FLINT, MI -- Millions of documents related to the Flint water crisis, including a list of state employees titled “Phones/Wiped,” have been discovered in the basement of a state-owned building, according to a filing Friday, April 26, by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office in Genesee Circuit Court.

Solicitor General Fadwa A. Hammoud made the explosive claim in a 10-page request for a six-month delay in the prosecution of former state Department of Health and Human Services Director Nick Lyon, whose attorney said the request amounted to nothing more than stalling in a case that was originally filed nearly two years ago.

“Although the duration of the requested stay is, admittedly, a lengthy one, it is indisputably commensurate with the volume of evidence that has been unknown to (if not withheld from) the People -- not to mention the importance of these prosecutions to the citizens of the state of Michigan,” the request says.

The postponement request also says the records -- collected in response to investigative subpoenas filed by former special prosecutor Todd Flood -- were never completely reviewed before criminal charges -- including involuntary manslaughter -- were filed against Lyon. The filing also claims prosecutors have learned “only a slice” of evidence requested was turned over to them and says evidence that was supplied “did not conform to data delivery standards that would have made it digestible, searchable and analyzable.”

“Among the newly discovered evidence is a list of names ominously titled ‘Phones/Wiped,' along with data from at least one cell phone that the People were told did not exist," the request says.

Chip Chamberlain, an attorney for Lyon, called the requested delay “nothing but a stall tactic” and said the former DHHS director would fight the postponement.

The delay request “is exactly what happened when Mr. Lyon was originally charged” in the Flint water case, Chamberlain said.

“Even though he was under investigation for a year and a half, prosecutors tried to delay matters, and we had to wait three months for a preliminary examination" to begin, he said.

Lyon was bound over to stand trial on two counts of involuntary manslaughter, willful neglect of duty and misconduct in office in August.

Prosecutors claimed during his preliminary examination that Lyon is responsible for the deaths of Robert Skidmore and John Snyder, two Genesee County men whom prosecution experts say likely died of Legionnaires’ disease during the water crisis.

Lyon, who denies the charges against him and has asked Farah to quash -- or dismiss -- his bindover from district court, was among city, county and state officials who were aware of Legionnaires’ outbreaks during the water crisis and suspicions that Flint’s water was connected to them.

Farah had been expected to rule on that motion to dismiss the case against Lyon in coming days but has scheduled a hearing on the attorney general’s new request for postponement on Friday, May 3.

A spokeswoman for the attorney general declined to comment in detail on information in the new motion, saying it "speaks for itself. "

“We will provide additional information at the appropriate time,” Communications Director Kelly Rossman-McKinney said in an email to MLive-The Flint Journal.

The Journal could not immediately reach Flood, who remains a part of the state’s prosecution team, for comment on Friday’s court filing.

In the filing, the attorney general’s office claims the new records were part of the response to subpoenas served on state officers and agencies, including Lyon, for data including voicemails, computer hard drives, audio and video recordings.

The request says that since the attorney general’s office took direct control of the Flint water prosecutions from Flood earlier this year, they have “learned of the existence of millions of pages of documents as well as phone extractions and other materials stored on hard drives recovered in a state-owned facility’s basement, that were responsive to the original subpoenas but were not turned over.”

The filing says those parties served the subpoenas were aware of the materials but “erroneously represented to the prosecution that the prosecution already possessed these materials in their entirety.”

In a brief in support of the request, the attorney general’s office says 23 boxes of evidence “were languishing in the basement” when information about them was discovered. Attorneys within the AG’s office were aware of the records but believed they were duplicates of data already turned over in relation to the case.

The same assistant attorney generals were responsible for the civil defense of “individuals whom this office is investigating in a criminal capacity" and took direction from attorneys outside the office “who are also responsible for the individuals’ civil (and now criminal) defenses," according to the brief.

Among the records in the boxes was data from a state employee’s cell phone despite claims from attorneys for Lyon that the employee had no cell phones preserved or imaged, the brief says, and the file titled “Phones/Wiped,” “which listed the names of eight state employees.”

Only one of these eight individuals appeared in documentation provided by the respondents, who could not explain the significance of the list of individuals," the court record says.

The brief claims that while there is circumstantial evidence of “bad faith concealment” by either Lyon or his attorneys, the state is not alleging that “at this time.”

“Simply put, the People issued investigative subpoenas that sought particular materials, and those materials were not provided,” the brief says.