Brian Morley, an attorney for Shekter-Smith, said the charges were a surprise, but he knows his client was not criminally liable.
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Neither Cook, Rosenthal nor Peeler immediately responded to phone messages seeking comment.
AP noted that it left messages for Cook and Miller and could not find listed numbers for Rosenthal, Peeler and Scott.
As the Free Press notes, this is the second round of charges that Schuette has announced. Others, charged in April, were Mike Prysby and Steven Busch of the MDEQ and Mike Glasgow, a City of Flint water quality supervisor who has since resigned, taken a plea and according to state officials has been cooperating with the investigations. “It’s long past time the attorney general turned his attention to the governor and other powerful players in his administration who are ultimately responsible for what happened to Flint’s drinking water”. According to Jeff Seipenko, an investigator in Schuette’s office, Peeler and Scott worked together to hide a damning report that showed elevated blood lead testing in Flint residents during the summer of 2015.
Skekter Smith faces charges of misconduct in office and willful neglect of duty. Schuette had brought felony charges against two Michigan Department of Environmental Quality officials and one City of Flint official in April.
The DEQ and MDHHS released a joint statement saying that based upon the filing of the charges, their departments would each be suspending two current employees (Rosenthal and Cook from the DEQ and Peeler and Scott from MDHHS) without pay until further review of the charges can be conducted.
“You start at the bottom and work your way up”. To see employees who work for a department of that magnitude to turn around and cover it up and not tell us, have us aware. “The scope of the investigation is progressing exactly how it should be”. There were high levels of a disinfectant chemical as well. A General Motors plant had stopped using the water just six months after the 2014 switch because it was rusting engine parts, and experts suspect a deadly Legionnaires’ disease outbreak was tied to the water.
A task force appointed by Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder, a Republican, to investigate what led up to the lead-tainting debacle found that the agency was unlikely to enforce clean drinking water regulations in the city without “widespread public outrage”.
“I sweat the details of policy ― whether we’re talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, the number of mental health facilities in Iowa, or the cost of your prescription drugs”, Clinton said. The Michigan Civil Rights Commission is holding public hearings on the matter. Although officials first claimed that there was no danger in drinking the water, it was later discovered that the water had given many of Flint’s children lead poisoning.
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The Associated Press couldn’t reach the employees for comment.
