How Duggan's Former Mistress Created Abdul El-Sayed
Sonia Hassan helped bring him into Detroit government, and an anti-Israel publisher helped him get a job in Wayne County
The Democrat Big Three—Jocelyn Benson, Abdul El-Sayed, and Eli Savit—present themselves as something new in the world of Michigan politics.
What they really are is the newest generation of the old, corrupt Wayne County Machine. A ship skippered by Mike Duggan, the former mayor of Detroit who had a grand jury follow him wherever he went.
It was Duggan, in fact, who set the three Democratic nominees’ political careers in motion. It began in 2015 when Duggan and his then mistress, Dr. Sonia Hassan, had a lunch interview with the little-known El-Sayed, according to a former El-Sayed aide. The mistress was impressed with the young man. He talked smoothly, had an Ivy League education, and they were both of Egyptian heritage. With no real-world experience and no medical license, El-Sayed, then only 30, was made Detroit’s health director.
To return the favor, El-Sayed’s department funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars of the bankrupt city’s money into Hassan’s nonprofit.
After just 16 months, El-Sayed resigned. Soon after, the mistress scandal exploded. That’s when Duggan’s chief development officer, Ryan Friedrichs, ordered City Hall staff to destroy evidence.
Friedrichs came to Duggan by way of billionaire developer Stephen Ross, as the two negotiated a massive real-estate deal in the city. Ross was the power behind little-known Jocelyn Benson, who was made dean of the Wayne State Law School. In return, Duggan hired Benson’s husband—Ryan Friedrichs—to negotiate with Ross.
Friedrichs went on to work for Ross as a lobbyist for the monster AI data center in Saline Township that nobody there seems to want. Benson went on to become secretary of state, and now candidate for governor. Benson claims she will not make a dime on the data-center debacle—an untruth.
Duggan’s senior legal counsel at the time of the mistress scandal was Eli Savit, who tried to get the Detroit Inspector General to bury her conclusions in the investigation, writing: “The draft findings threaten to impose severe, unwarranted damage to the reputation of several public servants—and further threaten to stymie effective governance in the City of Detroit.”
The inspector general refused to alter her findings.
Not to worry, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel—another Duggan sycophant from their days in the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office—made the scandal disappear.
Savit now hopes to replace her as attorney general.
El-Sayed also disappeared for a few years and resurfaced in 2023 as the new director of the Wayne County Health Department—again with no medical license and little real-world experience.
He was appointed by County CEO Warren Evans, another longtime Duggan protege. El-Sayed was introduced by his patron Osama Siblani, a Dearborn-based political rainmaker who raises obscene amounts of money for Evans.
For his part, the Lebanese-born Siblani considers Hezbollah and Hamas, known terror groups, to be freedom fighters. Despite withering criticism this election season, Siblani stands by his words.
“I mean what I say,” Siblani told me by telephone. “And I won’t back away from that.”
That’s more than you can say about El-Sayed. He deleted years of crazy social media posts in the run-up to his campaign announcement. For instance, El-Sayed used to advocate for defunding the police. Now he says the opposite.
Are we getting something new with this new generation of Michigan Democrats? Hardly. What we’re getting is something old, something borrowed, something tired, but nothing new.
