Traci Kornak grew angry when she found out the authorities were on to her. And she punished the old woman for it. She isolated her. She didn’t even tell the old woman that her family members had died.
The old woman liked to sit with the lights on. So, Kornak, her court-appointed conservator, removed the lightbulbs and the night light. She instructed that her room be kept cold. Kornak—against the wishes of the old woman—installed cameras in her quarters so she could monitor the comings and goings of investigators.
Kornak, who was recently the Michigan Democrat Party Treasurer, attempted to secretly record a confidential conversation between the old woman, Rose Burd, and a social worker who chronicled the abuse for two laborious years, trying to build a case against the politically powerful lawyer and orchestrate her removal from the woman’s life.
Investigators’ reports and forensic accounting documents obtained by Michigan Enjoyer paint a sickening portrait of abuse and betrayal of Rose Burd, who died last year at age 87. They also show that the authorities charged with protecting the vulnerable and elderly woman dithered.
Kornak would buy items like bulk toilet paper with the old woman’s money, but only give her a sleeve of it. Kornak swapped Christmas cards sent by family members with unsigned replacements. She verbally abused the old woman: “So you’re going to be a f***ing bitch today. Great.”
It is now alleged that Kornak looted Burd’s estate while she was the Democrat treasurer. That she used the old woman’s debit card for expensive clothes and liquor and food for herself. And when the old woman died last year, Traci Kornak incinerated her body even though Rose had asked for a Catholic burial. Cremation, after all, is cheaper than a casket.
Kornak lived the high life. “Essentially Ms. Kornak, you were making a significant living off Ms. Burd,” said Allegan County Chief Probate Judge Jolene Clearwater.
Kornak had come to court in an extravagant fuchsia overcoat. Observers in the gallery wondered how it was paid for. Black would have been more appropriate. Black is funereal. And Kornak’s career, reputation, and freedom are on life support.
After a three-year investigation, Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker last week leveled three felony charges against Kornak: two counts of embezzlement from a vulnerable adult, and one charge of false pretenses. Combined, they carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and restitution.
Kornak’s friends seemingly have abandoned her. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whom Kornak often bragged about being a happy-hour buddy, has said nothing in her defense. Attorney General Dana Nessel, too, has a personal and well-documented relationship with Kornak, having hired her as a transition team member in 2018 when she was elected Attorney General. Kornak—until last year—was one of the most powerful Democrats in Michigan, tasked with handling tens of millions of dollars of the party’s cash.
Now Kornak is a pariah.
Looking at Burd’s case file compiled by investigators at the Kent County Sheriff’s Office and the state’s Adult Protective Services, it seems all of it could have been stopped, and should have been stopped, well before Burd’s death.
Six enforcement agencies watched in real-time. The Kent County Sheriff’s Department. Adult Protective Services. The County Prosecutor. The Attorney General’s Office. The Michigan State Police. The Attorney Grievance Commission. Governor Whitmer was fully aware. But Kornak was powerful. She was among the untouchables. Cross Kornak, and you could find yourself on the unemployment line.
In one log, Stephen Conrad, the APS worker assigned to Rose Burd, memorialized a call he had with Amanda Van Essen Wirth, a special assistant attorney general attached to Nessel’s office.
“The case was reviewed with Amanda,” he wrote in February 2025. “She reported that because of the sensitivity of the case and the connection that Ms. Kornak has with government officials and the mystery surrounding the last people to blow the whistle on Ms. Kornak that it was best to wait… With what is being reported Amanda did not feel comfortable with the filing in Probate.”
Rose Burd died six weeks later.
In the end, Kornak will face a jury, but there is Nessel’s culpability too. In her capacity as attorney general, Nessel had the original case against Kornak. Her office conducted an investigation that appears to be little more than sock-puppet theater.
I was contacted four years ago by Joe LeBlanc, director of the assisted living center where Burd lived, Heather Hills. Burd’s room, board and medical needs were paid by an insurance company after her catastrophic car wreck more than a decade ago.
LeBlanc accused Kornak of concocting an ornate scheme to bilk the insurance company of an addition $50,000 for care provided to Burd by Kornak’s daughter, care that does not appear to have ever been given.
I wrote the original story in July 2022. Nessel had no choice but to open an investigation. Curiously, Kornak called Nessel’s chief investigator—unprompted—according to AG documents obtained through a public records request.
Kornak told Nessel’s investigator that she was indeed withdrawing $50,000 from Burd’s accounts to pay her daughter, but was planning to replenish those funds once the insurance company sent the check.
But the insurance company had already sent the check six months earlier, and that check was returned by Heather Hills. Nobody in Nessel’s office, it seems, noticed the obvious inconsistency. Or they simply ignored it.
Now with Kornak charged in Kent County, Nessel is attempting to cover her tracks since she is the subject of an impeachment investigation by the House Oversight Committee. “The Attorney General’s office is either one of two things,” said Committee Chairman Jay DeBoyer (R). “It is either wholly incompetent or it is corrupt.”
Or perhaps, it was both.
Why? Because Nessel jumped an ethical fire wall constructed by her staff to prohibit her from communicating with Kornak. Again, according to internal AG documents, not only did Nessel communicate with Kornak, she pushed her staff to send Kornak the active criminal case file… against Kornak herself.
Worse, the attorney general’s investigator never talked to Rose Burd. Nor her caregiver. Nor Joe LeBlanc.
This needed to go away, Nessel implied to her staff in December 2022. “Ms. Kornak has contacted me regarding this matter. Mr. [redacted]’s allegations are apparently holding up a potential judicial appointment for her in Kent County. She has requested the documents from our investigation.”
Whitmer was going to make her a judge.
And so, the documents were indeed sent to Kornak. Two weeks later the case was officially closed.
But Kornak never got that judicial appointment. A few weeks after Nessel closed the case, a caregiver for Rose opened a bank statement of hers that had been mistakenly sent to the nursing home. Normally, all of the old woman’s mail went directly to Kornak. Even the family Christmas cards.
The caregiver noticed a $30,000 withdrawal. When confronted with the statement, Kornak snatched it and shouted, “What’s that? Give it to me! You don’t need that, that’s mine!”
The caregiver approached Adult Protective Services with her suspicions. And that’s Kornak became especially abusive toward the fragile old woman, according to APS documents.
Kornak demanded that caregivers leave Rose in the dark. She duct-taped the switches and the thermostat. She forbade the caregivers from giving Rose her constipation medicine. The reports are as outrageous as they are nauseating, especially in light of Nessel’s social media theatrics claiming elder abusers will be sent to prison.
A forensic audit commissioned by the Kent County Sheriff’s Office has found questionable payments and transactions to Kornak from Burd totaling at least $419,640.05. That does not include Rose’s insurance settlement from her catastrophic car accident. A special fiduciary for Allegan County Probate Court said he cannot find a record of it and is now conducting his own forensic analysis stretching back 10 years.
When called in for questioning by the sheriff’s investigators, Kornak didn’t hesitate to invoke her political connections: “I’ve already been cleared of this by the Attorney General.”
It should be noted that Burd left a trust fund for her son, 64, who is a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic. The fiduciary is hunting for that money as well.
If anything good can come of this horror, it would be the passage of legislation that might truly protect the society’s most vulnerable who are caught up in the hell that is Michigan probate system. A system that has shown itself to be corrupt all the way up to the governor’s mansion.
And we might call that legislation “The Rose Burd Bills.”
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools. Follow him on X @Charlieleduff.
