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House Speaker Jase Bolger personally appealed Monday to Ingham County Circuit Court judges to reject a request to empanel a one-judge grand jury to investigate a foiled election-rigging scheme in a Kent County legislative district.
Senate Democratic Leader Gretchen Whitmer and state party chairman Mark Brewer petitioned the court last week to launch its own probe into Bolger and state Rep. Roy Schmidt's attempt earlier this year to plant a fake Democrat in the 76th District and allow Schmidt to become a Republican with a patsy opponent.
Kent County Prosecutor Bill Forsyth determined in July that no crime was committed after Schmidt's faux opponent, a 22-year-old friend of his son and nephew, dropped out of the race days after filing in May. But Democrats have called Forsyth's investigation into question after the Republican prosecutor acknowledged cancelling warrants to search Bolger's phone records and Schmidt's phone and email records.
A Michigan State Police detective said he had probable cause that Bolger and Schmidt may have caused subornation of perjury by knowingly procuring Matthew Mojzak to commit perjury by falsely claiming to be a 76th District resident for at least 30 days prior to the May 15 filing date.
Rep Lisa Brown (D-bag), would you care to take the lead of Justice Diane Hathaway into the stirrups for thorough examination?
via The Detroit News
Commentary: Hathaway land deal merits investigation
Maybe it's too cut and dried. Or perhaps it isn't very sexy. For whatever reason, it appears there is no confirmed, official, criminal investigation into whether Michigan Supreme Court Justice Diane Hathaway committed fraud by hiding assets in order to get a short sale on a home she owned.
It supposedly went something like this: Hathaway, elected to the state's highest court in 2008, owned several homes, including one in Florida that WXYZ-TV Channel 7 described as a mini-mansion that sits on a golf course.
Hathaway bought the home in question, at 15834 Lakeview in Grosse Pointe, on Sept. 21, 2001, for $1.475 million. On Oct. 10, 2010, she listed the home for sale for $1.2 million. On May 2, 2011, she listed the home subject to a short sale, and on Nov. 8, 2011, the home was approved for a short sale for $840,000.
Presumably, the short sale saved Hathaway from a few hundred thousand in mortgage payments. A short sale is a sale in which lender(s) will accept less than the amount owed on the home in order to sell it. Normally, short sales occur because something dreadful happened, e.g., debilitating illness, job loss, etc., and the debtor cannot make his or her payments, and everyone wants to avoid foreclosure.
Detroit - Mitt's presidential ambitions may meet their Waterloo in the Big Mitten and if they do, Mitt might have Bob to thank.
That's because Romney and Bob Ficano, the Wayne County executive who is caught in the crosshairs of an FBI corruption probe, have a certain friend in common -- John Rakolta. Rakolta is a prominent Detroit developer whose company, Walbridge, won a $300 million contract last summer to build the new Wayne County jail.
In turns out Rakolta is Romney's co-national finance chairman.
The Rakolta connection couldn't come at a worse time for Romney, whose commanding lead in his boyhood state of Michigan has shriveled to a statistical tie with Rick Santorum.
The feds are investigating a pattern of pay-to-play in the jail deal and have subpoenaed the county's records in connection with Walbridge. As it happens, Rakolta has been a contributor to the Democrat Ficano, a member of Ficano's finance host committee, and a $25,000 contributor to a non-profit business group know as Edge Opportunities that paid Turkia Mullin to lobby the county development czar.
