I have played Bay Harbor Golf Course the last two days. There may be prettier courses in the world, but there are not many.
As expected, parts of Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony in front of the House Select Committee is coming under attack, especially the version she related about what happened in the presidential vehicle when Trump found out the secret service would not take him to the Capitol on January 6, 2021 following his speech to his followers of the “Big Lie”.
Also as expected, AG Nessel is not going to accept that her prosecution of Snyder, Lyon and others is over even though the Supreme Court unanimously ruled against the use of the one-man grand jury. In a press release the AG office said they would continue to fight for the citizens of Flint. Here is the press release.
“The Citizens of Flint should know that these cases are not over. Public commentary to the contrary is presumptive and rash. Our reading is that the Court’s opinion interprets the one-man grand jury process to require charges to be filed at the district court and include a preliminary examination. Our team is prepared to move forward through that process. We relied upon settled law and the well-established prosecutorial tool of the one-man grand jury, used for decades, to bring forward charges against the nine defendants in the Flint water crisis. We still believe these charges can and will be proven in court.
“Furthermore, as Justice Bernstein noted, ‘If the allegations can be proved, it is impossible to fully state the magnitude of the damage state actors have caused to an innocent group of people—a group of people that they were entrusted to serve. The Flint water crisis stands as one of this country’s greatest betrayals of citizens by their government.’
“We are prepared and determined to prove the allegations against the defendants in court and are committed to seeing this process through to its conclusion.”
What Nessel is not mentioning are the hurdles she is facing such as:
- The requirement for her to have a Taint Team to sort through all of the documents she obtained illegally by not honoring attorney client privilege. Her own Solicitor General estimates it will take 3 years and $45 million in legal fees to sort through the documents and remove those that fall under attorney client privilege. This is over and above the $35 million she has spent to date, just to have everything shot down.
- For seven of defendants, the statute of limitations has expired for the crimes with which they were charged. Bringing new charges would require a legal stretch. Lyon’s and Baird’s case is still within the statute of limitations.
- The Republican state legislators are not going to support her office by providing additional funds. She will have take funds from other line items budgets, which will not sit well with the legislators.
- Credibility is a major issue. Nessel dismissed cases against the defendants by her predecessor AG Schutte. She refilled her own cases against the defendants and gets rebuked by the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision. And now she wants to start from scratch 8 years after the Flint Water Crisis began.
- Witnesses become unavailable or they memory fades. Witness accounts change. Opinions change. Witnesses are going to wonder why this is taking so long and why are they going through this a third time. Confidence in the prosecution fails. All the publicity makes if hard to get a fair trial. The list goes on and on.
I end with this from the Detroit News Editorial today.
Nessel has no credibility to restart these prosecutions. Taxpayers have already spent more than $35 million in legal bills. It could require up to $45 million, by the prosecution’s own estimate, to pay for a court-ordered “taint team” to review 22 million seized documents to determine whether they are privileged. If Nessel had a better case against the defendants, it might be a worthwhile investment. But her office has so botched this prosecution that the best choice now is to end this mess.
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Elections Matter. Pray for peace and tolerance. What are you doing to stop the violence?
Orchids of the Day: Eastern Michigan University men’s basketball team for getting a commitment from Emoni Bates. Bates was able to fill the EMU Convocation Center as a high school player at Ypsilanti Lincoln. I hope he can do it for EMU.
Onion of the Day: AG Dana Nessel, for her continued botching of the prosecution in the Flint Water Crisis. Enough is Enough. It should be over.
Quote of the Day: “What emerged from today’s explosive hearing was the story of a president and his close advisors who planned a coup, sent an armed mob to the Capitol, approved of calls to murder the vice president, and had to be forced to call the mob off. Two of the president’s closest advisors then asked for a presidential pardon. While they did not get those pardons, Trump’s PAC later gave $1 million to Meadows’s Conservative Partnership Institute.” Heather Cox Richardson
Question of the Day: Should AG Nessel be allowed to restart the prosecution in the Flint Water crisis after botching two previous attempts?
Video of the Day: My ringtone for my daughter Katy. “Centerfield” with John Fogerty and Keith Urban.