Duggan Obstructed the FBI Investigation into Corruption in City Hall
On Memorial Day weekend of 2022, The Detroit News broke the story that indicted Councilman André Spivey had told Mayor Duggan who was wearing the FBI wire around city hall, and that Duggan started going around warning others:
If you do not have a Detroit News subscription, here is the Deadline Detroit version, with no paywall:
Quotes from the Detroit News:
Detroit — Federal agents have linked Mayor Mike Duggan to a chain of events that outed a confidential FBI informant and alerted a target of an ongoing investigation of bribery, extortion and fraud at City Hall, The Detroit News has learned.
Federal court records and interviews provide a look at Duggan's conduct behind the scenes of a federal corruption investigation targeting at least two of the mayor's closest allies on the City Council in recent years: André Spivey and Janeé Ayers.
After getting advance notice of a federal investigation [of] Spivey in June, Duggan moved to capitalize on the scandal and shared the informant's identity with multiple people, according to four sources familiar with the investigation who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. The informant is a towing contractor in Metro Detroit who was wearing hidden recording equipment for the FBI while secretly filming Spivey and others accepting bribes. ...
The disclosures raise concerns about whether the informant's safety was jeopardized and if city officials obstructed an ongoing FBI investigation. ... Also unclear is whether FBI agents are formally investigating Duggan.
Although none of the papers have actually said it out loud yet, what we have here is the strong appearance that by telling everyone who the snitch was Duggan actively tried to derail the FBI's "Operation Northern Hook" investigation, the longstanding corruption probe of our city government. Which is obstruction, and is prosecutable. THAT PART needs to be front and center, but as usual the papers are all letting him have a chance for a rebuttal and to come up with a spin first. Then they print his rebuttal with an even bigger headline than the initial story, and apparently all is forgiven...
 |
| Does anyone actually believe this? |
They never gave Kwame the same benefit of the doubt, did they? They use the kid gloves for Prince Duggan.
There is also the strong appearance that if Duggan felt the need to make sure he warn everyone that there was a guy going around wearing a wire, then it sort of implies that he is in fact the ringleader of the corruption in question, which is what some of us have been saying for years. Nonetheless it seems like the feds keep pinching everyone around Duggan, but they can never quite seem to pinpoint who's the head of the organization...all they keep catching is small fish. This new revelation should spur a much deeper investigation into Duggan himself, but it's been a few weeks now and nothing further has developed.
There's a reason why stories like this only get a few seconds of coverage before moving on. It's because if you were to actually think about it for more than a second, you'd start to realize how much shit is fuckin wrong about it and how many questions it leaves unanswered. Only one journalist, Bankole Thompson, wrote an editorial on it the day after the story broke:
Duggan just got caught apparently obstructing a federal investigation into corruption in his city hall, and it is barely causing a ripple in the local media. Let that sink in for a minute. There is also the strong appearance that if Duggan felt the need to make sure he warned all his buddies that there was a guy going around wearing a wire, which sort of implies that he is in fact the ringleader of the corruption in question, which is what some of us have been saying for years.
 |
| Hey look, I made some more original content! |
What would have happened if Kwame or Coleman Young had just done the exact same thing? I think we all know.
Whenever scandal like this comes up and Duggan has to answer to questions of impropriety at a press conference, he never admits wrongdoing, and talks down to reporters with a scolding tone for asking probing questions. And then the papers dutifully print whatever lie or deflection he comes up with to cover his ass, and let the story die there. They let a dopey POS like Duggan talk to them like he's their daddy, when they should be hanging his ass out to dry. These are the same outlets that hounded Kwame and Coleman Young like a pack of wolves back in the day. Now we know why Duggan keeps winning elections: he is shielded from real scrutiny by the local media.
At this late stage, any news outlet that isn't digging into this mayor's ties to corruption are actively providing safe harbor for corruption in Detroit, to the serious detriment of half a million residents. It was the local Detroit media who made sure Kwame's corruption landed him in jail where he belonged. Why aren't they holding Duggan accountable? Is Duggan going to be allowed to obstruct a federal investigation with no consequences? It is a moral decision for those in charge of the press to remain silent on this.
A few days later one more journalist, Charlie LeDuff, wrote about the story again. Although it didn't dig any deeper, and only mentioned the mayor's offense in passing, I'll give him credit for trying to keep the story alive:
It would be nice if more journalists would open their mouths about Dear Mayor more often. Get ready for a shitload of new ribbon-cutting ceremonies to distract us from this, and to keep the "ZOMG Detroit is doing so well!" bandwagon pumped up. Duggan can't go two weeks without cutting a ribbon or posing with a silver shovel anyways, or he starts to look like a junkie in withdrawal.
As if this wasn't bad enough, besides giving Duggan plenty of leeway to make his rebuttal heard, you have reporters like Fox2's Charlie Lankton out there breaking their back to find some additional way to help Duggan clean the mud off himself again:
...Just imagine being up at the wild drunken island orgy for rich white conservatives and lobbyists known as the Mackinac Policy Conference and all of a sudden it comes out in the news that you willfully obstructed a federal investigation into corruption in your administration, and no one believes your hastily slapped-together rebuttal speech claiming that you didn't know the guy was an FBI informant... But fear not, Charlie Lankton is there (the same guy who dogged Kwame like a wolf, but he has a hard-on for you because your skin is the right color), and he is down to throw the smokescreen out for you to save face and give you a get out of jail free card.
And Charlie turns around and just like that he finds a nicely-buzzed former US Attorney Matthew Schneider, who just so happened to be the guy who presided over the start of the investigation, and because again your skin is the same color as his (and because your daddy was a federal judge) Schneider is more than happy to lay it on thick to cover your lyin' ass with feeble shit like "He said 'I didn't do it,' let's just believe him and move on," and "This is just a one day story," and "It should be put to bed," etc...
...Those are the literal quotes from this guy in the interview. Imagine having that level of privilege where powerful people will just happily go on TV and spew the most laughably implausible bullshit to obfuscate your wrongdoing...that's what it's like when you're Mike Duggan, the corporate avatar and gatekeeper of Detroit.
This is the most naked, rushed, half-assed Ol' Boys' Club style coverup of RAW CORRUPTION that I have ever witnessed. I mean it's all laid out here right in front of us in broad daylight, and everyone's smiling while serving us the shit sundae with a cherry on top. They're not even ashamed to look like they're having a good time with it, laughing and back-slapping and the whole nine yards. More champagne, anyone?
The media in Detroit has colluded to pull the curtains back over the Wizard of Oz here, and say "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" Seriously—how much does Duggan owe Charlie Lankton for this favor?! I mean if it was me I'd make Duggan suck my dick for it...deep. But Charlie is probably just grateful for the privilege to kiss Mr. Mayor's boots.
It's bad enough that the media is willing to render Duggan's corruption harmless, but the fact that the FBI is apparently going to pretend like they didn't see anything wrong here signals that Duggan has their protection, and that there will never be any justice done for the crimes he has perpetrated on the people of Detroit. That's the scoreboard, folks, read it and weep.
By the way, Schneider recently resigned his office to join the Honigman law firm in Detroit, which served as lead counsel for the Detroit Institute of Arts during the city's contrived "bankruptcy." It always makes me curious when someone in a high public office like that suddenly decides to quit and go back to the private sector....you know there was some shady shit behind the move that we missed.
