Michigan State trustee Mitch Lyons charged with misdemeanor assault and battery

Michigan State University Trustee Mitch Lyons was arraigned Friday morning in Jackson County District Court on a misdemeanor charge for assault and battery.

An arrest warrant against the Rockford Republican had been issued Dec. 28, court records indicate. Online records do not specify where or when the alleged assault occurred.

The warrant was cancelled after Lyons appeared in court Friday morning, court officials said. Another hearing is set for Jan. 29.

“The warrant has been cleared and the overall situation was a misunderstanding, but we cannot comment until the legal issue is resolved,” Lyons' attorney, Brian Lennon, said in a statement released Friday morning.

Lyons did not return phone messages left for him by the Lansing State Journal on Thursday evening and Friday morning. An MSU spokesperson said the university is aware of the situation and referred comment to a public relations firm representing Lyons.

Assault and battery is a misdemeanor punishable by up to 93 days in jail upon conviction.

Lyons, 47, played football at MSU from 1988 to 1992 and has a business administration degree from the university.

He played seven years in the NFL and now owns a financial services firm in Grand Rapids, according to his MSU bio page. He has been on MSU’s governing board since Jan. 1, 2011.

Last year, Lyons drew criticism by publicly naming the whistleblower who told MSU head football coach Mark Dantonio about an alleged sexual assault that happened the previous January. Three football players were later kicked off the team in connection with that incident and were also charged with criminal sexual conduct.

Lyons, who outed the whistleblower during a radio show, later apologized during an MSU board meeting, saying he misspoke while discussing multiple sexual assault cases involving MSU.

“I regret that my name was associated with that case,” he told his fellow trustees. “I absolutely 100 percent agree that we need to protect reporting individuals of sexual assault. I deeply regret having said any name in that situation, because again, it wasn’t related to what I was doing, which was standing up for Coach D and how he handled what he learned from the assault.”

Contact Ken Palmer at (517) 377-1032 or kpalmer@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @KBPalm_lsj.