Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald has declared her candidacy for Michigan Attorney General. The Oxford High School shooting prosecution is her most prominent case and her primary campaign credential. A documented examination of the Oxford record — including more than $100,000 in taxpayer-funded PR firm spending not directly disclosed by her office, defense attorney allegations of undisclosed proffer agreements with key witnesses, and a pattern of responding to due process concerns by attacking the lawyers raising them — raises accountability questions that voters evaluating her fitness for the state’s top legal office should consider.
The Oxford Record: Documented Concerns
Karen McDonald, the current Oakland County Prosecutor, declared her candidacy for Michigan Attorney General in June 2025. The Oxford High School shooting prosecution is the centerpiece of her public profile and her campaign. The case involved serious charges, genuine community trauma, and significant public attention — conditions that create both the opportunity for meaningful prosecution and the temptation to prioritize optics over process. The documented record of the Oxford prosecution raises the question of which McDonald chose.
McDonald’s office spent more than $100,000 on crisis communication firms during the Oxford trial — costs paid by Oakland County taxpayers. Her office did not directly disclose these expenditures. Defense attorneys alleged the firms were retained to influence public opinion and potential jurors — a covert PR campaign running parallel to the prosecution. When defense attorneys sought to disqualify McDonald on grounds of unethical conduct, her team argued the firms were not hired in secret while simultaneously acknowledging that documents related to the firms had been withheld from the defense. The acknowledgment of withheld documents, combined with the assertion that nothing improper occurred, produced a documented contradiction that the due process concerns raised by defense attorneys were designed to address.
Key school staff provided testimony under proffer agreements — arrangements through which witnesses receive some form of benefit in exchange for cooperation. Defense attorneys alleged these agreements were not disclosed to them or the jury, which affects the cross-examination record: a witness whose testimony is provided under an undisclosed arrangement cannot be fully cross-examined on that arrangement’s terms and incentives. McDonald’s team maintained that no promises of immunity were extended. Defense attorneys characterized the response as insufficient and formally raised the matter. The discrepancy between the prosecution’s characterization of these arrangements and the defense’s account of what was disclosed is documented in the case record.
When defense attorneys formally raised due process concerns about the PR firm spending and the witness agreement disclosures, McDonald responded publicly by characterizing their actions as an abuse of the court system and a cheap publicity stunt. She filed a motion for sanctions. The due process concerns themselves — whether the PR firm expenditures were properly disclosed, whether the proffer agreements affected the integrity of the cross-examination record — were not addressed substantively in her public response. They were attacked as improper in motive. Prosecutorial ethics require engaging due process concerns on their merits, not characterizing lawyers who raise them as acting improperly for raising them.
Prosecutorial power requires restraint and adherence to procedural fairness not because it is convenient or politically safe, but because the legitimacy of criminal convictions depends on it. A conviction obtained through processes that defense attorneys can credibly challenge on due process grounds is a conviction whose foundation is not as solid as the public is told. The Attorney General of Michigan oversees the state’s prosecutorial apparatus across all 83 counties. A pattern of prioritizing optics over process, and of responding to due process concerns with deflection and attack rather than substantive engagement, applied at that scale has consequences beyond any single prosecution. Voters evaluating McDonald’s AG candidacy are entitled to weigh her Oxford record — including the concerns documented here — against the standards the office requires.
What Voters Should Research
The attorney general race is an accountability question, not a partisan one. The documented concerns about McDonald’s Oxford record are process concerns — about disclosure, transparency, and how due process objections are handled — not substantive policy disagreements about what cases to prosecute or how to prioritize resources. Voters who want to evaluate McDonald’s fitness for the office should examine those process questions directly, rather than evaluating her candidacy primarily on the high-profile nature of the Oxford prosecution itself.
Other declared candidates in the 2026 AG race — including Totten and Savit — have emphasized procedural fairness in their campaigns. Their positions on transparency and prosecutorial accountability, and how they compare to McDonald’s documented record, are questions worth researching before the vote. Michigan deserves an Attorney General whose record demonstrates that due process is a constraint to be respected, not an obstacle to be managed through public relations and sanctions motions.
Sources
Rita Williams, Questioning Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald’s Run for Michigan Attorney General, Clutch Justice (June 25, 2025), https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/25/why-im-warning-voters-questioning-oakland-county-prosecutor-karen-mcdonalds-run-for-michigan-attorney-general/.
Williams, R. (2025, June 25). Questioning Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald’s run for Michigan Attorney General. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/25/why-im-warning-voters-questioning-oakland-county-prosecutor-karen-mcdonalds-run-for-michigan-attorney-general/
Williams, Rita. “Questioning Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald’s Run for Michigan Attorney General.” Clutch Justice, 25 June 2025, clutchjustice.com/2025/06/25/why-im-warning-voters-questioning-oakland-county-prosecutor-karen-mcdonalds-run-for-michigan-attorney-general/.
Williams, Rita. “Questioning Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald’s Run for Michigan Attorney General.” Clutch Justice, June 25, 2025. https://clutchjustice.com/2025/06/25/why-im-warning-voters-questioning-oakland-county-prosecutor-karen-mcdonalds-run-for-michigan-attorney-general/.
