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After the Boston Globe revealed Thursday that aides to then-Gov. Mitt Romney purchased their official computer hard drives shortly before Romney left office in 2006, leaving no trace of emails and other records of the departing administration, the 2012 Romney campaign accused his successor in Massachusetts of political gamesmanship.

The Globe reported Thursday that Romney’s chief of staff while governor, Beth Myers; his chief legal counsel, Mark Nielsen; and Peter Flaherty, his deputy chief of staff, purchased their state-issued electronic equipment and data, preventing the staff of the man elected to succeed Romney -- Democrat Deval Patrick -- from accessing the information they contained. According to the report, 11 staffers in all bought 17 hard drives, at $65 apiece. The Romney staff also removed administration emails from a server, the Globe said.

Although Romney’s defenders pointed out that state law allows for such purchases, several issues cropped up as a consequence: Some of the staffers transitioned to Romney’s first presidential campaign, including Myers, who became campaign manager. It also prompts questions about what sort of information was kept from the Deval staff. The governor’s office told the Globe that it receives many requests for records pertaining to the prior administration, but has no electronic copies of emails.

It’s no secret that Romney had long intended to run for president. Some news sources charting his political rise have suggested that he had national ambitions when he ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 1994. And when the Salt Lake City Olympics went looking for an executive in the late 1990s to get the Games’ troubled budget and planning in order, one member of the search committee indicated that Romney would be a good fit because of his future political plans.

But given that at least one prominent member of Patrick’s administration was quoted early in the Globe story, the Romney campaign went on the offensive: Romney campaign manager Matt Rhoades issued a FOIA request to obtain “copies of all email correspondence, phone logs, and visitor logs showing contacts that [Gov. Patrick’s] office has had with David Axelrod, David Plouffe and Jim Messina.”

Those members of President Obama’s brain trust, along with the president himself, are close with Patrick, who has remained a strong ally. And given that Patrick has been vocal about Romney’s problems as governor, the Obama campaign has already deployed him often in the campaign.

Apparently to deflect criticism, then, the Romney campaign publicized its own request.

Rhoades wrote in a letter to Patrick: “As you know, state law strictly prohibits you and your staff from using public resources for political campaign purposes. Under state law, a public employee may not provide services to a candidate or campaign during his or her work hours.”

He continued that Patrick’s administration has “become an opposition research arm of the Obama reelection campaign,” citing the Globe story as evidence and reiterating that the erstwhile Romney operatives were within the letter of the law when taking the hard drives with them.