But as his newly filed lawsuit says, the damage was already done.
"His family was harassed, and all feared for their safety. His professional and personal life were so harmed that it will be difficult and costly to recover the reputation he worked decades to foster," his attorneys wrote in a suit filed Tuesday in Baltimore County Circuit Court.
Eiswert is suing Darien and two teachers who shared the recording for defamation, and he's suing the school system for negligence.
Although it took months for the police to confirm the audio wasn't real, Eiswert's union representatives say they provided a forensic expert analysis proving it was fake to the district within 48 hours of it being published. But, Eiswerts lawyers say, the school continued to punish him and refused to correct the record publicly for months.
"He was locked out of his email, cut off from colleagues, ostracized publicly, and Superintendent Rogers refused to inform the public that Mr. Eiswert did not make the comments depicted on the Fake Audio,” Eiswert’s attorneys write. “Dr. Rogers only offered the tepid qualification that she could not 'confirm' the genuineness of the recording."
His lawyers also say his removal from his position violated his contractual and due process rights.
The lawsuit also blames BCPS for hiring Darien in the first place, saying his resume contained a “myriad of lies and exaggerations,” and the school system failed to properly vet him.
“Darien never had the required Maryland teaching certificate or educational background to be hired as an educator in the first place, let alone an administrative role requiring additional credentials,” the attorneys write.
Indeed, it was Eiswert’s concerns over Darien’s qualifications and competency that led to the souring of the pair’s relationship. In September 2023, according to the lawsuit, Darien “spent thousands of dollars on new uniforms without approval, bullied students and other staff members, and was suspected of misappropriating fundraising money.”
WMAR-2 News previously reported, based on charging documents, that Darien allegedly authorized his roommate, a junior varsity basketball coach at Pikesville High, to be paid $1,916, falsely claiming he helped coach the girl's soccer team.
During an interview with detectives when he was initially charged, Darien admitted to "having issues" with Eiswert since he was employed.
According to the lawsuit, Eiswert alerted his superiors to his concerns for several months, but after “BCPS failed to act with any urgency to address” those concerns, he informed Darien he would not be renewing his contract for the following school year.
Darien has maintained his innocence in the criminal case. His trial is scheduled for the end of this month. His public defender declined to comment on the lawsuit.
A spokesperson for BCPS also declined to comment, but did confirm that Eiswert is still employed there. He is currently the principal at Sparrows Point Middle School, where he was reassigned “in further violation of his contract and constitutional due process,” according to his lawyers.
"As these technologies appear, we all have to be prepared for cases like these,” Dr. Daniel Trielli, University of Maryland professor of media and democracy, told WMAR-2 News. “We have to avoid automatically believing all the content that we see and hear.”
"We have the expression, I saw it with my own eyes, or I heard it with my own ears. Now, that doesn't even work anymore,” Anton Dahbura, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Institute for Assured Autonomy, said.
Experts we talked to say it’s extremely easy to clone someone’s voice. You only need a couple of minutes as a sample. But they say there are small ways to tell whether an audio clip is real or AI-generated, at least for now.
“You might see the voices skipping at an unnatural rate. You might see differences in speed and cadence, and weird cadence” Dr. Trielli explained. “So you should be on the lookout for those signs. But those signs are going to go away as this technology evolves.
“There might be little glitches, just things that sound a little unnatural,” Dahbura said. “But unfortunately, those advantages that we have now won't last very long. The technology's getting better and better."
Dahbura says laws and regulations will try to keep bad actors at bay, but we’re pretty far behind.
“As usual, we as a society are one or two steps behind the technology, including our policies, our laws. I know that our leadership in Annapolis at the state level, they work really hard to try to catch up but the process takes a lot longer to catch up to the technology and by the time, the bad guys are on to the next thing.”