Politics

Attorney General: Snyder's Flint Probe Could Mess up Criminal Inquiry

May 27, 2016, 6:48 AM

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Gov. Rick Snyder

At this juncture, the last thing Gov. Rick Snyder wants to be accused of is undermining a criminal probe into the Flint water crisis. But that essentially is what's going on.

Chad Livengood of The Detroit News writes that state Attorney General Bill Schuette and Genesee County Prosecutor David Leyton sent Snyder what amounts to a cease-and-desist letter Wednesday, asking the governor to stop the state auditor general and the HHS inspector general’s investigation of the health agency because it's interfering with their investigation in the Flint water crisis. 

U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade, who is also investigating the matter with the FBI, has raised similar concerns.

Livengood reports:

McQuade’s office said a Michigan State Police administrative investigation of the Department of Environmental Quality is legally problematic because some DEQ employees were forced to answer questions under the threat of being fired.

“If the statements were in fact compelled, which we understand they may have been, then the dissemination of those statements could have a substantially negative effect on our criminal investigation moving forward,” Assistant U.S. Attorney John Neal wrote in a May 19 letter to Schuette’s office.

Schuette and Leyton also requested Snyder stop the state police from doing any follow-up interviews of DEQ employees, who also were told the investigation’s findings would not be used against them criminally.

“These two investigations have compromised the ongoing criminal investigation ... as will any other investigations of a similar nature,” Schuette and Leyton wrote in the letter to Snyder.

Wayne State University Law Professor Peter Henning, a former federal prosecutor, tells the News that compelled statements “cast a pall over the government’s investigation” and could be “disastrous” for prosecutors.

“It’s a real wild card,” said Henning. “If they wanted to go after someone who had been promised their statement wouldn’t be used against them, then that may make it impossible to prosecute a person.”


Read more:  The Detroit News


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