Two Attorneys With Personal Knowledge of a Barry County Plea Agreement Are Now Working Under the Same Kalamazoo County Prosecutor. Neither Is Talking.

The Timeline That Needs an Explanation

Christopher J. Elsworth’s career trajectory is documented in public records. He practiced law in Hastings, Michigan for nearly 20 years, working as a Barry County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney. His name appears on the Kalamazoo County Family Court Division’s public staff listing. The move to Kalamazoo County Family Court happened in January 2025.

One month earlier, in December 2024, Clutch Justice filed a complaint with the Michigan Supreme Court naming Elsworth and Judge Michael Schipper. Elsworth’s move from Barry County to Kalamazoo County followed that complaint by thirty days.

That timeline requires an explanation. Clutch Justice is not asserting that the complaint caused the move. What Clutch Justice is asserting is that the timing is documented, that the complaint is documented, and that the public is entitled to know both facts simultaneously and draw its own conclusions.

Benjamin Norg and the Move to Getting’s Office

Benjamin M. Norg’s public record is straightforward. He graduated from Western Michigan University Cooley Law School in 2017. He worked at Sharp and Associates, the firm of Tara Sharp, before joining the Kalamazoo County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. He is currently listed on Kalamazoo County’s Circuit Court Division page as a Circuit Court Assistant Prosecuting Attorney handling felony prosecutions under Jeffrey Getting.

Norg worked with Christopher Elsworth on a Barry County matter in 2022 and 2023. That matter involved plea negotiations and sentencing expectations. Communications between Norg and Elsworth related to that matter, as well as communications involving Tara Sharp and Anastase Markou, a second attorney connected to the same matter, have been formally demanded and not produced.

On June 20, 2026, Clutch Justice served a formal legal demand on Norg at the Kalamazoo County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. The demand requests the complete client file, all plea negotiation communications, all communications between Norg and Elsworth, all communications involving Tara Sharp and Anastase Markou, and any communication reflecting representations that sentencing would result in no jail time. The demand also serves as a formal preservation notice. Norg has fourteen days to respond. Civil remedy will be pursued if records are not produced.

This Is Not the First Time Elsworth’s Conduct Has Been Documented

The Barry County plea agreement communications are not the only matter in which Christopher Elsworth’s conduct as a Barry County APA has been documented by Clutch Justice. In January 2026, Clutch Justice published an investigation into the case of Megan Moryc, a former Michigan State Police trooper identified as the victim in a domestic violence and sexual assault investigation involving another trooper. The warrant request in that case was presented to Barry County for prosecutorial review in July 2023. It was denied by Christopher Elsworth.

The investigative record in that matter reflects that no recorded interview of the victim was conducted as part of the criminal investigation. Despite the seriousness of the allegations, the file documents no formal recorded statement taken from the person identified as the victim. Moryc was not contacted directly by the prosecuting office when the charging decision was made. She later learned of the declination through law enforcement rather than from prosecutors, despite Michigan law recognizing the right of crime victims to receive notice of significant prosecutorial decisions.

The Spencer matter adds another data point to Elsworth’s documented declination record. Richelle Spencer, a former Barry County Sheriff candidate, stalked a Hastings-area pediatrician beginning in 2023. Per dialogue at a Barry County Board of Commissioners meeting documented by Clutch Justice, charging decisions in that matter were in the hands of an Assistant Prosecutor. The Barry County Prosecutor’s office knew about the stalking and declined to pursue charges. Spencer went on to stalk a second victim. Kent County arrested her in October 2024. She was subsequently found not competent per a competency examination, with an insanity defense filed in her Kent County aggravated stalking case, Case No. 25-03128-FH. Barry County’s declination did not stop the harm. It deferred it to a second victim in a different county. The pattern across the Moryc declination and the Spencer matter is consistent: the Barry County Prosecutor’s office, with Elsworth as a key actor in charging decisions, declined to pursue charges in matters involving identifiable harm, and other jurisdictions bore the consequences.

Moryc subsequently sought Elsworth’s personnel records through a FOIA request. Barry County obstructed that request. The FOIA was ultimately approved, but only after that obstruction. The pattern is consistent across both matters: Elsworth declines to act, records are sought, Barry County resists producing them, and the people seeking accountability are forced to fight for documentation that should have been available.

What This Means for Current Cases

The question raised by Norg and Elsworth’s presence in Getting’s office is not only about what happened in Barry County. It is about what is happening in Kalamazoo County right now.

If two attorneys are permitted to withhold personal knowledge of a plea agreement from a prior matter, to deny on the court record the existence of communications that multiple parties confirm exist, and to do so without consequence while continuing to handle active prosecutions, that raises a direct question about the integrity of their current casework. What are they permitted to conceal in matters they are prosecuting today? What discovery obligations are being met, and which are being managed the same way the Barry County communications have been managed for years?

These are not hypothetical concerns. They are the logical extension of a documented pattern. Elsworth’s December 2023 denial is on the court record. The communications he denied the existence of have been confirmed by multiple actors. That is not a misunderstanding. That is a prosecutor making a false representation on the court record. He then moved jurisdictions one month after a formal complaint naming him was filed with the Michigan Supreme Court. He is now in a family court handling matters involving children and families. That context matters.

Norg is handling felony prosecutions. Defendants in those cases have a right to prosecutors who meet their discovery obligations in full. The documented record of withholding in the Barry County matter is relevant to whether that standard is being met.

The Ethical Implications and What Three Years of Silence Actually Means

Michigan’s Rules of Professional Conduct are not suggestions. They govern every licensed attorney in the state, including attorneys who have changed employers, changed counties, and changed the zip code where they practice. The obligations that attached to Norg and Elsworth’s handling of the Barry County matter in 2022 and 2023 did not expire when they left Barry County. They are still attached. They will be attached until the records are produced or a disciplinary body decides otherwise.

MRPC 1.15 requires attorneys to safeguard client property, including files and records. MRPC 1.16 governs the obligations that attach when representation ends, including the duty to surrender papers and property to which the client is entitled. MRPC 3.4 prohibits attorneys from unlawfully obstructing another party’s access to evidence and from concealing documents having potential evidentiary value. MRPC 8.4 defines professional misconduct to include conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, or misrepresentation. Elsworth’s December 2023 denial of the existence of communications that multiple actors with direct personal knowledge confirm exist sits squarely in that territory. A denial made on the court record is not a misunderstanding. It is a representation to the court.

Three years is not an oversight. Three years of withholding documentation of a plea agreement, across a change of employers, a change of counties, and a Michigan Supreme Court complaint, is a choice made repeatedly and deliberately. Every month that passed without production was another month that choice was renewed. The documentation did not disappear. The obligation to produce it did not disappear. What disappeared was the willingness to meet it.

The denial did not happen only on the court record. Elsworth also denied the existence of the plea communications to the Attorney Grievance Commission, again despite multiple people having direct personal knowledge that those communications exist. A denial made to the AGC is not a procedural technicality. It is a representation made to the body responsible for licensing and disciplining Michigan attorneys. Making a false representation to that body, while other actors with direct knowledge can confirm the communications exist, is conduct that goes to the core of what professional licensure is supposed to mean. The AGC has that representation in its file. It has the complaint. What it has not done is act on it.

There is one additional documented account that belongs in the record. According to a witness with direct personal knowledge, Elsworth told Norg during the Barry County matter that Norg had made a procedural error in the case. That same witness states that Elsworth gloated about it after court. That account has not been disputed by either attorney. It is consistent with the broader documented pattern: a case in which one attorney knew something had gone wrong, told the other attorney, and neither produced the documentation that would allow the error to be examined, corrected, or addressed through proper channels. Instead, the communications were denied. The records were withheld. And both attorneys eventually left Barry County.

The implications extend beyond the Barry County matter. Norg is currently handling felony prosecutions at Kalamazoo County. Defendants in those cases have due process rights that include timely and complete discovery. An attorney with a documented pattern of withholding records and making false representations on the court record and to the AGC in a prior matter is an attorney whose current discovery practices warrant scrutiny. That is not a character attack. It is a logical consequence of the documented record.

There is one additional dimension to Elsworth’s current placement that requires naming directly. Elsworth spent nearly 20 years as a Barry County APA. His documented record in that role includes declining to pursue charges in domestic violence matters, failing to conduct recorded victim interviews, and failing to notify victims of declination decisions. He is now in Kalamazoo County Family Court, handling matters involving children and families, in the same week that Barry County’s six-year failure to protect the Foley children became public record. The children in that matter were failed by a court system Elsworth served for nearly two decades. The conditions that produced that failure, the obstructed father, the ignored allegations, the misdirected mail, the weaponized contempt findings, developed on his watch. He is now in a family court. That is not an abstraction. It is a placement decision that the public is entitled to scrutinize in light of everything that has been documented this week.

Tara Sharp, at whose firm Norg worked before joining Getting’s office, is named in the outstanding records demand as a party to communications being sought. Her role in the withholding, if any, has not been publicly established. What is established is that her name is on the demand and the demand has not been answered.

It is also worth noting, for those tracking the full scope of these interconnections, that Sharp and Associates is the same firm that filed an ex parte motion to suspend a father’s parenting rights in an Allegan County matter documented by Clutch Justice. That motion was signed by Christopher E. Podoll of Sharp and Associates. The Allegan County matter involved Roberts Kengis, the former Allegan County judge who was forced into early retirement by the JTC for corruption and abuse of power, who regularly engaged in ex parte communications, and who weaponized law enforcement to silence dissent. Kengis is now working as a mediator in Allegan County family court matters, documented by Clutch Justice in a June 2026 investigation as working both sides of Allegan County’s family court. Kengis was also a mentor and campaign donor to Barry County Prosecutor Julie Nakfoor-Pratt, who sits on the Safe Harbor Children’s Advocacy Center board alongside Allegan County’s chief assistant prosecuting attorney. Norg, who worked at Sharp’s firm, is now at Getting’s office. It is a very small world, and it is very well documented.

Elsworth’s documented conduct also connects directly to the sentencing pattern documented in Clutch Justice’s January 2026 investigation of Judge Michael Schipper. Elsworth was the APA working alongside Schipper during the period in which Schipper imposed repeated extreme upward departures on nonviolent defendants, multiple of which were vacated or remanded by Michigan appellate courts, while simultaneously imposing a 30-day sentence for reckless driving causing death. That sentencing incoherence, documented at clutchjustice.com/2026/01/17/when-a-death-gets-30-days/, was carried out with Elsworth as the prosecuting attorney in the room. The pattern of outcomes across Elsworth’s tenure in Barry County is not a collection of unrelated decisions. It is a body of work.

Brady, Giglio, and What Every Defense Attorney in Kalamazoo County Should Know

Brady v. Maryland established that prosecutors must disclose material exculpatory evidence to the defense. Giglio v. United States extended that obligation to evidence bearing on the credibility of witnesses, including the prosecutor’s own witnesses. Both are constitutional obligations. They attach to every prosecution Benjamin Norg is currently handling in Kalamazoo County. They do not expire. They do not have a jurisdictional limit. And they are directly implicated by what the documented record shows about Norg’s prior conduct.

If Norg withheld communications documenting a plea agreement being misrepresented or a procedural error being concealed in a prior Barry County matter, those communications are potentially Giglio material in every active case he is prosecuting now. Giglio material includes anything that impeaches the credibility of a government witness or, by extension, the integrity of the prosecutor’s own representations to the court. A prosecutor with a documented pattern of denying the existence of communications on the court record and to the AGC, while multiple actors with direct knowledge confirm those communications exist, has a credibility problem that is constitutionally relevant to every case he touches.

The Brady implication is equally direct. If the withheld communications relate to how plea agreements were structured or represented in the Barry County matter, that pattern of conduct is relevant to how Norg handles plea negotiations in current Kalamazoo County cases. If sentencing expectations were misrepresented to a defendant in Barry County and the documentation was concealed for three years, the question every defense attorney in Kalamazoo County should be asking right now is whether the same thing is happening to their client.

Christopher Elsworth’s Giglio exposure in Kalamazoo County Family Court is a different category but no less serious. Family court proceedings are not criminal prosecutions, but they involve representations to judges about facts that determine outcomes for children and families. An attorney who denied the existence of communications on the court record and to the AGC in a prior matter is an attorney whose representations in current family court proceedings carry a documented credibility risk. Judges presiding over matters in which Elsworth appears are entitled to know that risk exists. It is now documented and public.

The Sideways Move: How Michigan Manages Officials It Will Not Discipline

There is a pattern in how Michigan’s legal system handles officials with documented misconduct exposure that stops short of formal discipline. It does not fire them. It does not publicly sanction them. It moves them sideways. Away from the most visible cases. Away from the scrutiny that accumulates in criminal court. Into roles where the caseload is different, the oversight is lighter, and the paper trail starts fresh.

Judge Kirsten Nielsen Hartig is the most recent documented example. Clutch Justice reported on JTC Formal Complaint No. 109 against Hartig, with the master’s report filed June 9, 2026. Following the JTC proceedings, Hartig was moved off criminal cases. No public discipline. No formal removal. A sideways move that kept her on the bench, kept her licensed, and kept the formal record of accountability from ever fully materializing.

Elsworth’s trajectory follows the same pattern with striking precision. Nearly 20 years as a criminal APA in Barry County. Documented declinations in the Megan Moryc matter, where no recorded victim interview was conducted. Documented declination in the Richelle Spencer matter, where the failure to act deferred harm to a second victim in a different county. Denial of plea communications on the Barry County court record in December 2023. Denial of those same communications to the AGC. Michigan Supreme Court complaint filed December 2024 naming him and Judge Schipper. Move to Kalamazoo County in January 2025, one month later. Not criminal prosecution. Family court. Where the cases involve children and vulnerable families, the media coverage is lighter, and the connection to his Barry County criminal record is less obvious to the families appearing before him.

That is not a coincidence. That is a managed transition. The question is who managed it, who knew about the misconduct exposure that preceded it, and whether the Kalamazoo County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office conducted any inquiry into Elsworth’s Barry County record before placing him in a role handling matters involving children. Getting has not answered that question. The silence is its own answer.

Jeffrey Getting is an elected official. He is also a supervising attorney under Michigan’s Rules of Professional Conduct. MRPC 5.1 requires supervising attorneys to make reasonable efforts to ensure that attorneys under their supervision comply with the rules of professional conduct. That obligation is not satisfied by not asking questions. It requires affirmative steps to ensure compliance, particularly when information about a subordinate’s prior conduct is reasonably available.

The information about Elsworth and Norg is not obscure. Elsworth’s Barry County tenure, his documented declination in the Megan Moryc matter, his denial of communications on the court record and to the AGC, and the Michigan Supreme Court complaint that preceded his January 2025 move to Kalamazoo County are all part of the public record or documented in published Clutch Justice reporting. Norg’s connection to the Barry County plea agreement matter, his prior employment at Sharp and Associates, and the outstanding formal legal demand served at Getting’s office address are all documented. Getting has been contacted directly for comment. He has not responded.

The question Getting’s office needs to answer is the same one Barry County’s board could not answer: did you know, and if not, why not? Barry County’s board claimed it did not know about the misconduct in its court system while simultaneously paying outside counsel to defend it. Getting has the advantage of being able to answer before that dynamic repeats itself in Kalamazoo County. The formal legal demand served on Norg at his office address means Getting cannot claim he was not put on notice. The published investigative record means he cannot claim the information was not available. What he does with that information, or what he continues to not do with it, will itself become part of this investigation’s record.

There is one additional dimension to Getting’s institutional position that is worth stating plainly. Getting currently serves as President of the Prosecuting Attorneys Association of Michigan, the statewide body representing Michigan prosecutors. He has also served on the State Bar of Michigan’s Attorney Discipline Board, the body responsible for adjudicating professional misconduct proceedings against Michigan attorneys. That is the person who is employing two attorneys with documented records of denying the existence of communications on the court record and to the AGC, withholding records for three years, and generating a formal legal demand and pending civil remedy. The gap between Getting’s institutional positioning and what his office is currently permitting is not a minor administrative matter. It is a question about whether the leader of Michigan’s prosecutorial community meets the standard he is positioned to enforce on others.

The Broader Pattern: Barry County Officials Do Not Stay in Barry County

Christopher Elsworth and Benjamin Norg are not the only people connected to Barry County’s documented misconduct who have moved to other jurisdictions. This is a pattern Clutch Justice has identified across its Barry County investigation. When complaints accumulate, when JTC filings land, when Supreme Court complaints are filed, officials move. The record control infrastructure documented in Part 2 of this series ensures that the conduct that prompted the complaints does not follow them in any official form. The Barry County record stays in Barry County. The officials leave.

What they take with them is knowledge. Elsworth knows what happened in that Barry County plea negotiation. Norg knows what happened. Their files, their emails, their communications with each other and with other parties to that matter, contain the record that Barry County’s administrative infrastructure was designed to keep contained. A civil remedy proceeding, if necessary, can reach those records outside Barry County’s administrative control. That is the same principle identified in Part 2 of this series: the way to beat a court that controls its own record is to build the record somewhere else.

There is a strategic dimension to Elsworth and Norg’s presence in Kalamazoo County that is worth naming directly. When both attorneys were in Barry County, they were inside the same administrative infrastructure that controls the record, obstructs FOIA requests, manages what enters and exits the system, and has outside counsel on retainer to defend all of it. Any civil proceeding, any records demand, any complaint had to fight through that infrastructure on Barry County’s home terrain.

Kalamazoo County is different terrain entirely. A civil proceeding filed in Kalamazoo County is adjudicated by Kalamazoo County judges who have no institutional loyalty to Barry County’s administrative apparatus. Discovery in that proceeding is managed by Kalamazoo County court staff. FOIA requests to Kalamazoo County go through Kalamazoo County processes. Getting’s office has its own institutional interests that do not necessarily align with protecting Barry County’s record. The Kalamazoo Board of Commissioners has its own exposure now that it has been contacted and not responded. And Brady and Giglio create an independent pathway through active criminal defense proceedings that has nothing to do with the civil remedy and is not controllable by anyone in Barry County. Multiple vectors are now pulling toward the same documents from different directions. None of those vectors run through Barry County’s administrative infrastructure. That is a materially better position than the one that existed when both attorneys were still in Hastings.

One additional data point belongs in this record. This reporter has direct professional experience in Kalamazoo County’s legal community. During that time, Norg’s reputation among local defense attorneys was not a matter of uncertainty. He was known. The defense bar in the jurisdiction he is now prosecuting in was already aware of concerns about his conduct before the Barry County matter became public. That is not an allegation. It is a professional context that defense counsel in current Kalamazoo County cases should factor into their assessment of the Brady and Giglio implications documented above. The same principle applies to Elsworth in family court. His nearly 20-year record in Barry County, including documented declinations in domestic violence matters, a denial of communications on the court record, and a JTC-prompted departure from the bench in the same courthouse, is not unknown to practitioners who worked in or around Barry County during that period. Attorneys appearing against him in Kalamazoo County family court, and the families whose matters he is handling, are entitled to know that record exists and is now fully documented.

What Happens to People Who Do This Work in Michigan

One question worth asking before this article closes is whether situations like the one documented here, a journalist reporting on court and prosecutorial misconduct and being subsequently targeted by the same system through false reports and retaliatory proceedings, are documented elsewhere in Michigan. The honest answer is that they are not well documented. Not because they do not happen. Because the people they happen to typically lack the platform, the credentials, and the persistence to build a public record of what was done to them.

At a 2023 Michigan Supreme Court public hearing on judicial grievance confidentiality, witnesses testified directly to this dynamic. Retaliation against judicial grievants, they said, is real, often hard to prove, and prevents accountability information from reaching the people who need it. The court was debating whether to codify retaliation against a grievant as judicial misconduct. That debate reflects an institutional acknowledgment that the problem exists. It does not reflect a solution. Retaliation against people who report misconduct in Michigan’s court system remains difficult to prove, rarely formally documented, and systematically underreported.

This reporter reported on Barry County prosecutorial conduct. The system’s response was to accept false reports from a stalker as legitimate complaints and process them against the reporter rather than protecting her. A Macomb County PPO, Case No. 2026-000735-PH, documents part of what followed. The retaliatory probation case that came before Judge Doherty, who ultimately terminated it, is part of the same documented record. What makes this situation unusual is not that it happened. It is that there is a paper trail, a published record, a documented timeline, and a named journalist willing to put it in print under her own byline.

Most people in this situation do not have those things. They give up. The system counts on that. Barry County has counted on that for years across multiple complainants, multiple families, and multiple matters. The accumulated record documented in this series exists because the people in it did not give up, and because Clutch Justice built the record in public where Barry County’s administrative infrastructure cannot reach it.