Last weekend’s email dump proved beyond any doubt that Rick Snyder at the very least had reason to know that Flint’s water was contaminated well before he claims to have known about it. But late Wednesday, Progress Michigan got its hands on an email exchange that makes it certain that Snyder definitely knew about the crisis.
On February 17, 2015; Snyder emailed his executive director, Allison Scott, with a list of items to discuss at a top-level meeting later in the week. Read the email here.
“Jarrod” is Jarrod Agen, Snyder’s chief of staff. John Walsh is Snyder’s director of strategy. Notice what was on the list of other items to discuss? “Flint water.”
But wait a minute. Snyder claims that he didn’t know the extent of the crisis until November 2015, and blames his staffers for not telling him sooner. We already know that’s bull. After all, Snyder’s former chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore, says that soon after two of Snyder’s top aides passed on concerns about Flint’s water in October 2014, “we discussed them” with Snyder. Additionally, health officials in Genesee County, home to Flint, were kept from seeing lead test results last October until Snyder’s office could figure out how to spin them. And in January 2015–a month before this email was sent, state workers already had access to purified water.
By itself, this email looks innocent. However, when you put this email onto the timeline of everything we already know about the crisis, it is absolutely damning. If Snyder was truly in the dark about the water situation, why did he feel the need to discuss “Flint water” in a meeting with two of the highest-ranking officials on his staff? Put next to everything else, and there is only one plausible conclusion. Snyder didn’t just twiddle his thumbs while his staffers engaged in an outrageous cover-up. He was actually complicit.
Even more tellingly, Snyder didn’t send the original email to Scott’s state government account. He sent it to an account she had with his reelection campaign. The governor’s office is exempt from the state’s Freedom of Information Act. However, Progress Michigan executive director Lonnie Scott says that this exchange proves at the very least that Snyder is conducting state business via his campaign email system. It at least makes you wonder–what other matters were discussed on that system?
Unless I’m very wrong, this email makes the Flint water crisis exponentially worse than Bridgegate. It is one thing to create an environment in which it is even remotely acceptable to put innocent people in harm’s way for political gain. It is quite another to be directly involved in an attempt to deceive a city about the quality of its water.
Enough has already emerged about what we now know is a criminal act to demand that Snyder resign. But unless Snyder has a really good explanation for why he saw fit to discuss a situation that he claims to have known nothing about at the time, there is no defensible reason to allow him to remain in office. If Snyder has anything in him, he will go now while he can still do so with even the appearance of decency.
In a sane world, those two little words would be the most expensive words ever uttered in Michigan. After all, this email would normally mean certain impeachment at least, and potentially put Snyder in an orange jumpsuit at worst. But it says a lot about our political culture that we have to even wonder if the Republican-controlled state legislature will bother to take off its red-tinted blinders. At the very least, this email should be grounds for an immediate impeachment inquiry. The people of Flint deserve no less.
