Michaelia Cash’s former media adviser, David De Garis, has finished given evidence in the federal court after today revealing he worked with an aide to Michael Keenan to leak information about police raids to the media.

The AWU’s lawyer, Herman Borenstein QC, tendered email, text messages and call logs from De Garis’ work laptop and mobile phone that were acquired as part of a separate federal police investigation and subpoenaed by the AWU.

De Garis conceded he had deleted three text messages he had exchanged with Michael Tetlow [Keenan’s former staffer] about the leaks. He did so before his work phone was collected by parliamentary staff shortly after he resigned, the court heard.

“Can I suggest to you that item 20 is a message from Teltow saying warrants are underway and your response is to thank him,” Borenstein said, referring to an exchange between the two.

De Garis said deleting the messages “probably wasn’t the smartest thing to do”.

Cash’s former chief of staff, Ben Davies, will take the witness stand in the civil trial tomorrow.

De Garis said on Tuesday that Davies had tipped him off about the raids on the AWU offices, which the union says were resulted from a “politically motivated” probe by the union regulator, the Registered Organisations Commission.