The filing details “inaccurate and misleading” representations made by the Michigan Attorney General’s office to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court related to the AG’s so-called “conflict wall” in the Flint Water cases.
Documents recently received through the Freedom of Information Act call into question representations made by the Attorney General’s Office to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court about the AG’s “conflict wall,” which was constructed to separate the Flint Water criminal prosecution team from Attorney General Nessel, her Chief Deputy, and the Assistant Attorneys General who were representing Governor Snyder and the State of Michigan in the Flint Civil cases. Contrary to representations made by AG Nessel’s Chief Legal Counsel to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, both in pleadings and during a June 16, 2021, hearing, the so-called “conflict wall” was more like a sieve, with hundreds of meetings between Attorney General Nessel, who was representing Governor Snyder and others in the civil litigation, and Solicitor General Hammoud who was prosecuting Governor Snyder.
Emails recently obtained through FOIA establish that Assistant AGs on both sides of the “conflict wall” communicated substantively about the privileged documents SG Hammoud’s team seized from the custody of her colleagues on the opposite side of the conflict wall. After the June 16, 2021, hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court, AG Nessel herself approved of a revised protective order intended to cover the same Federal Court-protected mediation confidential documents at issue in Governor Snyder’s Motion for Sanctions and Limited Discovery. And despite warning SG Hammoud that she needed to correct the record with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court on the misrepresentations of AG Nessel’s Chief Legal Counsel, no one from the Attorney General’s Office has corrected the record regarding the “conflict wall.” Today’s pleading, if accepted by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, establishes by any burden of proof, that the representations made by the Attorney General’s Office were inaccurate and misleading.