Michigan AG Killed Slam Dunk Prosecutions For Those Responsible For Flint Water Crisis

Investigators and lawyers were lining up some very serious charges against the officials - and the banks - that played a role in the Flint, Michigan water crisis. But suddenly, they decided to scrap those prosecutions once a new, Democratic attorney general came into office. This decision has left Flint residents with little hope of justice, and Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins discusses this new story with Jordan Chariton of Status Coup News.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

In just a couple years, we're gonna be coming up on the 10 year anniversary of the Flint water crisis and unfortunately, even eight years out from it, we're still not seeing the kind of accountability for those responsible that needs to be seen. And according to a phenomenal new report in The Guardian, that may be by design. And I'm joined now by Jordan Chariton the, the co-author of this wonderful new Guardian piece and of course, with Status Coup news, Jordan, thank you for coming back on the program here, man. This is a, a wonderful, terrifying, but wonderful report that you and Charlie LeDuff have put together here.

Yeah. Thanks for, thanks for having me. I'm, you know, obviously I've been working on the Flint water crisis and the coverup for many years. There's not a lot of other journalists still digging on this, so I appreciate you covering this because it's still a really, really important story.

Well, you know, actually, you know, and you just said something there that I was definitely gonna bring up too. Everybody else seems to have moved on from this. You know, if you were to ask most people, I think right now, hey, what's happening in Flint? Everybody's gonna think, oh, well obviously we, we solved the problem. You know, people went to jail. We, we've seen that governor Snyder, you know, is, is, is facing these criminal charges here. So right. Everything's good. Well, no, and that is what this report lays out. So let's start, you know, well, this isn't the beginning of the crisis, I guess, but let's go back to the beginning of this individual Dana Nessel. That's where everything really started to get bad, I would say politically and legally. So start us there.

Yeah. So for those that don't know, the Flint water investigation, it started in 2016, soon after this became national and, you know, the media rushed Flint. So the, there was an originally an investigation launched in 2016 under, at the time, Republican attorney general Bill Schuette. He was the attorney general of Michigan at the time. Bill Schuette, the Republican, he had appointed a special prosecutor to, to lead the investigation, best way to describe it is just think like a Robert Mueller, but for the Flint water investigation. So that investigation went on for three years, 2016 through the end of 2018, they charged 15 state of Michigan and city of Flint officials with crimes related to the water crisis, everything from involuntary manslaughter to misconduct in office to financial crimes. Then when attorney general Nessel, when she was running for office as a candidate, she did something kind of unusual. She was very publicly criticizing that investigation lead by attorney general, Bill Schuette.

At the time she, you know, she didn't have, she didn't have access to any of the evidence obviously. But she called the investigations politically show, politically charged show trials and other things, and really hinted at basically cleaning house if she were to win attorney general. Well, she won the election for attorney general and as promised, when she got into office, she did clean house. She fired that special prosecutor. She fired the chief investigator of, of the investigation who was the head of, former head of the Detroit FBI office, had done serious investigation into the Gambino crime family, into 9/11, had a pretty good resume. So she fired that team.