Michigan AG Dana Nessel allegedly breached ethics wall regarding investigation into member of her transition team

A hard-nosed, colorful investigative reporter is no longer employed with the Detroit News after his explosive report alleging that Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel — a far-left Democrat with a particular aversion to the phrase "Merry Christmas" — violated an ethics wall during her office's investigation into yet another powerful Michigan Democrat who also once served on Nessel's transition team.

'She said she’d pay us a little money for the trouble': The investigation into the treasurer of the Michigan Democratic Party

In July 2022, 57-year-old reporter Charlie LeDuff, who notably received a Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for his contributions to a New York Times series on race relations in America, wrote a report for the Detroit News alleging that Traci Kornak, the treasurer of the Michigan Democratic Party, had used a nursing home resident to defraud an insurance company of nearly $50,000.

LeDuff based his reporting on the claims of a whistleblower named Joe LeBlanc, the former chief executive of the Village of Heather Hills in Grand Rapids. Kornak, a licensed attorney, was the guardian of an elderly, brain-damaged woman at Heather Hills during LeBlanc's time as executive director.

According to reports, Kornak hired an extra caregiver for the incapacitated woman. This extra caretaker shared an address with Kornak and may even be her daughter.

State Farm, the elderly woman's insurance company, wanted to pay the woman's new caretaker $12 an hour since she was not a licensed medical professional, LeDuff reported. Likely to convince State Farm to pay more for the extra caretaker, Kornak allegedly forged invoices and other documents and sent them to the insurance company.

According to whistleblower LeBlanc, Kornak used Heather Hills' tax ID number and a billing template from another facility to create fabricated invoices totaling nearly $50,000 over two years. She also incorrectly claimed that the caregiver was a Heather Hills employee, LeBlanc told LeDuff at the time.

State Farm then issued reimbursement checks to Heather Hills, where LeBlanc reportedly saw at least one of them. When LeBlanc confronted Kornak about a check for $23,401.05 in November 2021, Kornak — whose work as treasurer has already caused the Michigan Democratic Party to be fined $19,000 by the Federal Election Commission — supposedly gave a disturbing response. "She asked me to just cash it, and then she said she’d pay us a little money for the trouble," LeBlanc alleged.

Reporter Charlie LeDuff then went on Tucker Carlson's now-defunct Fox News program in the hopes of shining a national spotlight on the story:

'The appearance of impropriety': Dana Nessel's office becomes involved; whistleblower loses job

Meanwhile, former Heather Hills director Joe LeBlanc filed a report in AG Nessel's portal for allegations of elder abuse, fraud, and/or exploitation in the state of Michigan. An investigator connected with the AG's office contacted LeBlanc the next day, he claimed, and he then gave all of the evidence supporting his allegations to Heather Hills attorneys.

The following week, LeBlanc was fired, a full two months before he was scheduled to leave the position on a voluntary basis, he said. It is unclear why he was asked to leave the position early. Heather Hills did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.

Without any clear answers, some have begun to speculate that his early termination may have stemmed from his accusations against Kornak, who, it turns out, has a long history with Attorney General Nessel. In fact, Nessel selected Kornak to serve on her transition team when Nessel was first elected to the Michigan attorney general's office in 2018.

Their relationship posed such a possible conflict of interest that Scott Teter, the director of the Financial Crimes Division of the Michigan attorney general's office, wrote a memo in September 2022 ordering "an isolation wall" that would prevent "Attorney General Nessel from being provided or accessing any information related to this investigation."

According to Detroit News editor Gary Miles, Teter demanded that, regarding the investigation into "suspect" Traci Kornak:

• Nessel be excluded "from access to the ... files";
• staff "refrain from discussing this matter" in Nessel's presence and prevent her from viewing related documents; and
• staff should refuse to "provide any information related to this matter to" AG Nessel.

"Because the suspect in this matter assisted with Attorney General Nessel's transition into office," Teter wrote, according to LeDuff, "I believe it would create the appearance of impropriety for AG Nessel to access information about this investigation."

'There is some urgency to the matter': 'Isolation wall' apparently breached

It appears that Nessel disregarded Teter's directives, LeDuff reported in a Detroit News column last week. According to documents that LeDuff received via Freedom of Information Act request, on December 5 of last year, Nessel received four reports related to the Kornak investigation, which was seemingly still ongoing.

The next day, Nessel emailed the reports to her solicitor general, Fadwa Hamoud, with the following message (emphasis added):

Ms. Kornak has contacted me regarding this matter. Mr. [redacted]'s allegations are apparently holding up a potential judicial appointment for her in Kent County. She has requested the documents from our investigation.

I think (she) wants to be able to assert that the claims made by [redacted] were never substantiated by our investigation and the case is closed. Please advise what our process should be. There is some urgency to the matter in that she needs to supply this information by the week's end.

The Kornak investigation was officially closed two weeks later. No criminal charges were ever filed in the case. The circumstances surrounding the supposed judicial appointment remain unclear.

"Did [Nessel] hook up her gal pal? I say she did," LeDuff later wrote.

LeDuff's column, which is hidden behind a paywall at the Detroit News, can be read in its entirety here.

'Half-understood and fully fabricated notions': Nessel's office fires back

Last Wednesday, just one day after LeDuff's column was published, Nessel's office responded to the allegations. In fact, her response was so swift and forceful that LeDuff claimed she had gone "nuclear."

"For the life of me, I’ve never received a letter like this in my entire career. In fact, I didn’t receive the letter at all. I was informed about Madam Nessel’s complaints from a guy I know who works in the sewer department," LeDuff ostensibly wrote in a description of the October 19 episode of his weekly podcast, "No Bulls*** News Hour with Charlie LeDuff," an episode that features another interview with whistleblower Joe LeBlanc, who appears just after the 19:00 mark.

The letter to which LeDuff referred was written by Linus Banghart-Linn, acting chief legal counsel for Nessel's state office, on the AG office's letterhead and addressed to Detroit News editor Gary Miles. In it, Banghart-Linn claimed that Nessel "did not breach an internal isolation wall" and "had no influence on the Kornak investigation." "[Nessel] made no effort to influence it and took no action that had such an effect," the letter said.

The letter also claimed that LeDuff's column made "false factual claims" and that it "irresponsibly twist[ed] half-understood and fully fabricated notions of the Department to the detriment of public trust in their State government."

According to Banghart-Linn, Nessel sent the emails "after" the investigation into Kornak had concluded, even though documents quoted by LeDuff indicate that as late as December 2, 2022 — just four days before Nessel wrote the email quoted in the section above — members of Nessel's office were still abiding by the "conflict wall" in Kornak's case.

Though the Kornak "file was not yet closed" when Nessel sent the email, Banghart-Linn explained in the letter, "this does not mean that the investigation was open or active." Rather, the investigation "was already concluded by the time of the cited communications," Banghart-Linn said, and "the 'file,' ... had already been in the process of closure for weeks."

Banghart-Linn then seemed to blame Joe LeBlanc for the apparently stalled investigation into Kornak. "The complainant in this matter, quoted by the Detroit News, never returned a single phone call from Department investigators," the attorney wrote, suggesting that LeBlanc's supposed inaction prevented the allegations from even having the chance to be "substantiated."

LeBlanc countered that those phone calls were all made to his former extension at Heather Hills, even though the AG's office knew he no longer worked there, and that investigators never contacted his cell phone once. In fact, an individual with the AG's office even declined to speak to LeBlanc when LeDuff, who was on the phone with the AG's office during a visit to LeBlanc's home, offered to pass the phone over to him, both men stated.

Detroit News editor Gary Miles also added that the "records provided" in LeDuff's column "contradict" two of Banghart-Linn's key claims: that Nessel never breached the isolation wall and that the isolation wall was never intended to "prevent any and all communications between the Attorney General and her staff related to the investigation."

"The underlying facts could not be more clear," Miles wrote.

Banghart-Linn's letter, already a highly unusual response from a state executive to a newspaper column, was not the only official statement from Nessel's office regarding the allegations. Her office also issued a press release further denying the claims made by LeDuff. The press release even seemed to attack the Detroit News, slamming the "news standard of accuracy" "in the Opinions section" at "large and typically credible publications."

"It is unfortunate the Department of Attorney General should have to refute so many falsehoods published under the masthead The Detroit News," Banghart-Linn added.

LeDuff and Detroit News part ways

Unfortunately, much of this alleged scandal involving Kornak and Nessel has been overshadowed by a crude tweet from LeDuff, and many, including some in the media industry, have preferred to focus on LeDuff's off-color verbiage rather than the substance of his reporting.

LeDuff, who hosts a show with the word "bulls***" in the title, regularly uses profanity in his casual speech. On Friday, LeDuff used the phrase "See you next Tuesday" in a social media post directed at Nessel. While LeDuff did regularly publish columns in the Detroit News on Tuesdays, that particular turn of phrase has also been in modern parlance used as code for the C-word.

Screenshot of X post

LeDuff's post appears to have been deleted, but many on social media almost immediately began a pressure campaign against the Detroit News to fire LeDuff for possibly calling Nessel an uncouth epithet.

"I will cancel my digital subscription with a quickness unless you take action against @Charlieleduff. Or is misogyny the way to go at the @detroitnews?" commented one user.

Another user called LeDuff's language "misogynistic, immature and wholly inappropriate." "As a 64 year old woman and lifelong subscriber," the user continued, "I’m disgusted with the unprofessional behavior represented here."

Within days, LeDuff was out at the Detroit News. Most reports indicated that he was fired, but LeDuff lightly disputed those reports.

"I was under the impression I resigned my weekly column at the Detroit News," LeDuff wrote on X on Sunday afternoon. "The publisher recalls otherwise. Regardless, I thank him and the editors for the many interesting years. The podcast is the main thing. It, and the column, continue."

"See you next Thursday," LeDuff added.

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