“They Don’t Like the Answer”: How Michigan Prosecutors Use FOIA as a Shield

The Phrase

Jessica Cooper, Oakland County Prosecutor, used it against Barry King when he sought records about Christopher Busch — the primary suspect in the murders of his son Tim and three other children. King had obtained over 3,400 pages of documents through FOIA. He had lost three lawsuits. He had read the lab report showing no gunshot residue on Busch’s hands after his alleged suicide. And Cooper told a reporter: “He doesn’t like the answer. If it were me, I wouldn’t like the answer either.”

Julie Nakfoor Pratt, Barry County Prosecuting Attorney, used a version of the same phrase against requesters seeking records connected to her office’s charging decisions — decisions that, in each case documented here, resulted in law enforcement accountability being declined or obstructed.

Same phrase. Different counties. Different cases. Different requesters. Same result: the conversation closed, the records withheld, and the official position that the problem lived inside the requester’s psychology rather than inside the office’s conduct.

When an elected official says “you don’t like the answer” in response to a FOIA request, the question that should immediately follow is: what exactly is the answer, and why won’t you put it in writing? In both cases documented here, the answer to that question is illuminating. Cooper’s office had transferred files to the Sheriff specifically to avoid producing them. Pratt’s office had produced two written statements — in the same FOIA proceeding — that directly contradicted each other about whether personnel records existed.

The phrase is not a statement of fact. It is a management technique. And it works because most requesters don’t have the resources to fight it.

Oakland County: Cooper and the OCCK Files

The full record on Jessica Cooper’s tenure as Oakland County Prosecutor — including her handling of the Christopher Busch investigation, her transfer of OCCK files to the Sheriff’s office to shield them from future FOIA requests, the document shredding reported in the days after she lost her primary, and her treatment of Barry King — is documented in detail in Clutch Justice’s companion piece on the staged death scene of Christopher Busch.

The short version: Cooper held the files for the most significant unsolved murder investigation in Michigan history. When families sought those files, she fought them. When the files might have been produced, she moved them somewhere they legally didn’t have to be. When she lost her office, documents were reportedly destroyed. The father of a murdered eleven-year-old boy died in 2020 having lost three lawsuits against the office that held his son’s killer’s investigative record.

Cooper told a reporter he didn’t like the answer. What the answer actually was — and what was being done to make sure he never fully received it — was a different matter entirely.

Barry County: Three Cases, One Office, One Pattern

Julie Nakfoor Pratt is the Barry County Prosecuting Attorney. In the span of roughly two years — 2025 and 2026 — her office produced documented FOIA obstructions in at least three separate cases. All three connect to the same underlying dynamic: requests for records tied to law enforcement conduct or prosecutorial charging decisions, denied by the office whose conduct is under scrutiny.

The Moryc Contradiction — A Closer Look

The Megan Moryc FOIA is worth examining in detail because it produces something rare: documentary proof of impossibility.

In November 2025, Moryc submitted a FOIA request seeking personnel records related to Assistant Prosecutor Christopher Elsworth — the official who had declined to charge a Michigan State Police trooper accused of domestic violence and sexual assault against a fellow trooper. The declination cited the standard justifications: lack of witnesses, no confession, delay in reporting, inability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt. These are factors frequently invoked in intimate partner violence cases, and especially frequently invoked when the accused is law enforcement.

What followed the FOIA request was a set of written responses from the prosecuting authority that cannot both be true. In one communication, the office stated that no personnel files were maintained for employees. In another, the same authority stated that if records existed, they would have been maintained either by the office or by county administration.

The Barry County Board of Commissioners approved Moryc’s appeal on November 26, 2025, after consulting legal representation before voting. The fact that the Board required outside legal counsel before deciding whether to honor a FOIA appeal is itself a statement about how normalized obstruction has become in that office.

Snowden and the Weaponization of Process

Jeffrey Snowden’s case introduces a third mechanism of obstruction that goes beyond records denial: the use of procedural tools as retaliation against people who assert their rights.

Snowden is an Iraqi War veteran and former Barry County resident. He appeared before the Barry County Board of Commissioners on February 24, 2026 and put on the public record that his arrest was fraudulent, that the prosecutorial handling of his case triggered Brady and Giglio disclosure failures — meaning exculpatory evidence was withheld — and that when he asserted rights under the Americans with Disabilities Act, he was met not with accommodation but with a motion for mental competency testing.

His FOIA requests for court and prosecutorial records were denied as “too broad” — the same deflection language used against Clutch Justice’s own preservation notices in Barry County proceedings. The Board was placed on Preservation Notice at the same meeting. A body that has had actual institutional knowledge of prosecutorial conduct concerns since May 2023 heard public testimony about fraudulent arrest, Brady violations, ADA retaliation, and FOIA obstruction — and initiated no independent investigation.

Why the Conflict of Interest Is the System

The through-line across every case documented in this piece is not individual misconduct, though individual misconduct is present. It is structural. Michigan law allows elected officials to control FOIA responses for their own offices. The person deciding what gets disclosed is the person most incentivized to withhold it when the records might expose their own conduct to scrutiny.

This is not a bug. It was not accidentally designed this way. It persists because the people with the power to change it are the same people who benefit from keeping it. Elected prosecutors control their own FOIA processes. Elected sheriffs can receive files from prosecutors specifically to shield them from disclosure. Boards of Commissioners can receive notice of prosecutorial misconduct, retain outside counsel, and then decline to investigate — and face no meaningful consequence for that declination.

The consequence falls entirely on the requester. Barry King paid it with three lawsuits and died without answers. Megan Moryc paid it with a FOIA appeal process that produced two contradictory written statements and no records. Jeffrey Snowden paid it with a competency motion filed after he asserted his legal rights. Richelle Spencer’s victim paid it with a case that has no court date and no timeline for resolution.

The Fix

The structural reform is straightforward. It is not complicated. It is politically expensive, which is why it has not happened.

FOIA requests that implicate potential liability for the responding office — requests for prosecutorial records, personnel files of charging officials, investigative files connected to ongoing legal disputes — should be routed to an independent state FOIA ombudsman with real enforcement authority. Not an appeals process that takes years and costs the requester money they don’t have. An independent arbiter, operating within a defined statutory window, with the power to compel production and impose meaningful penalties for obstruction.

The requester should not carry the burden of proving the records exist. The office should carry the burden of demonstrating why they can be withheld. That inversion of burden is the entire reform. It is the difference between a transparency system and a concealment system with paperwork.

Michigan currently has the latter. The documented record across Oakland County and Barry County — and across the OCCK investigation, the Moryc case, the Spencer case, and the Snowden case — is what the latter looks like in practice.