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rick snyder
As Flint Water Crisis Enters Sixth Year, 'Astounding' Report Exposes Lies of Ex-Gov. Snyder and Others
"Coronavirus is the biggest story in the country, and rightfully so. But today, this enormous, exclusive, and damning story should be a very, very close second."
Apr 16, 2020
VICE on Thursday published an "astounding" and "important" exclusive report on how Rick Snyder, a Republican who served as Michigan's governor from 2011 to 2019, "knew about Flint's toxic water--and lied about it."
The report, based on a year-and-a-half investigation, comes almost six years after an emergency manager appointed by Snyder switched Flint's water supply from Detroit's system to the Flint River. Since that move on April 25, 2014, city residents have endured health consequences resulting from a deadly Legionella pneumophila bacterial outbreak and exposure to heavy metals and cancer-causing contaminants.
\u201c6 years after Flint began using a toxic water source that sickened its residents, @VICE uncovered payoffs, whistleblower silencing, a shady financial deal, a coverup, & the former gov. who presided over it all. By @JordanChariton & me\n\n#FlintWaterCrisis\n\nhttps://t.co/Gt2fjv280s\u201d— Jenn Dize \ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffb\u200d\ud83d\udcbb Follow @Courage_News! (@Jenn Dize \ud83d\udc69\ud83c\udffb\u200d\ud83d\udcbb Follow @Courage_News!) 1587057044
As Jordan Chariton and Jenn Dize reported Thursday:
Hundreds of confidential pages of documents obtained by VICE, along with emails and interviews, reveal a coordinated, five-year cover-up overseen by Snyder and his top officials to prevent news of Flint's deadly water from going public--while there was still time to save lives--and then limit the damage after the crisis made global headlines.
All told, the waterborne bacterial disease may have killed at least 115 people in 2014 and 2015, and potentially more whose pneumonia wasn't officially considered Legionnaires' disease, the illness caused by Legionella. In addition to the outbreak, Flint's water supply was contaminated with lead and other heavy metals, harmful bacteria, carcinogens, and other toxic components. This wreaked havoc on Flint residents, leaving them with a laundry list of illnesses, including kidney and liver problems, severe bone and muscle pain, gastrointestinal problems, loss of teeth, autoimmune diseases, neurological deficiencies, miscarriages, Parkinson's disease, severe fatigue, seizures, and volatile mood disorders.
Beyond this, the long-term effects of heavy-metal poisoning takes years to develop, meaning many ill residents' conditions are worsening as the years go on. Many have said they still rely on bottled water to avoid using the water that comes through their pipes and into their homes, schools, and businesses.
The report detailed actions of local and state officials both leading up to and during the public health crisis, which continues today. It is based on interviews and documents from a criminal investigation of Snyder's administration that was led by special prosecutor Todd Flood from 2016 until last year, when newly elected state Attorney General Dana Nessel fired Flood and others.
The prosecution team led by Flood charged 15 Flint and Michigan officials with various crimes; seven of those cases were resolved with plea agreements. In January 2019, Nessel appointed Fadwa Hammoud as the state's solicitor general and assigned her to take over the Flint criminal cases.
In June, the state's prosecution team dismissed all pending criminal charges against the eight remaining defendants and launched a new probe based on concerns about the initial one. That decision, as Common Dreams reported, "elicited fresh concerns and demands for justice."
VICE noted that with Flint about to enter its sixth year of the water crisis, "the clock for justice is also ticking." Unless the Republican-controlled state legislature intervenes, the statute of limitations for filing new felony misconduct-in-office charges will run out next week. Chariton highlighted that detail in a series of tweets about the reporting Thursday.
\u201cthe statute of limitations to press new felony misconduct in office charges related to the #FlintWaterCrisis runs out in 9 days (4/25/14 to 4/25/20). Some lawmakers have called to extend it from 6 years to 10 years...so far unsuccessfully.\u201d— Jordan (@Jordan) 1587054257
In August, a pair of state legislators from Flint proposed legislation to extend the statute of limitations from six years to 10. Karen Weaver, then-mayor of Flint, expressed support for the proposal, declaring at the time that "there is no time limit that can be put on the amount of suffering that we have faced, nor the amount of pain as a result of the loss of life."
Weaver told VICE that the governor's office repeatedly dangled "a pot of money for different things" and pressured her to publicly claim that the city's water was safe. The outlet reported that "after repeated attempts by the Snyder administration to get Mayor Weaver to cooperate proved unsuccessful, the promised funding suddenly became unavailable."
The outlet added:
Weaver was even pressed to say the water in Flint's schools was safe to drink, according to former city government officials familiar with the administration's overtures to Weaver. Weaver didn't, and soon after, the remaining free water-bottle stations Flint residents relied on were prematurely shut down.
When the stations were shuttered, Weaver attempted to reopen them by turning to the $48.8 million rainy-day fund that was allocated to Flint from the state's 2017-2018 budget. But when Weaver looked, the money was gone. The Snyder administration had been using these funds--meant to be under Flint's control--to pay for the water stations.
In addition to detailing interactions between Weaver and the Snyder administration from the mayor's perspective, the report highlighted a few findings from the Flint criminal investigation documents:
- Snyder was warned about the dangers of using the Flint River as a water source a year before the water switch even occurred.
- Snyder had knowledge of the Legionella outbreak in Flint as early as October 2014, six months after the water switch--and 16 months earlier than he claimed to have learned of the deadly outbreak in testimony under oath before Congress.
- Communication among Snyder, his top officials, and the state health department spiked in October 2014 around the same time state environmental and health officials traded emails and calls about the Legionella outbreak in Flint.
Snyder and his attorneys did not respond to VICE's requests for comment. Several other officials named in the exhaustive report also declined to respond or comment, with some of them citing the ongoing criminal investigation.
The reporting provoked a fresh wave of criticism directed at government officials involved in the crisis and was published as the international community contends with a global pandemic that has infected more than two million people since late last year.
Sharing Chariton and Dize's Flint piece on Twitter Thursday, VICE senior editor Maxwell Strachan wrote that "coronavirus is the biggest story in the country, and rightfully so. But today, this enormous, exclusive, and damning story should be a very, very close second."
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'Snyder Not Welcome': Has Flint's Smoking Gun Finally Emerged?
Michigan House Democratic leader becomes the first member of the state Legislature to join call for Gov. Rick Snyder's resignation
Mar 02, 2016
As evidence against the state government continues to accrue, Michigan House Democratic leader Tim Greimel on Wednesday became the first member of the state legislature to join a growing call for Gov. Rick Snyder's resignation over Flint's water contamination crisis.
"It's now clear that for over a year, the governor's top aides and advisers wrote thousands of emails relating to the Flint situation and that they held many meetings and had many conversations about Flint," said Greimel. "It is inconceivable that the governor wasn't aware of what was happening. In fact, the governor's own chief of staff came out last week and indicated that he had been keeping the governor informed all along the way."
"Governor Snyder is a criminal disguised as a public servant."
--Shaunna Thomas, UltraViolet
What's more, the Michigan Democratic Party revealed on Wednesday records obtained under Michigan's Freedom of Information Act suggest that the Snyder administration "forced Flint residents to continue drinking poisoned water due to a dirty deal it signed with the city's Emergency Manager in April 2015."
According to the Detroit Free Press, the state of Michigan prevented Flint from returning water from the Detroit water system to Lake Huron when it agreed to grant the city an emergency loan of $7 million in April 2015.
The deal was signed off on "even after alarm bells were going off all over the Governor's office that lead and Legionnaires' disease were poisoning families," said Brandon Dillon, chair of the Michigan Democratic Party.
"The Snyder administration effectively put a financial gun to the heads of Flint's families by using the emergency manager law to lock the city into taking water from a poisoned source," Dillon said. "While children were being poisoned, the Snyder administration was playing political power games."
Meanwhile, an email in ongoing data dumps shows that Snyder planned to discuss "Flint water" with top staffers in February 2015—nearly nine months before the governor said he knew about a water crisis in Flint.
Progress Michigan said Wednesday:
The message was sent on February 17, 2015 to the Rick for Michigan campaign email account -- rather than the official state email account -- of Allison Scott, the executive director to the governor, and shows that Rick Snyder wanted to personally discuss the "Flint water" situation with top officials in his administration, among other issues. The email seems to be proof that Gov. Snyder lied each and every time he claimed that his staff never brought the crisis to him and that it was not on his radar.
"Gov. Snyder wants us to believe that he knew nothing of the problems in Flint and that he was poorly served by his staffers. This email shows that Snyder was not only aware of the Flint Water Crisis but was concerned enough to discuss it with high-ranking staff in February of 2015," said Lonnie Scott, executive director of Progress Michigan.
"Every time Snyder is confronted with news about this crisis, his excuse has been that he didn't know--he can't say that this time."
--Lonnie Scott, Progress Michigan
"Every time Snyder is confronted with news about this crisis, his excuse has been that he didn't know--he can't say that this time," Scott continued. "This email is the smoking gun people have been looking for and proves that Snyder knew about and discussed the Flint water situation with top-level staffers months before taking any action."
Meanwhile, on Wednesday, the national women's advocacy organization UltraViolet announced it has placed full-page ads in three Michigan newspapers this week. The ads give residents and businesses a cut-out sign that they can put up in their homes and storefronts declaring, "Governor Snyder Not Welcome."
"Governor Snyder is a criminal disguised as a public servant," said UltraViolet co-founder Shaunna Thomas. "Snyder's actions have resulted in more than ten thousand children and pregnant women being exposed to dangerously toxic levels of lead that will cause severe brain, nervous system, and liver damage for their entire lives. This is unforgivable."
"Snyder must immediately resign and face criminal prosecution for poisoning the kids and families of Flint," Thomas declared.
Also Wednesday, a coalition of environmental and racial justice groups called on the Democratic National Committee to focus Sunday's debate, which will take place in Flint, solely on racial and environmental injustice.
"The poisoning of Flint epitomizes a larger national crisis of people of color being physically endangered and politically ostracized," said Color of Change executive director Rashad Robinson.
"We need to hear real plans for how to safeguard the people of Flint and other communities in peril from anyone who wants our vote," he said. "The Democratic Party has an opportunity to use their platform to elevate this necessary conversation, putting the voices of those most impacted front and center and hopefully building greater momentum for change."
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'The Revolution Has Begun': After Super Tuesday Wins, Sanders Looks Ahead
'We are going to take our fight for economic justice, for social justice, for environmental sanity, for a world of peace' to all 50 states, says Sanders
Mar 02, 2016
Having notched Super Tuesday victories in Colorado, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Vermont, the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign says it's "going all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia and beyond."
The results in the 11 states that voted on March 1, seven of which went to Hillary Clinton, widened the former secretary of state's delegate lead against Sanders and reinforced her support among minority voters. Some even suggested that Clinton's solid Super Tuesday performance would increase pressure on Sanders to drop out of the race.
But at a rally Tuesday night with more than 4,000 supporters in his home state of Vermont--where he won resoundingly with 86 percent of the vote--and in a statement Wednesday morning, Sanders stressed his determination to carry his message to voters in all 50 states.
"At the end of tonight, 15 states will have voted, 35 states remain," he told the crowd in Burlington, where he once served as mayor. "And let me assure you, we are going to take our fight for economic justice, social justice, environmental sanity, and a world of peace to every one of those states."
"People should not underestimate us," Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver added in an email to supporters late Tuesday night.
"By winning four states last night, including the general election swing state of Colorado, and many delegates, Bernie Sanders has shown that this campaign to take on a rigged political system and economy is gaining momentum," declared Ilya Sheyman, executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action. "There are still more than forty primaries and caucuses to go and MoveOn members are excited to continue to mobilize to support Bernie and turn out the progressive vote. Your zip code should not determine if your primary vote matters or not."
Meanwhile, even Clinton's narrow victory in Massachusetts was painted as a partial win for Sanders.
Clinton "was made a better candidate thanks to Bernie Sanders engaging her in a race to the top on popular economic populism issues like debt-free college, expanding Social Security, and jailing Wall Street bankers who break the law," said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC), in a statement Wednesday.
There's no denying that Sanders faces an uphill climb. "Democrats award delegates proportionally, which means Sanders would need to win by big margins in the remaining states to catch up," Harry Enten wrote at FiveThirtyEight.
Still, John Nichols wrote at The Nation on Wednesday, "Sanders won more states from Clinton in the Democratic contests on Super Tuesday than the combined efforts of Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio won from Donald Trump in the far more intensely covered Republican contest."
"That," he continued, "to borrow a phrase from Sanders, was 'pretty good'--especially because the Super Tuesday map was always seen as favoring Clinton."
Nichols continued:
If he hopes to level things out, Sanders must broaden his appeal to African-American and Latino voters, who will be a factor in many of the states where he must win in the weeks to come. He must also recognize that Clinton's pivot to a focus on fighting Trump is an example of not just smart but necessary, politics. Democratic primary and caucus voters want to hear about issues - especially the economic-and-social justice issues that have animated the Sanders campaign -- but they also want to be reassured that their party's nominee will have a message and a strategy that is sufficient to see off Donald Trump. Right now, Clinton is doing a very good job of providing that assurance - and it is helping her to have some very super Tuesdays.
To that very end, top Sanders strategists reportedly held a press briefing Wednesday morning highlighting Sanders' electability against Trump.
\u201cTop @BernieSanders strategists holding press conference, arguing Sanders is strongest to take on @realDonaldTrump, say "Integrity" key.\u201d— Jeff Zeleny (@Jeff Zeleny) 1456928291
"The political revolution has begun," Sanders himself said Wednesday. "I look forward to a contest this fall between democracy and demagoguery, between ordinary Americans and the oligarchs. I look forward to the chance for our people-powered campaign to show Donald Trump that the United States of America belongs to all of us and not just billionaire bullies."
The Democrats will face off in two debates over the next 10 days, including one Sunday in Flint, Michigan. Earlier this year, Sanders called on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder to resign for his administration's failure to deal with a lead-poisoning crisis that has sickened thousands of children in that city.
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