I am a party to the proceeding described here, not an observer of it. This is a companion piece to an earlier article about the same matter, brought by opposing counsel and his firm against me. I am also the complainant in an open Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission matter concerning that same attorney, and what follows was submitted to that same open matter as a supplemental account rather than as a new filing.
Neither opposing counsel nor his client is named in this article, for the same reasons explained in the earlier piece. Both are identifiable to any reader who pulls the public docket.
The statements described below were made across hearings on August 3 and August 5, 2026, and in chambers at the end of the second of those two days. No transcript or chambers recording has been produced yet. I have requested preservation of the hearing audio. Until a transcript exists, what follows rests on my contemporaneous account as the party present in the room, and it should be read that way.
On August 3, 2026, opposing counsel told the court he had supplied information and documents about me to a man I have identified for more than a year as a stalker, and stated he was very positive that same man created domains carrying my name and my minor daughter’s name. Two days later, on August 5, after he finished his own testimony and I had spent the rest of that day testifying by videoconference, he told me, at the end of the day in the judge’s chambers, that his own wife, not his client, not his client’s mother, wanted to slash my tires. He offered it as a joke. I told him it was not funny. The judge agreed. I am not claiming he threatened to slash my tires himself, or that his wife has taken any step toward doing so. I am describing exactly what was said, in that room, at the end of a day I had spent testifying and unpacking traumatic material, and what it is reasonable to make of that.
On August 3, counsel again described the man he supplies my records to as very interested in me, the same word used to describe him earlier in this same hearing.
After a death threat and repeated visits to my door, I filed my own police report. On August 5, on the stand, counsel admitted he had personally called that same department afterward to give them his own account.
He stated he was very positive that man created domains using my name and my minor daughter’s name.
Later that same day, at the end of the day, in chambers, he told me his wife wanted to slash my tires and offered it as a joke. I immediately objected. The judge agreed it was not funny.
Two hours before the hearing began, he had filed a motion seeking sanctions against me tied to my earlier request for court-ordered protection for my children.
Counsel cross-examined me directly, at that same hearing, after making the admissions described above.
Both people I have identified in this reporting as having harassed my family, including the man he admitted supplying my records to, have at one point appeared on his own witness list in this case.
No transcript exists yet. I have requested preservation of the hearing audio, and this account is written as recollection until one is produced.
The Same Word, Twice in One Day
The earlier piece in this reporting was built around a single word. Counsel told a judge his client was interested in me, and that he had supplied the filings and records that fed that interest. Later that same hearing, on the same record, in the same case, the word came back. He was again very positive about what his client had done, this time describing domains carrying my name and the name of my daughter, who is a minor.
I am not going to relitigate what interest means here. That work is done, and it is linked below. What matters for this piece is narrower: the same attorney, on the same record, within hours of the first use, kept describing the same man’s attention to me in the same terms, and kept supplying him material regardless.
His client’s mother has a pending contempt proceeding against me. Her theory depends on attributing material from an anonymous or disputed Facebook page to me. I do not own, control, or post through that page, and I want to be direct about this: I would never willingly supply that page, or any other information, to either of them. In my own interactions with them, they have come across to me as sadistic and mentally unhinged, and nothing about how I have experienced them invites voluntary cooperation. I have challenged the absence of native files, metadata, provider records, device evidence, or a competent witness establishing that I operated it, and none of that has been produced.
A contempt motion built on an unauthenticated page is still a contempt motion. It still requires me to show up, answer it, and carry the cost of doing so, whether or not the underlying attribution ever holds up.
What Also Happened on Wednesday
After the man I have identified as a stalker threatened to kill me, and after counsel and his clients kept sending people to my door, I made a police report of my own. On August 5, on the stand, counsel admitted that he had personally called my local police department afterward, to explain, in his own characterization, what was going on between us. He did not go through any formal channel connecting police to this litigation. He called them himself, to give them his account of me after I had already gone to that same department about a threat on my life.
The day before, on August 4, a separate show cause proceeding brought by his client’s mother, built on the same Facebook page described above, had also been scheduled, and was adjourned because of my child’s injury.
In a chambers conversation after the hearings that day, counsel told me, in his own characterization, that the judge overseeing that Macomb matter was “ready to throw” me in jail. I have no independent way to confirm that characterization was accurate. I am reporting what he told me, not asserting that the judge described her own view of the matter that way. In that same conversation, he acknowledged that his client’s mother’s contempt theory, built on a protective order no longer in effect and screenshots from an account I have never owned or operated, probably would not survive given the false attribution problem.
The contempt theory described earlier in this piece is not something only I have challenged. Counsel representing the person pursuing it told me himself, in chambers, that it probably would not survive the false attribution problem. In chambers, the judge over the lawsuit separately and without prompting, raised the same possibility on her own, that someone else could be deliberately mimicking me, though I do not yet have a transcript to confirm the exact wording.
At the End of Day Two, in Chambers
Later that same day, after counsel had finished his own testimony and I had spent the rest of the day testifying, a discussion occurred at the end of the hearing in the judge’s chambers. During that discussion, counsel stated that his own wife, not the client’s mother and not anyone else connected to the case, wanted to slash my tires. He attempted to present it as a joke. I said immediately that it was not funny. The judge then agreed that it was not funny. She did not interrupt him before I objected. The sequence matters: he made the statement, I objected, and the judge agreed afterward.
I understood the statement as threatening because of what surrounded it, not because of the sentence alone. It came at the end of a day I had spent testifying by videoconference and unpacking traumatic material. Attending virtually did not make it easier. It was still exhausting. Testifying meant recounting almost a year of traumatic experiences while holding a precise timeline in my head, and watching, the entire time, for the hand grenades and twisted words that turn an honest answer into something it was never meant to be. That same day had begun, two hours before the hearing, with a motion asking the court to punish me again for having asked, months earlier, for protection for my children. It came two days after he told the court, on the record, that he had given my records to a man I have spent more than a year describing as dangerous to me and my family, and that he was very positive that same man had created domains carrying my name and my daughter’s name. It came against the backdrop of a cease and desist I had already sent over conduct affecting my child, and warnings I had already given him directly about that same man. None of those facts prove intent. Together, they are the context in which a comment about slashed tires stopped sounding like a joke to the person it was aimed at.
I am not claiming counsel personally threatened to slash my tires. I am not claiming his wife has attempted or intends to damage my vehicle. A statement that a spouse wanted to do something is not proof that she did, or that a criminal threat has been established. What I am reporting is narrower and precise: in a judge’s chambers, during active litigation in which he is my adversary’s counsel, he told me his wife wanted to slash my tires, and tried to characterize it as humor.
Tire slashing is not an abstract image in this case. Another person who has also had to deal with the man I have identified as a stalker told me directly, in person after leaving a court appearance of his own, that his tires had been slashed, and that he reported it to the prosecutor. He has separately described being ambushed after court on another occasion. I am not naming him, for the same reason I have not named other people in this reporting who did not choose to be part of it. I have not independently confirmed his report to the prosecutor beyond what he told me, and I am not asserting any connection between what happened to him and the statement made to me in chambers, which came from a different person entirely. What I can say is that a comment about slashed tires does not land the same way in a case where tire slashing has actually happened to someone connected to it as it would in a case where nothing like that had ever occurred to anyone.
The Rest of What Was Said That Day
The tire comment was not the only thing said to me that day that I found difficult to sit with. During the same proceedings, I was told, in substance, that I did not deserve protection, that my credentials and my work did not matter, and that I am not actually a professional. My investigative and forensic work on this matter was treated as though it counted for nothing.
That characterization landed on top of everything else already documented here and in the piece before it: an admission that my records had been handed to a man I have called a stalker for a year, repeated attempts to minimize what that meant, and something close to the oldest line there is for anyone who reports being targeted, that I brought this on myself by documenting it.
At one point in this litigation, both people I have identified in this reporting as having harassed my family, including the man counsel admitted supplying my records to, appeared on his own witness list.
During cross-examination that same day, counsel asked me more than once whether he himself had ever posted about me. He had not, and I have never said he did. The question was not really about whether he had posted. It let him spend time establishing something no one was disputing while the admission he had already put on the record, that he gave my information to a man he knew was harassing me, went unaddressed.
Counsel has had this documentation, including DMCA takedown records and Meta’s own verification records, since at least April, when I first fought the contempt motion built on this same attribution. He had it again when I filed with the Court of Appeals. He had it before the hearing described here, and he has had it since. During the same cross-examination, he pressed me directly, more than once, telling me I knew those screenshots were mine. I do not know that, because they are not.
I got loud. I told him I was tired of having my life disrupted over his clients’ false accusations, and I meant every word of it.
I was the one asked to answer for keeping a record of what happened to me and my children. The man and his mother were not, in that room, asked to answer for the harassment that made the record necessary in the first place. At one point, they were listed as his witnesses instead. That inversion, where the person who documents the harm is treated as the problem and the people the documentation is about are not, is the same logic behind telling anyone who reports being targeted that they invited it.
He said it like a joke. I did not laugh. Nobody in that room needed it explained to them why.
Clutch Justice courses teach the same document literacy this reporting is built on, how to read a docket, request a transcript, and build a record that holds up when a system tells you it doesn’t see a problem.
Explore the Courses ?What the Rules Already Say
Michigan Rule of Professional Conduct 4.4(a) prohibits a lawyer from using means that have no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden a third person. MRPC 8.4(b) reaches conduct involving dishonesty, fraud, deceit, misrepresentation, or a criminal act, where that conduct reflects adversely on a lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness to practice. MRPC 8.4(c) reaches conduct that is prejudicial to the administration of justice.
The chambers statement is not the only fact those rules would have to weigh. At the hearing two days after those admissions, counsel personally cross-examined me, in the same case where he had already put on the record that he supplied information to the man I have identified as a stalker and that he believed the same man created the domains carrying my name and my daughter’s name. I am not asserting that cross-examining an adverse party who is proceeding without counsel is improper on its own. It is what happened before and after it that a process built around these rules would have to consider together, not as isolated moments.
I am not a disciplinary body and I am not deciding here whether a statement made in chambers, offered as a joke, and immediately disclaimed as such meets any of those standards. That question belongs to the grievance process, and I have already put this account in front of it, as a supplement to the open matter concerning this same attorney rather than as a separate filing. What I can say is that the rules exist, they are not vague about what they are meant to reach, and a statement like this one is exactly the kind of fact a process built around those rules is supposed to be able to weigh.
A Separate Question: Can He Still Represent Her in Macomb
Counsel also represents his client’s mother in the separate Macomb County contempt matter described earlier in this piece, the one built on the disputed Facebook page. Michigan Rule of Professional Conduct 3.7(a) bars a lawyer from acting as advocate at a trial in which the lawyer is likely to be a necessary witness. Michigan’s version of that rule includes a subsection most jurisdictions do not have. MRPC 3.7(c) does not bar a lawyer from appearing as attorney of record in a case in which the lawyer is himself a party representing himself. That exception is very likely why counsel cross-examining me directly in this proceeding is not, on its own, a violation of that rule. He is a party here, representing himself.
The Macomb matter is different. There, he represents someone else, and that exception does not reach that far. His own admissions, that he supplied information about me to the man his client’s mother’s contempt theory requires treating as uninvolved, go directly to the same underlying conduct at issue in her case. Personally eliciting testimony about those same domains and that same man, in a separate proceeding where he is the one asking the questions rather than answering them, makes it harder to treat what he knows as background rather than something a factfinder in Macomb might need to hear from him directly.
Disqualification under this rule is not automatic. Michigan case law puts the burden on whoever raises it to show specifically how, and on what contested issue, the lawyer’s testimony would be necessary, and that the same fact cannot be established some other way, such as through the hearing record itself. No motion raising this question has been filed as of this writing. I am describing a real question that exists in the record now, not a ruling that has been made or one I am predicting.
Four People, One Statement, Four Different Rules
Five people were in that chambers discussion. One of them made the statement. The other four, a judge and three lawyers, each had a rule pointing at them the moment they heard it, independent of anything the others did or did not do.
Counsel who made the statement is bound by MRPC 4.4(a) and 8.4(b) and (c), covered above. The judge is bound by Michigan Code of Judicial Conduct 3(B)(3), which calls on her to take or initiate appropriate disciplinary measures against a lawyer for unprofessional conduct she becomes aware of. What counts as appropriate is not defined narrowly, and it does not necessarily mean a formal grievance filing. Counsel’s co-counsel, also a lawyer, sits under MRPC 8.3(a), which raises a separate question for any lawyer who witnessed what happened: whether it amounted to a violation raising a substantial question about another lawyer’s honesty, trustworthiness, or fitness, a judgment call the rule leaves to the lawyer who witnessed it, not an automatic trigger. My own counsel sits under that same question, independent of his role representing me in this matter.
MRPC 8.3 puts the question of another lawyer’s misconduct to the lawyers who witness it, not to the lawyer who commits it. Of the four professionals in that room, the only one that question was never put to is the one who made the statement.
I don’t know what side his co-counsel is on. I have no way of knowing whether he found the statement as unfunny as I did and said nothing, or didn’t think twice about it at all. I don’t expect anyone in that room to act on a rule that technically applies to them, and I really don’t expect a complaint from anyone but me. That is not to be construed as a swipe at any specific person. It is simply what I have come to expect from watching how these rules function in practice, and it is the same thing every other finding in this reporting has shown: the mechanism existing is not the same thing as the mechanism working.
The Same Gap, One Hearing Later
The earlier piece in this series found that Michigan’s false report statute, MCL 750.411a, only reaches a report made to police or another authorized government recipient. A statement made in a judge’s chambers is not a report to any of those recipients either. Whatever else it was, it is not something Michigan’s criminal law is built to reach on its own.
Michigan has separately solved a version of this problem before, just not for people in my position. Jurors who fear the parties they are required to sit near have a statutory compensation floor under MCL 600.1344, set by 2017 PA 51, and a separate employment protection provision under MCL 600.1348 that bars an employer from threatening, disciplining, or firing someone for jury service. No comparable mechanism exists for a self-represented civil litigant who has told the court, repeatedly and in writing, that she fears the people connected to the case against her, including, as of August 5, a statement from opposing counsel himself.
What I Would Change
I intend to run for office. Everything documented in this piece and the one before it has sharpened two specific positions I would push for, not abstractions, fixes tied directly to gaps this reporting has already found.
The first is about UPEPA itself. Michigan’s Uniform Public Expression Protection Act took effect March 24, 2026. Its transitional language is narrower than a simple filing-date cutoff might suggest: the act applies to a civil action filed, or a cause of action asserted in a civil action, on or after that date. That second clause matters. A case filed before the effective date is not automatically outside the law’s reach if a new cause of action is asserted in it after the law takes effect, through an amended pleading, for instance. I am not asserting here that this happened in my own case, or what the answer is. That is a question for the record, not for this article. What I am pointing to is a structural problem regardless of how my own case comes out: whether a person gets this protection can turn on a technical question of pleading timing that has nothing to do with whether the underlying litigation was actually aimed at silencing public participation. A law meant to screen out that kind of litigation should have included a look-back window, or qualifying criteria a pending case could be measured against, rather than leaving the answer to depend on exactly when and how a claim was reasserted.
The second is about how courts weigh the parties in front of them. Right now the question a court asks is largely procedural: whose lawsuit is this, and what does the filing party want. What gets less weight, if any, is what each side actually has documented, and what resources and power each side brought into the room before either of them said a word. An attorney suing a self-represented party is not the same contest as two represented parties with comparable means. In this matter, counsel repeatedly raised the fact that I do not have an attorney, as though it were a choice rather than a function of what I can afford. That complaint came from a place of privilege, from someone for whom hiring counsel was never a question at all. A motion built on an unauthenticated page carries the same procedural weight as one built on verified records, until someone with the time, money, and training to fight it proves otherwise. Judges should be required to weigh that imbalance directly, not as an afterthought, and not only after the cost of litigating it has already landed on the side with less power to begin with.
Neither fix would have stopped everything in this piece from happening. They would have changed what happened after.
What I Don’t Have an Answer For
I don’t know how to square a motion asking a court to punish someone for a months-old request to protect her children with anything other than pressure. I don’t know what to call it when that motion opens a day I spend testifying by videoconference and unpacking trauma, exhausting whether or not I was ever physically in the room, and the day closes with a joke about my tires. I am not asking this article to answer that question. I am putting the sequence on the record so that someone else can.
Whatever happens with the motion filed two hours before that hearing, whatever happens with a contempt theory built on a page nobody has been able to source, that chambers exchange is part of the record now too. I said it wasn’t funny. The judge agreed. The rest is not mine to decide.
The next procedural step in this matter is a reconvened discussion among the parties. I have told the court I do not want to be present for it. My counsel will appear in my place. It’s the first opportunity I’ve had to breathe in almost a year.
I have said before that writing this down is the only thing that has ever felt like it kept me safe. The court system has not done it. The police have not done it. If I do not write it down, no one will.
Is Rita Williams claiming opposing counsel threatened to slash her tires?
No. She is reporting that, in chambers, he told her his wife wanted to slash her tires and presented the statement as a joke. She is not claiming he personally threatened the act, or that any attempt has been made.
What did the judge do when the statement was made?
According to the author’s contemporaneous account, she immediately objected that the statement was not funny, and the judge agreed. No transcript has been produced yet to confirm additional detail, and the author has requested preservation of the hearing audio.
How is this connected to the earlier article about the same case?
Directly. Same case, the same week, same attorney. The phrase very interested was used again on the record to describe the same client, echoing the framing of the earlier hearing.
What Michigan rules could apply to a statement like this from an attorney?
MRPC 4.4(a) bars using means with no substantial purpose other than to embarrass, delay, or burden a third person. MRPC 8.4(b) reaches dishonesty, fraud, or a criminal act bearing on a lawyer’s fitness, and MRPC 8.4(c) reaches conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice. Whether this statement meets those standards is a question for the grievance process, not a finding this article makes.
Is Rita Williams planning to run for office?
Yes. She has said she intends to run, and this reporting reflects specific policy positions that experience has shaped, including changes to how Michigan’s UPEPA law applies and how courts weigh resource and power imbalances between litigants.
Civil action, case number and venue omitted by the author. Proceedings held August 3 and August 5, 2026.
Author’s AccountContemporaneous account of the August 3 and August 5, 2026 hearings and chambers discussions, by the author, a party present in the proceedings. Preservation of hearing audio has been requested and has not yet been produced.
Prior ReportingWilliams, Rita. “He Said His Client Was ‘Interested.’ My Skin Crawled.” Clutch Justice, August 3, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/03/he-said-his-client-was-interested/.
Rules and StatutesMichigan Rules of Professional Conduct 4.4, Respect for Rights of Third Persons, 8.3, Reporting Professional Misconduct, 3.7, Lawyer as Witness, and 8.4, Misconduct.
Michigan Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 3(B)(3).
Michigan Compiled Laws 750.411a, false report of crime.
Michigan Uniform Public Expression Protection Act, Michigan Compiled Laws 691.1851 et seq., 2025 PA 52, effective March 24, 2026.
Michigan Compiled Laws 600.1344, juror compensation floors, set by 2017 PA 51, and Michigan Compiled Laws 600.1348, juror employment protection.
Bluebook: Williams, Rita. His Wife Wanted to Slash My Tires. He Called It a Joke, Clutch Justice (Aug. 7, 2026), https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/07/his-wife-wanted-to-slash-my-tires/.
APA 7: Williams, R. (2026, August 7). His wife wanted to slash my tires. He called it a joke. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/07/his-wife-wanted-to-slash-my-tires/
MLA 9: Williams, Rita. “His Wife Wanted to Slash My Tires. He Called It a Joke.” Clutch Justice, 7 Aug. 2026, clutchjustice.com/2026/08/07/his-wife-wanted-to-slash-my-tires/.
Chicago: Williams, Rita. “His Wife Wanted to Slash My Tires. He Called It a Joke.” Clutch Justice, August 7, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/07/his-wife-wanted-to-slash-my-tires/.
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