Gov. Rick Snyder
Michigan's ex-Gov. Rick Snyder knew about Flint's toxic water, lied about it and was involved in a cover-up, a lengthy investigative story published Thursday in VICE claims.
The story by reporters Jordan Chariton and Jenn Dize states:
Hundreds of confidential pages of documents obtained by VICE, along with emails and interviews, reveal a coordinated, five-year cover-up overseen by Snyder and his top officials to prevent news of Flint’s deadly water from going public—while there was still time to save lives—and then limit the damage after the crisis made global headlines.
The report says the outgoing Gov. Snyder approached then-Flint Mayor Karen Weaver at Gretchen Whitmer's inauguration in January 2019 and asked her to speak to Democratic Congressman Elijah Cummings, who was incoming head of the powerful U.S. House Oversight Committee.
“You have a lot of influence with him,” Weaver remembered a worried Snyder saying to her about Cummings. Weaver told Vice that Snyder asked her to get Cummings to “back off” from investigating him, saying he wanted to move on with his life as a private citizen.
Cummings was pushing for more information on when Snyder first learned of the lethal Legionnaire's disease outbreak in Flint, which may have killed at least 115 people in 2014-15.
Snyder had testified to Congress that he first became aware of it in January 2016 and held a press conference the next day. But Harvey Hollins, the director of the state’s Urban and Metropolitan Initiatives office, contradicted the governor, testifying to Congress that he informed Snyder about Flint’s Legionella outbreak in December 2015, Vice reports. Cummings died last October before he could pursue the matter further.
Neither Snyder nor his attorneys returned calls for comment, according to Vice.
The story also says that investigative subpoena documents it obtained, along with details from sources with knowledge of the Flint water criminal prosecution, reveal that Snyder was warned about the dangers of using the Flint River as a water source a year before the water switch even occurred.
