by WorldTribune Staff, March 10, 2021
A Michigan prosecutor said criminal charges are possible against Gov. Gretchen Whitmer over her order which put coronavirus patients inside nursing homes which were used as hubs early in the pandemic, a report said.
Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido said anyone whose loved ones who were residents or staff in nursing homes who died of covid should get the vital information about the circumstances of the death and take that to local police and make a complaint as a wrongful death, WXYZ-TV 7 Action News reported on March 8.
Lucido said the law prevents him from obtaining the information in his own investigation.
“If we find there’s been willful neglect of office if we find there’s been reckless endangerment of a person’s life by bringing them in then we would move forward with charges against the governor. Of course, we would. Nobody’s above the law in this state,” Lucido told 7 Action News.
The news comes as Republicans in the Michigan legislature said they will hold hearings into a $155,000 confidential separation agreement made to former Health Department director Robert Gordon amid accusations that it may be a “hush payment.”
Lucido told 7 Action News that he began looking into the nursing homes controversy last year when he was a state senator. He issued a statement in August that said more than 2,000 residents and 21 staff died in nursing homes, 32 percent of all Michigan coronavirus deaths.
After becoming prosecutor in Macomb County this year, Lucido said he asked fellow county prosecutors to form a Blue-Ribbon Committee for consistency investigating nursing home death cases.
That association as a group declined and said Lucido should make the request to the Michigan attorney general and the federal government. Lucido provided letters showing he did that last May, 7 Action News reported.
The state attorney general’s office said there was not a proper basis to open a criminal investigation. The U. S. Attorney said they would look into his request.
“I didn’t receive a very warm welcome. This is not political everyone. This is about people who passed away at the behest of a policy that was created by the governor,” Lucido told 7 Action News.
A statement from Whitmer’s office said: “Lucido’s comments are shameful political attacks based in neither fact nor reality.”
Michigan House Oversight Chairman Steve Johnson, a Republican, said he wants answers from Whitmer on the nursing home deaths and the payment to the former health director.
“We have invited the department to come and testify before our oversight committee. They have refused to. We’ve asked them to share with us the data with the nursing home deaths. They refuse that. And now we see that the governor has paid the former health department director Robert Gordon $155,000 to stay quiet, which begs the question: what are they trying to hide,” Johnson told Fox News.
Johnson said Michigan was among the states which “forced covid patients” into nursing homes, “just like what you saw in New York. That happened here, and they hid the numbers in New York and nursing home deaths, and that’s the question here, are they hiding the numbers?”
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Death by covid tyranny: Prosecutor weighs criminal charges against Michigan’s Gov. Whitmer added by World Tribune on
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