The Flint, Mich., water criminal case involving former Gov. Rick Snyder took a strange side trip yesterday into bankruptcy court where his lawyers asked a judge to penalize state attorneys for distributing confidential documents from Detroit's historic financial restructuring, the Associated Press reported. The documents were related to private talks between Detroit, the state and creditors while the city was trying to emerge from bankruptcy in 2014. Snyder's administration played a key role in groundbreaking deals. Armed with a search warrant in 2019, prosecutors in the attorney general's office obtained documents from computer servers controlled by other state attorneys who had represented Snyder in matters related to Flint's lead-contaminated water. The search apparently swept up sensitive documents from the Detroit bankruptcy as well as attorney-client communications of other state officials, Snyder attorney Charles Ash said. “There has been a massive breach. ... We don’t know how this happened and don’t really know the full extent of the problem," Ash told Bankruptcy Judge Thomas Tucker. The records were given to other people charged with crimes in the Flint water scandal because prosecutors have an obligation to share documents with defense lawyers.
