Politics can never be allowed to prevail over truth, or over justice. Yet as we uncover more of the details surrounding the third rate election fraud scheme that Speaker of the House Jase Bolger, Representative Roy Schmidt and their co-conspirators tried to pull on the people of Michigan, we know that politics has been standing directly in the way at every step of the way.
In fact, despite efforts to sweep what has taken place quietly under the rug by Republican party officials, a Michigan State Police Detective, the only non-partisan official to have weighed in on the investigation to date, stated that there was probable cause to believe crimes had been committed and the investigation should have been continued.
If we do not pursue this corruption here in the halls of our State Capitol to its fullest extent then we have learned nothing from the conduct of Kwame Kilpatrick or others who have treated their office and our electoral system as their own personal playground.
If the Attorney General is unwilling to uphold his duty to investigate this case, and if the county prosecutor feels it is simply too complicated or too costly for him to pursue, then justice demands that we move forward without them. No one is above the law.
As a result, I held a press conference inside our State Capitol earlier today to announce that
I have filed a formal complaint with the Ingham County Circuit Court asking for them to appoint a one-person grand jury to remove this case from the political arena, fully investigate the fraud that has taken place and make a determination as to whether crimes were committed by those currently known to have been involved.
This step will assure the public that at the end of this process they will at least know the truth, something I would hope that Speaker Bolger and Representative Schmidt would even agree the public deserves.
The Kent County Prosecutor's report slammed the Speaker and Representative Schmidt for what they did, but concluded under an inexplicably narrow review of election law that no laws were broken. However, based on the evidence we have now obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, it is clear that his investigation was at best incomplete, and that laws may indeed have been broken.
Laws such as perjury, conspiracy to commit perjury, subornation of perjury and obstruction of justice were all potentially violated based solely on the limited evidence we currently have available. The question that must now be answered is what further light would a continued investigation shed on this case?
We may unfortunately never know, because a prosecutor deemed the case too complicated and costly to pursue, and our state's Attorney General, the person who promised Michigan residents that he would clean up corruption in Government, is potentially himself involved in the story as records reveal he had been in communication with Representative Schmidt as this scheme was becoming known.
Instead of a pursuit of the truth, we saw the opposite take place while this scheme unraveled as Representative Schmidt, Speaker Bolger, Representative Lisa Posthumous Lyons and potentially others arguably obstructed justice by seeking to conceal the facts of their involvement from the public and from authorities. Also troubling, it appears that persons in the office of the Secretary of State may also have obstructed justice by their interference with, or lack of cooperation with, the investigation of these alleged crimes.
Simply put, the public deserves to know the full extent of what happened, and if crimes were committed, the public deserves justice. Yet from top to bottom, every single person involved in this case, as well as in the review of it, appears to have put their party affiliation and political interests ahead of the truth.
In short, that's disgraceful, and the action I've taken today to remove this process from the political gutter in which it currently lies is our best hope of finally getting the answers that the people of Michigan have been asking for.
I thank you for your support as we continue to pursue justice against anyone who violates the trust given to them by the people of Michigan.