Campaign finance records show three sitting judges — all serving in courts where Kent County Prosecutor Chris Becker’s office regularly litigates — have donated to Becker’s election committee. Judges Curt Benson and Jennifer Faber each donated $20 at the same Becker fundraiser on December 13, 2023. Judge Jeff O’Hara donated $250 directly in April 2020. None of this has been publicly flagged by any judicial disciplinary body. Clutch Justice is filing Judicial Tenure Commission complaints for all three.
The Documented Record
The donations were identified through a review of Becker’s publicly available campaign finance disclosure forms filed with the Michigan Bureau of Elections. The review was part of Clutch Justice’s ongoing investigation into Becker’s campaign finance practices, which previously identified the BattleGR tactical games expenditure now the subject of a separate Michigan campaign finance complaint.
The same-date, same-venue donations from Benson and Faber are not incidental. Two judges attending the same campaign fundraiser for the county’s lead prosecutor and making donations at that event represents documented participation in Becker’s electoral support structure. That is what was found in the records. That is what the records say.
The Canon 2 Problem
The Michigan Code of Judicial Conduct establishes the ethical floor for sitting judges. Canon 2 states that a judge should avoid all impropriety and appearance of impropriety. The standard is not limited to illegal conduct. It explicitly encompasses the appearance of a problem, because public confidence in the judiciary depends on the public’s ability to trust that the outcome of a case is driven by law and evidence rather than by pre-existing financial or political relationships between the bench and the bar.
Unlike federal judges, Michigan’s sitting judges are elected and face the political dynamics that come with electoral accountability. The state’s Code of Judicial Conduct does not flatly prohibit donations to other candidates’ campaigns. That gap in the rule framework is precisely what allows these donations to exist in the record without triggering any formal review — and it is precisely what the reform proposals below are designed to address.
When a defense attorney walks into court to argue against Becker’s prosecutors, the question of whether that courtroom is politically neutral has a documented answer: at least three of the judges in that building have written checks to the man running the office across the aisle. The defense attorney knows it, the prosecutor knows it, and now so does everyone reading the campaign finance forms.
Political donations, whether from corporations or individuals, serve a signaling function. The scholarship on corporate campaign contributions is clear that donors give to secure access and goodwill, not simply to express preference. When a sitting judge donates to a prosecutor’s campaign fundraiser — regardless of amount — they are signaling alignment. In a system where the prosecutor appears before that judge in criminal cases, that alignment has a direct bearing on the experience of every defendant whose case is heard there.
The Silence Around It
No judicial disciplinary body has flagged any of these donations. None of the three judges has issued a public statement. Becker’s campaign has not addressed why it is accepting donations from sitting judges before whom his office litigates. Prior Clutch Justice reporting documented Becker’s office accepting donations from staff members who attend office events funded by those same campaign accounts. The judge donations are part of the same pattern: a prosecutor building a financial network inside the very institutional structure he relies on to do his job.
None of that is normal. Collectively, it is a documented picture of how an elected prosecutor shapes the political environment in which his office operates.
What Reform Requires
Michigan should adopt an explicit prohibition on campaign donations by sitting judges to prosecutors whose offices appear before them. Canon 2’s appearance standard is insufficient as a self-enforcing rule when no body is actively reviewing disclosures for this pattern. A categorical ban removes the ambiguity and the opportunity.
Where a donation is documented, recusal in cases involving that prosecutor’s office should be automatic, not discretionary. The current system places the recusal decision with the judge who made the donation — the same judge who has already demonstrated alignment through the donation itself. That is not a neutral arbiter.
Campaign finance disclosures are public records. The Bureau of Elections, the JTC, or a designated oversight body should conduct affirmative review of prosecutor campaign disclosures for judicial donors and flag them for conduct review without waiting for a public complaint. These records are available. No one is reading them for this purpose unless a reporter or a member of the public does it manually.
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