Mike Duggan secretly followed. Then video aired at city hall

Joe Guillen | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Robert Carmack explains private eye video of Duggan Robert Carmack explains his private eye video of Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. The video has been altered.

Local businessman Bob Carmack — the star witness in the federal government’s bribery case against Detroit Councilman Gabe Leland — went to extreme lengths Wednesday in an attempt to publicly shame another elected official: Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.

As part of an operation for which Carmack said he paid about $20,000, surveillance video of Duggan was broadcast on two giant video monitors affixed to the back of a truck parked outside city hall Wednesday evening during rush hour. The truck drove around the government office center, exposing the video to city employees and downtown visitors during the busy evening commute.

Onlookers stopped and stared at the video, which appeared to show Duggan’s movements away from the office. Duggan is seen in the video — of which the Free Press has obtained a version — driving a Ford Taurus and entering and exiting the car at various locations. In an interview outside City Hall on Wednesday night, Carmack explained that he had hired private investigators to follow Duggan and record him after hours.

The edited video displayed on the giant screens showed Duggan driving to what appeared to be a suburban location and pulling into a garage. On three occasions, according to the annotated production, the video shows a woman arriving at the same location between one and four hours earlier in the day.

Duggan arrives at the location without his personal protection unit in view, staying on three different occasions for between one and two hours, according to the video obtained by the Free Press. The 15-minute video identifies a woman and implies Carmack's allegations of an extramarital affair, although nothing in the video provides documentation of those allegations. The Free Press also has not independently verified the accusation.

In a statement Thursday, Duggan and his wife, Lori Maher, called Carmack an angry litigant and condemned Carmack's intent to "create a negative judgment on the state of our marriage."

"We decided to write this statement together because we are proud of the marriage we’ve built over 32 years, proud that our bond today remains strong, and proud of our goal to spend the rest of our lives together."

More: Detroit Councilman Gabe Leland arraigned on bribery charges

More: Lawsuit: Detroit councilman Gabe Leland extorted $15K for favor

The Free Press is not identifying the woman in the video. She did not return a phone call requesting comment, and was not available at her place of work Thursday. She is not a city employee, but has served on at least one mayoral advisory group after Duggan was elected to office.

City spokesman John Roach earlier refused to discuss any aspect of the incident, including whether a citizen conducting video surveillance of the mayor or broadcasting allegations of misconduct with a large mobile display was considered a potential security threat that the city was going to examine.

Carmack, who is embroiled in a handful of lawsuits involving the city, told the Free Press he hired a private eye to track the mayor this summer to see whether Duggan was living in the city and to see what the mayor was doing after hours.

Carmack explained that his goal in publicly broadcasting the video was to pressure Duggan to appear for a deposition in a lawsuit the city filed to evict Carmack from his collision shop in southwest Detroit.

Carmack offered an explanation for the video's footage.

“This is a video showing Mike Duggan going out … to meet a lady at nighttime when I put my private eyes following him on my federal lawsuit, to try to find out what kind of character he is,” Carmack said in an interview alongside the truck as it played the video on Larned Street near the employees’ entrance to the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.

“I’m broadcasting it because this is where they can see what kind of character that this man has. They say he’s a clean-cut guy, that he’s honest and so forth. Here you see that he’s going to meet a lady at 10 o’clock at night, staying there one hour then leaving,” Carmack said.

Carmack has long held a grudge against Duggan. He blames the mayor for the demolition two years ago of a structure on a piece of property on Michigan Avenue that Carmack believes he owned. The city has disputed Carmack’s ownership, saying it bought the property in 2010 after the county foreclosed on it.

In a separate lawsuit against Carmack filed in June, the city called him a thief for fraudulently obtaining title to a piece of city property and selling it for $1 million. Carmack denies he acquired and sold the property improperly.

Wednesday’s stunt comes about a month after Carmack was thrust into the public eye as the key witness in Leland's bribery case.

Carmack told the Free Press last month that he wore a recording device for the FBI in its investigation of Leland, who was indicted Oct. 4 on bribery charges. The indictment does not name Carmack; it refers to a local businessman who Leland asked to pay a $15,000 bribe in exchange for a political favor. Carmack says he is the businessman in the indictment. The circumstances in Leland’s charging documents match details in a lawsuit Carmack filed earlier this year alleging Leland extorted him for $15,000.

Leland has pleaded not guilty to the charges and told reporters after his arraignment last month that he is looking forward to his trial.

Here is the full text of the statement from Duggan and his wife:

"A litigant, angry to be losing a case to the Detroit Law Department, apparently decided to retaliate by hiring private investigators to follow the Mayor without his knowledge for several months. And in the end, their surveillance failed to uncover a single misdeed in the management of the city. "If that terrible invasion of privacy weren’t enough, it got worse. This same angry litigant then took individual videos of cars driving, spliced them together, and added assumptions and insinuations, all so he could create a negative judgment on the state of our marriage. "We decided to write this statement together because we are proud of the marriage we’ve built over 32 years, proud that our bond today remains strong, and proud of our goal to spend the rest of our lives together. "When you elect a public official you have every right to pass judgment on their performance in office. But you don’t get the right to pry into their personal lives, or demand information on their marriage. At least that’s how we feel and why we don’t answer questions about ours."

Joe Guillen is a reporter on the Free Press Investigations Team. He has been covering city governance and development issues for the newspaper since 2013. Contact him at 313-222-6678 or jguillen@freepress.com.