Lansing — Attorney General Dana Nessel was held in contempt of the House of Representatives after she blew off a subpoena compelling her to explain her role in the financial abuse of an elderly and incapacitated woman.
The House Oversight Committee voted 10 to 6 to refer the charges to the House as a whole. If convicted there, Nessel could technically be jailed.
“Dana Nessel used the power of her office to manipulate possible criminal cases against people she had relations with,” said Jay DeBoyer, chairman of the Oversight Committee. “As the most powerful law enforcement officer in the state, Nessel stepped around ethical rules to benefit those personally close to her.”
The hearing was something like a criminal trial held in absentia. Legislators grilled an empty chair and name plate carrying the attorney general’s name. This caused some confusion as the empty chair seemed to possess the same IQ as Nessel herself.
In a crisp presentation, investigators for the committee laid out two cases involving Nessel, which can best be characterized as obstruction of justice.
In the first, Nessel was shown to have crossed an ethical “firewall” that was to prohibit her involvement in her office’s criminal investigation of a friend.
That friend, Traci Kornak—a probate lawyer who was treasurer of the state Democratic Party at the time—was accused by a whistleblower of using the identity of her elderly client Rose Burd and the tax ID number of the facility where Burd lived to commit insurance fraud.
Nessel was obligated to stay out of it. But she didn’t. According to emails presented at the hearing, Nessel told her staff that Kornak needed the case wrapped up because Gov. Gretchen Whitmer—also a friend—was considering a judicial appointment for Kornak.
The next day, Nessel’s staff gave the active criminal case file to Kornak. Two weeks later, the case was officially closed.
After Nessel’s office shut down the case against Kornak, the Kent County Sheriff’s office opened its own.
What did they find? More than $100,000 missing from the old woman’s bank account before the insurance scam ever came to light. It has recommended charges of embezzlement and identity theft against Kornak, felonies that carry 15-year sentences at least.
Kornak is also under investigation by the Allegan County Probate Court for billing the old woman nearly $100,000 after she died earlier this year.
In Burd’s probate casefile is a hand-written note from 2019 in which the old woman accused Kornak of theft.
The judge did not allow it, and Nessel’s investigators never found the note.
“This stinks to high heaven,” DeBoyer said. “In all of this, the only person who was interviewed by Nessel’s office was Kornak.”
In a second case, investigators showed committee members how Nessel had yet again jumped an ethical firewall, this time involving her wife, Alanna Maguire.
Maguire and her associates were subjects of a criminal referral to Nessel’s office by Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. It accused them of campaign finance fraud involving a gay-rights ballot initiative. Maguire was co-chair of that ballot committee, called Fair and Equal Michigan.
(Investigators noted that a nearly identical criminal referral was made against a conservative group trying to strip Whitmer of her Covid emergency powers. Nessel charged two people in that case, which is currently in the courts.)
Again an ethical firewall was constructed, and again Nessel jumped it. Documents showed that Nessel and Benson had agreed to make the criminal referral against Maguire go away.
“I was informed by the AG that she reached out directly to the secretary and that the secretary agreed to take this matter back for further review,” Danielle Hagaman-Clark, Nessel’s criminal bureau chief wrote last year to Benson’s chief legal counsel, Mike Brady.
To which Brady responded: “Thank you for the heads up. I will let the secretary know about our legal analysis that we lack any legal authority… to ‘take back’ or ‘restart’ that effort.’”
Brady soon found himself on the unemployment line, according to DeBoyer.
Nessel’s contempt charges were being drafted this afternoon and articles of impeachment may soon follow, said DeBoyer.
Impeachment should be the least of it.
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools. Follow him on X @Charlieleduff.
