By Joel Thurtell
It took a Wayne County Circuit judge to do what Detroit’s Sludgegate-tainted City Council members should have had brains enough to do.
Butt out.
Now it’s time for Michigan’s governor to realize there is only one proper way for Detroit to rid itself of its scandal-plagued mayor, and that’s through the channel of criminal court proceedings.
If Kwame Kilpatrick is convicted by a judge or jury of perjury, obstruction of justice and conspiracy, then he will be out automatically. State law won’t allow a convicted felon to occupy an elected office.
But all this caterwauling about how Kwame’s destroying the city’s good name and ruining things for rich business people is claptrap. Worse, much of it is self-serving. Know what I mean? Didn’t you get a sense that one or two council members, at least, had their eyes on the mayor’s office for themselves?
And then there were those mega-business guys, Dave Bing and Pete Karmonos Jr. pressuring Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy to cut a plea deal with Kwame that would safeguard his law license but get him off stage so someone else could run the city with honor and dignity.
Who did they have in mind?
Journalists should never use “talk on the street” as a source for articles, so I won’t note that talk on the street had Dave Bing crowned as mayor to fill in the blank left by Kwame’s removal, should it happen.
The idea that a bunch of self-appointed business folk would interfere in a judicial proceeding is repulsive. Twisting the prosecutor’s arm, aided and abetted by trumpeting Detroit Free Press columnists, sounds to me like something akin to obstruction.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell(at)gmail.com
