Michigan Attorney General executes search warrant at Detroit government office

Kat Stafford and Joe Guillen | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Ellen Ha addresses deleted city emails with city council Detroit Inspector General Ellen Ha addresses deleted emails to Detroit City Council

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel's Office executed a search warrant Friday related to its Make Your Date investigation, seeking information from the city's information technology department.

A spokesman for Nessel could not describe what authorities took during their search, but did confirm the search warrant involved the city's information technology operations at the Detroit Public Safety Headquarters on Third Street. Michigan State Police assisted in the execution of the warrant.

"I can confirm that a search warrant was executed today on the City of Detroit's IT department," spokesman Dan Olsen told the Free Press.

For several months, Nessel's criminal division has been investigating allegations that city employees were ordered to delete government emails to hide the city's support of the Make Your Date prenatal care program.

“We are cooperating fully with the Attorney General’s investigation. In fact, I spent much of my day working closely with her staff,” Corporation Counsel Lawrence Garcia said late Friday.

A recent Detroit inspector general's report found that Alexis Wiley, Duggan's chief of staff, twice ordered city workers to delete emails related to Make Your Date. Inspector General Ellen Ha recommended discipline for Wiley and two other city officials complicit in carrying out her orders to delete the emails.

Read more: Duggan administration admonished for preferential treatment of Make Your Date program

Read more: City fundraising office deleted emails about nonprofit tied to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan

Ha called Wiley's actions egregious. She did not determine whether Wiley broke any laws, deferring that decision to Nessel.

"She (Wiley) did have an intention to make those emails disappear, which we find egregious because the whole point of open government is so that people see what went on. And to have those records disappear is just not only a violation of spirit of openness but, quite frankly, it really puts a shadow over the government that's supposed to be transparent," Ha told the Free Press late last month when her report was released.

The inspector general launched its investigation into Make Your Date in April following a Free Press report about Duggan’s relationship with Make Your Date and its director, Dr. Sonia Hassan. Duggan worked with Wayne State University officials to create the program, handpicked Hassan to lead the initiative and ordered city staff to raise money for Make Your Date. The city also directed more than $358,000 in federal grants to the program.

Ha’s report found Duggan gave Make Your Date preferential treatment. Her report confirmed details in numerous Free Press investigative reports and included new information about additional city resources provided to Make Your Date. General fund money was earmarked for Lyft rides for Make Your Date participants and the city’s health department was expected to perform an inordinate amount of work for the program. Workers in the department felt pressured by the mayor’s office to recruit women to Make Your Date, the OIG found.

Duggan so far has declined to punish Wiley. She and the two other employees — chief development officer Ryan Friedrichs and his deputy, Sirene Abou-Chakra — were told to undergo public records training. In statements and public appearances, Duggan downplayed the OIG findings and insisted no wrongdoing had been uncovered.

Days later, Ha appeared before the Detroit City Council to debrief officials on the major findings of the report, stressing how important it was that there be accountability among government staff and officials.

City Council passed a resolution this week urging Duggan to issue "an appropriate level of discipline" for the deleted emails.

"The mayor has not acknowledged the severity of the findings and their impact on public trust and the integrity of City of Detroit government," the resolution reads. "The Detroit City Council urgently requests that the mayor take actions that are more appropriate to the gravamen of the underlying acts to help reinstate trust and integrity to the city’s processes by respecting the findings and recommendations of the OIG and issuing an appropriate level of discipline beyond needed training to effectively restore public confidence in city government."

It is illegal in Michigan to destroy public records. General correspondence records — which city emails are often classified as — must be preserved for at least two years, according to the state policy followed by the City of Detroit. The policy states that “records cannot be destroyed unless their disposition is authorized by an approved retention and disposal schedule.”

Furthermore, records cannot be disposed of if they are part of a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, investigation or lawsuit.

Wiley first ordered city staff to delete Make Your Date emails in December 2018, according to the inspector general's report. It was not long after surveillance footage was broadcast outside City Hall showing Duggan meeting after hours with Dr. Sonia Hassan, Make Your Date’s director, at a suburban residence.

Wiley told Friedrichs to have two development officers who worked in his office, Monique Phillips and Claire Huttenlocher, delete their emails related to Make Your Date. Phillips and Huttenlocher worked in the city’s Office of Development and Grants and were tasked with helping raise money for the program.

A second directive to delete emails came from Wiley in February, after Huttenlocher continued to send Make Your Date emails about fundraising.

Duggan said he and Dave Massaron, the city’s chief financial officer, learned about the deleted emails in May and began trying to recover them.

The city recovered more than 200 pages of deleted emails. The messages showed that the city was engaged in a robust fundraising effort to support Make Your Date, contrary to a public statement Wiley previously made that the city only made preliminary inquiries on Make Your Date’s behalf.

The OIG noted "it still cannot be definitely stated that all deleted MYD emails were recovered."

The inspector general concluded in her report that Wiley abused her authority by ordering the deletion of emails. In an interview with the inspector general, Wiley said that she did not try to recover the emails once she learned of the problem. “I did not view it as that big of a deal. I did not view it as they did something wrong,” Wiley said, according to the inspector general report.

There was no evidence that Duggan directed Wiley or knew about her orders to delete emails, the inspector general found.

Duggan has said the emails were deleted out of a desire to protect Phillips and Huttenlocher from scrutiny.

The allegation that employees were directed to delete emails was initially made by Kennedy Shannon, a former assistant director in the development and grants office. Shannon told the Free Press in the summer that Phillips approached her in April to talk about the deleted emails, days after publication of the Free Press’ investigation into Make Your Date and Duggan’s ties to Hassan.

Shannon told the Free Press on Friday that she recently met with an investigator and two criminal prosecutors from the attorney general’s office more than a month ago, who indicated the investigation was ongoing.

Shannon declined to share details about the nature of the conversation.

Shannon said Friday after learning about the search warrant execution she feels she made the right decision in coming forward.

“When I was telling people they were deleting emails, they were like, ‘Oh, no, they’re not deleting emails,’” Shannon recalled. “Nobody believed me at first, they said that can’t be going on. They made it seem like I was a bitter employee that got fired for just cause. So I do feel vindicated.”

A previous version of this story indicated the search warrant was executed at another city government site.