Clutch Exclusive · 57th District Court
The original investigation reviewed a body of private workplace messages and declined to publish or quote them, because the people in them were not public figures. One of those people has now published them herself.
Direct Answer
Rebecca “Bex” Holzgen, a former employee at Thomas Siver’s Grand Rapids law office, published her own account of working there in an Allegan County community Facebook group, along with the February 2023 messages behind it, and authorized Clutch Justice to use both. Clutch Justice had reviewed that body of communications for its August 17 investigation and withheld it, because the participants were not public figures and identifying them was unnecessary. Holzgen removed that constraint as to herself. The other participants remain unnamed here.
After the original investigation published, the Siver campaign posted to multiple Allegan County community Facebook groups under the heading “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT,” telling voters that Siver has never been arrested for violating any law. Those campaign posts were already circulating before Holzgen published her account late on the evening of August 17. Clutch Justice did not report an arrest. It reported a November 2023 welfare check, documented on police body-camera footage produced through a public records request, that ended in protective custody and transport for a mental-health evaluation. The campaign’s post does not address the March 2023 Kent County contract terminations, which were the investigation’s lead finding.
Key Points
Holzgen published her account and the underlying February 2023 messages publicly under her own name and gave Clutch Justice written permission to use them. The reason the August 17 article withheld the material, protection of people who are not public figures, no longer applies to her.
Messages Holzgen published show her reporting a urinary tract infection and a doctor visit, being told the absence would be treated as a no call no show and written up, being told a second write-up would follow for discussing the matter with a coworker, and resigning by email the next morning with a resignation letter attached.
Holzgen’s screenshots document her asking why deposited pay was being withdrawn and Siver responding that her compensation was being recalculated and that a final check depended on specified exit steps. Holzgen states that deposits to her account and her father’s were reversed and that a partial amount was later returned. Michigan’s wage act generally bars deductions from wages without written employee consent. The absence of a wage complaint or lawsuit means no agency or court issued a legal determination; it does not erase the documented exchange.
The February 2023 workplace collapse Holzgen describes preceded Kent County’s March 8, 2023 for-cause termination of Siver’s two indigent defense contracts by roughly three weeks. The county’s stated grounds included repeated late appearances and at least two total non-appearances that left clients without counsel.
Michigan Attorney Discipline Board annual reports list Siver on the Kent County hearing-panel roster from 2019 through 2024, including during the 2023 workplace events. Former employees told Clutch Justice that Siver used his place inside the attorney-discipline system as a buffer: it made them feel there was nowhere safe to report alleged misconduct. One former worker, whose identity Clutch Justice is withholding, says Siver also threatened to grieve him.
The campaign distributed its post to multiple Allegan County groups before Holzgen gave her public account late on August 17. The post denies an arrest, describes circulating rumors and innuendo, and asks voters not to accept the governor’s appointee. It does not engage the county termination letter, the four grounds the county gave, or the denied motion to seal. Clutch Justice gave the campaign a week to respond before publication and received no reply.
Because of the full record that has now come to light, Clutch Justice endorses Judge Christopher E. Burnett for the 57th District Court. The endorsement does not withdraw Clutch’s prior criticism of Burnett. It reflects the contrast between how the two candidates have responded to scrutiny and the record now available to voters.
Quick FAQs
Why publish now what was withheld a day ago?
Because the reason for withholding was source protection, not doubt about the material. When the participant publishes her own messages under her own name and consents to their use, protecting her from identification is no longer possible or requested. That reasoning extends only to her.
Is a workplace dispute relevant to a judicial election?
A private employment disagreement, standing alone, would not be. What makes this record relevant is that it describes the operation of a law office during the same window in which a county terminated that office’s public contracts for missed court appearances, and the candidate is asking to preside over the docket in question.
Has any of this been adjudicated?
No formal employment or discipline proceeding located by Clutch Justice has produced a ruling on these events. That is different from saying the account is unsupported. Holzgen supplied an extensive collection of contemporaneous workplace messages and emails, and the article distinguishes what those communications show from the legal conclusions an agency or court would have authority to make.
Was Siver on the Attorney Grievance Commission?
The official records reviewed do not show that. They show him on the Attorney Discipline Board’s Kent County hearing-panel roster. The distinction matters: the Attorney Grievance Commission investigates and prosecutes allegations of lawyer misconduct, while three-lawyer Attorney Discipline Board panels hear formal cases and decide whether misconduct occurred and what public discipline to impose.
Is the campaign wrong about the arrest?
The campaign is correct that Siver was not arrested for violating a law. Clutch Justice never said otherwise, and the original article said the opposite in explicit terms. The two statements are compatible, which is why the post functions as a denial rather than a rebuttal.
What Changed, and Why It Changed
The August 17 investigation included a sourcing disclosure that said, in plain terms, that Clutch Justice was not publishing the workplace messages, not quoting them, and not naming the individuals in them. It described their contents generally and stopped there. The reason given was that the staff members were not public figures and identifying them served no reporting purpose.
That decision belonged to Clutch Justice, but the interest it protected belonged to them. Holzgen has now published her own account in an Allegan County community Facebook group, under her own name, with the messages attached, and she has authorized Clutch Justice to use both. A person who is not a public figure can decide to enter the record. When she does, the protection built around her stops being protection and starts being an obstacle to her own account.
Holzgen consented to being named and to the use of the communications she published. She cannot consent on behalf of anyone else. The other participants in those messages, including coworkers and a family member, are described here by role only. Contact information visible in her screenshots, including a telephone number belonging to a person who appears to have been contacting the office, is not reproduced.
Clutch Justice is reproducing the substance of these communications in prose rather than as images, for that reason. Readers who want the primary material can view Holzgen’s own public post.
February 14, 2023
The sequence is short and it is documented in the participants’ own words. Holzgen had a vacation booked and paid for before she was hired, disclosed at her interview, and agreed to. She took it in early February. She came back in pain, saw a doctor by telehealth, and was diagnosed with a urinary tract infection.
She messaged Siver that morning to say she would not be in and would see her doctor, and that she would return the next day. Roughly half an hour later he told her people were calling for her. She said she would return the calls the following day and that she was in severe pain. He replied that it was a first no call no show and that he would write it up that day.
She pushed back, pointing out that she had in fact called and that she had just told him she was unwell. His answer was that the matter would not be discussed there and that it was a first write-up. He then forwarded a message from someone asking whether the office had been closed the previous day, and said clients were being lost. She wrote that she could not control being sick.
His reply reframed the illness as a work ethic problem. He said he needed reliable employees, that he had been twenty five once, and that he understood not wanting to come to work after a big check and a long vacation. She offered the telehealth note. She reminded him he had recently called her his most reliable employee and told her she did eighty percent of the work. By mid-morning he told her a second write-up was coming, this one for discussing the conversation with a coworker.
An employee reported an illness before the start of the workday and was told within thirty minutes that the absence would be documented as a failure to report. The second write-up was not for the absence. It was for telling a colleague about the first one.
That afternoon Siver opened a group message with five staff members. He told them he was going into the hospital with walking pneumonia and Covid and that they should run the office. The messages that follow are profane and directed at the group. He wrote that nobody showed up for work and that they could figure out how to run the place. In one message he grouped jet lag, what he called bullshit UTIs, uncollected debt, and money not coming in, and told the group they could kiss his ass. When one employee responded that this was incredibly adult, he told her to leave and not come back.
Later messages say he was being checked in at Butterworth and then admitted. In the last of them he said he would take care of his own docket, told each employee to decide whether they wanted the job, and closed by saying that if they did not like it, they would leave as friends.
Holzgen resigned the next morning. Her email, timestamped 10:59 a.m. on February 15, 2023, attached her resignation letter and copies of the previous day’s messages, and went to Siver and to the office’s human resources contact. Five minutes later he replied that nothing hostile had happened and that she had quit because she was twenty five, got a large bonus, and decided to call in for jet lag. Her response that afternoon said she had a doctor’s note, that money does not buy loyalty, and that her keys and the note were on his chair and the laptop was on her desk.
The screenshots establish the sequence, timing, and participants’ own words: Holzgen reported illness before work, Siver announced two write-ups, the office group exchange followed, and Holzgen resigned the next morning. Whether the announced write-ups were later placed in a personnel file is a separate administrative detail; their threatened use and the surrounding communications are preserved in the record.
A court or agency would decide whether particular conduct violated employment law. Voters do not need to wait for a lawsuit to evaluate the documented way a supervising attorney communicated with subordinate staff, responded to illness, and handled the office during this period.
The illness, the write-ups, and the group message
Holzgen reports a urinary tract infection and a doctor visit. Siver characterizes the absence as a no call no show and says he will document it, then adds a second write-up for her discussing it with a coworker. That afternoon he tells five staff members by group message that he is being hospitalized and that they should figure out how to run the office, in a series of profane messages.
Siver announced both write-ups in the preserved exchange. Whether the office later created or retained separate personnel forms does not change what employees were told in real time.
Resignation, and the reply five minutes later
At 10:59 a.m. Holzgen emails her resignation letter and copies of the prior day’s messages to Siver and the office human resources contact. At 11:04 a.m. Siver replies that nothing hostile occurred and attributes her resignation to her age, a bonus, and jet lag. Holzgen states that her father, who also worked at the office, resigned the same day.
Holzgen documents her own resignation and states that her father resigned the same day. The article attributes the second resignation to her rather than presenting it as a separate public record.
The payroll reversal and the exit conditions
Holzgen asks why her paycheck is being withdrawn. Siver responds that walking out of a professional job forfeits paid vacation for the prior week, that her numbers are being recalculated, and that she will receive a final check when she returns equipment, meets with human resources, and completes an exit interview. She asks what equipment, notes he has the laptop, and later declines an exit interview until the human resources representative returns.
The exchange documents Holzgen asking why deposited pay was being withdrawn and Siver stating his reasons and conditions for a final check. Bank and payroll records would establish exact amounts, but the wage dispute itself is documented.
Kent County terminates two contracts for cause
Roughly three weeks after the office sequence above, Kent County’s indigent defense administrator terminates Siver’s felony and misdemeanor contracts for cause, effective immediately, citing services not completed on time, repeated late court appearances, at least two total non-appearances that left clients without counsel, missing monthly reconciliations, and complaints about professionalism and language directed at clients.
The two records are close in time and consistent in subject matter. That is not proof that they concern the same cases, the same dates, or the same underlying cause, and this article does not treat it as such.
The record goes public, and the campaign responds
Clutch Justice publishes the investigation on August 17, 2026, having given the campaign a week to respond and received no reply. The Siver campaign then distributes posts to multiple Allegan County community Facebook groups denying that Siver has ever been arrested and describing rumors circulating in the race. Late that evening, after the campaign posts were already circulating, Holzgen publishes her own account and the underlying messages.
The campaign has still not addressed the county termination letter, its four stated grounds, or the denied motion to seal.
This reporting required public-record requests, court files, source protection, document review, and follow-up work that does not end when an article publishes. Clutch remains free to read because Clutch Confidential members help pay for the work behind it. Join for $10 a month to sustain deeper investigations and support a newsroom that keeps digging when institutions would prefer silence.
Join Clutch Confidential · $10/month ?The Paycheck Is the Part With a Statute Attached
Most of what Holzgen describes is conduct, and conduct of that kind has no enforcement mechanism outside an employment lawsuit nobody filed. One piece is different. She states that pay already deposited into her account and her father’s was reversed after they resigned, and that a portion was later returned.
Holzgen’s post puts it directly, writing that he “stole money from me and my disabled father.”
Rebecca Holzgen, public Facebook post
That is her characterization, and theft is a criminal accusation that no authority has evaluated. Set the word aside and look at what the messages document, which is that Siver told her the final check depended on returning equipment, meeting with human resources, and sitting for an exit interview, and that vacation pay for the prior week was being recalculated because she had walked out.
Michigan’s Payment of Wages and Fringe Benefits Act, 1978 PA 390, addresses both halves of that. Under MCL 408.477, an employer may not deduct from an employee’s wages, directly or indirectly, except for deductions required or expressly permitted by law or a collective bargaining agreement, without the full, free, and written consent of the employee, obtained without intimidation or fear of discharge. Under MCL 408.474, an employer may not withhold compensation due as a fringe benefit payable at a termination date unless the withholding is agreed to by written contract or by a signed statement given with the employee’s full and free consent. Wages owed at separation are payable on the regularly scheduled payday for the period in which the separation occurs.
Michigan does not require any employer to offer paid vacation. Where no written policy or contract creates the benefit, there is nothing at termination to withhold, and an employer recalculating an unearned advance is not the same as an employer taking wages. Clutch Justice has not reviewed Siver Law’s written pay policy, and without it, no conclusion about the vacation recalculation is available.
The deposited pay is a narrower question. Money already paid and then reversed is a deduction in substance whatever it is called in a payroll system, and section 477 conditions deductions on written consent rather than on the employer’s view of what the employee deserved. Whether written consent existed here is not something the public record answers.
An Employment Lawyer Responds
Robert Anthony Alvarez, a Michigan attorney whose practice includes employment law, wage-and-hour litigation, discrimination, retaliation, and civil-rights cases, responded publicly beneath Holzgen’s post. Alvarez has practiced for more than twenty years. His reaction was not limited to the reversed deposit.
“Employment lawyer here with over 20 years experience, SO MUCH going on in this post that I hope you spoke to someone during that time to explore possible claims for everything from wage theft to discrimination.”
Robert Anthony Alvarez, comment on Rebecca Holzgen’s public Facebook post
Alvarez added that when an employer is swearing at an employee, it can be a warning that other workplace conduct may warrant legal review. He specifically identified unpaid overtime and withheld wages as issues employees should bring to an employment lawyer, and encouraged anyone in a similar situation to seek a consultation.
Alvarez was reacting to Holzgen’s public account, not announcing that he had reviewed a personnel file, payroll records, medical documentation, or the employer’s written policies. His comment identifies potential areas for legal evaluation. It is not a finding that wage theft, discrimination, retaliation, or any other violation occurred.
The act routes disputes like this to the Wage and Hour Division within the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity, which investigates complaints and issues determinations. No such complaint appears in any record reviewed for this article, and the filing window on a February 2023 payroll event closed long ago. That procedural history means no agency issued a determination. It does not make the preserved payroll exchange less real. A twenty five year old employee who had already found another job documented the dispute but did not turn it into a formal case.
Her Account Beyond the Message Thread
The February exchange is only one part of the material Holzgen supplied. Her public account was accompanied by an extensive collection of screenshots, including workplace messages and emails spanning more than the single day described above. The screenshots document substantial portions of her account in the participants’ own words, while her narrative supplies the workplace context and describes events that are not always captured in a single exchange. Her account is therefore not a story offered without documentation; it is a firsthand account supported by a significant contemporaneous record.
She writes that she was sorting through well over two hundred criminal cases across several counties, that clients called about matters the office had no record of, and that when she asked Siver about those clients he did not know who they were or what was happening in their cases. She writes that he took money from clients and then did no work, and that he cared about money rather than helping people. She describes outbursts involving thrown objects, shouting, and slammed doors, and a nickname he gave her that she found demeaning. She states that after the illness he told others in the office that she had been promiscuous on vacation and that this explained the infection.
In an email she dates to July 2023, sent after she says Siver left a voicemail asking her to return, she declines and sets out further accounts. She writes that she was told he had said the only reason he had not slept with any of his clerks was that he did not want to disrupt the office dynamic. She writes that he claimed to have paid off her former school district so that she could receive a diploma rather than a general equivalency credential, and she states that this claim was false.
Holzgen supplied far more than a summary of what she remembers. The screenshots preserve workplace conversations, the illness and write-up exchange, group messages, her resignation, Siver’s response, the payroll dispute, and later communications. They provide a contemporaneous framework for the office conditions she describes, including the language used toward employees and the conflict surrounding her departure.
Not every workplace event produces its own screenshot, and the absence of a one-to-one message for every observation does not make the larger account undocumented. The caseload, client interactions, outbursts, nickname, and post-illness remarks are Holzgen’s firsthand account placed alongside the extensive communications she preserved. The alleged remark about clerks is identified separately because it was relayed to her by another person whom Clutch Justice has not interviewed. The school-district episode concerns a statement Holzgen says Siver made; her account is that the claimed payment never occurred.
The screenshot record also sits beside a government record from the same period. Kent County’s March 8, 2023 letter gave, among its grounds, complaints the county had received about professionalism and about the language Siver used in front of and directed at clients. Holzgen’s preserved messages document language directed at staff, while her broader account describes the office environment around it. The county letter concerns clients rather than employees and does not establish that the two records describe the same incidents, but the records are consistent in subject matter.
The Discipline-System Role Employees Could See
There was another power relationship in the office that does not appear in the February message thread. Michigan Attorney Discipline Board annual reports list Thomas D. Siver on the Kent County hearing-panel roster in every year from 2019 through 2024. That includes 2023, when the workplace events described in this article occurred. In 2019, Siver served on a three-lawyer panel that ordered another West Michigan lawyer disbarred.
The institutional name matters. Siver was not, on the record reviewed, a member of the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission. The Commission is the investigative and prosecutorial arm of the Michigan Supreme Court for allegations of attorney misconduct. After the Commission authorizes a formal complaint, the Attorney Discipline Board assigns the matter to a three-lawyer volunteer hearing panel. That panel can dismiss the complaint or impose public discipline, including reprimand, suspension, or disbarment.
Former employees told Clutch Justice that Siver used his position inside the attorney-discipline system as a buffer while treating employees poorly: because he sat on panels that judged allegations of lawyer misconduct, they felt there was nowhere safe to take allegations about him. A second former Siver employee, whose identity is known to Clutch Justice but is withheld here, described that fear in messages reviewed by the publication. The source says Siver demanded repayment of an off-the-books bonus connected to work for a client and threatened to file a grievance against him if he refused. He identifies himself as a W-2 employee, says some of his compensation was paid in cash, and says he was intimidated and threatened. He explains that this fear was why he did not come forward at the time.
Former employees say Siver used the panel role as a buffer. One says Siver threatened to use the grievance process against him while Siver himself sat on the roster of lawyers trusted to hear formal attorney-discipline cases. To that employee, the overlap made the discipline system look less like a place to seek protection and more like a system in which his employer already held standing.
The same former employee later described why his fear extended beyond professional retaliation. He indicated that he would speak privately with the Attorney Grievance Commission, provided the risk of reprisals was taken seriously. In the preserved exchange, he attributed two alleged threats to a secretary who worked in the office: that Siver had spoken about arranging the death of another woman and about damaging the former employee’s vehicle by putting sugar in its gas tank.
The source said the secretary was prepared to testify about the statements and that the woman who was allegedly threatened was afraid of Siver. Clutch Justice is withholding both women’s names. The source expressly said the alleged target’s identity should not be disclosed without her permission.
That perception is relevant even though it is not proof of institutional control. A hearing-panel member does not decide whether the Attorney Grievance Commission opens an investigation or files a complaint, and the records reviewed do not establish that Siver could select a panel, influence Commission staff, or participate in any matter involving himself. They also do not establish that he sought or retained the panel position in order to deter employees from reporting him.
The messages establish what the former employee told Clutch Justice: that he experienced Siver’s alleged demand and threatened grievance as intimidation, and that fear contributed to his silence. The Attorney Discipline Board’s reports independently establish Siver’s panel-roster status during the same period.
The later message also documents the source reporting the alleged threat to put sugar in his gas tank and relaying the secretary’s account of a threat against another woman. The source did not claim to have personally heard Siver make those statements; he identified the secretary as the witness and said she was prepared to testify. Clutch Justice has not interviewed either woman or reviewed a police report concerning the alleged threats. They are published here as attributed accounts because they explain the source’s stated fear of reprisals, not as a criminal finding.
The distinction does not make the overlap meaningless. An employee does not need a technically correct understanding of disciplinary jurisdiction to be deterred. If a supervising lawyer threatens to grieve a subordinate while appearing on the public roster of the body that adjudicates formal grievances, the subordinate may perceive the reporting channel as compromised even when the lawyer has no formal control over intake. The documented fact is the role. The allegation from former employees is that Siver deliberately used that role as a buffer. The record reviewed does not independently establish his motive, so the article attributes that claim to the sources rather than adopting it as a finding.
These workplace accounts are especially troubling in light of another documented event: in December 2025, only months before the 2026 judicial race, Siver moved to seal his own divorce court file. The court denied that request on January 14, 2026.
The motion to seal does not corroborate any former employee’s account, establish what Siver wanted shielded, or prove that the request was connected to his candidacy. It does sharpen the transparency question. A candidate seeking judicial power had recently asked a court to remove part of his own history from public view, and voters are now learning from former employees about conduct they say they were once too intimidated to report.
The Campaign Answered a Question Nobody Asked
After the August 17 investigation published, the Siver campaign distributed a post to multiple Allegan County community Facebook groups under the heading “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT.” The campaign posts were already circulating before Holzgen published her account late that evening. The post says campaigns get ugly, describes rumors circulating that Siver was recently arrested, and states that he has “NEVER been arrested for any violation of any law.” It invites anyone hearing the rumor to ask for the arrest record, notes that such records are public, and says that if the record existed it could easily be produced.
All of that is true. It is also a response to something Clutch Justice did not publish.
Claim: Siver has never been arrested for violating any law
Accurate, and consistent with the reporting. Clutch Justice reported a November 14, 2023 welfare check captured on Wyoming Police body-camera footage produced through a public records request, in which officers took Siver into custody and transported him for a mental-health evaluation. Protective custody under Michigan’s Mental Health Code is civil in nature and is not a criminal arrest. The article stated in its own text that the footage does not establish a diagnosis, an evaluation result, treatment, or a criminal charge.
Custody and arrest are different legal events. A denial of the second is not a response to reporting about the first.
Claim: rumors and innuendo are circulating in the race
Rumors may well be circulating. The reporting was not built on them. Its sources were a county’s own termination letter obtained through a records request, police body-camera footage produced under FOIA, a sworn 2015 affidavit filed in Allegan County Circuit Court, and public registers of actions from Ottawa County. Every document was generated by an institution performing an official function.
A rumor is a claim without a document behind it. The remedy for a rumor is a document, which is what the reporting consisted of.
Claim: the campaign will set the record straight and provide truth
The post does not mention the March 8, 2023 Kent County termination of two indigent defense contracts for cause, or any of the four grounds the county stated, including at least two total non-appearances that left clients without counsel. It does not mention the December 2025 motion to seal his own divorce file or the court’s January 14, 2026 denial of it. Clutch Justice gave the campaign one week to respond before publishing and received no reply.
Three documents would materially change the public picture: the sealing motion itself, any Kent County record of whether the threatened State Bar referral was made, and the campaign committee’s filed statements or reporting waiver.
Claim: voters should not accept the governor’s hand-picked selection
Factually, Governor Gretchen Whitmer appointed Christopher E. Burnett to the 57th District Court on July 21, 2025, to fill the vacancy created by Judge William Baillargeon’s retirement. Burnett’s term began August 4, 2025 and expires at noon on January 1, 2027, with the November 2026 election determining who holds the seat for a full term. Filling a mid-term judicial vacancy by gubernatorial appointment is the ordinary constitutional mechanism in Michigan, not an irregularity, and Michigan district judgeships are elected on a nonpartisan basis.
The post also states that Siver has the exclusive support of a Right to Life political action committee. Clutch Justice has not independently verified that endorsement and takes no position on it.
There is a reason denials of unmade claims are worth noticing during an election. A campaign that answers the loudest thing in the air rather than the documented thing on the page is telling voters which question it prefers. The rumor is easier to beat, because it is false. The termination letter is harder, because it is a county’s own account of its own decision, in writing, with copies to corporate counsel and purchasing.
Every institution in this story did its job in the narrow sense. Kent County documented why it ended a contract. A police department recorded and produced footage. A court denied a motion and made a clerk write it down. An employer’s own messages preserved themselves.
What no institution did was put any of it in front of a voter. That work fell to a twenty five year old former employee with screenshots and to a records request, which is not a system.
What Fixing This Would Actually Require
The structural gap here is narrow enough to close, and Michigan already owns the vehicle.
Every judicial candidate in Michigan files an affidavit of identity, and Michigan enforces that document without mercy. The Court of Appeals confirmed as much this month, keeping a sitting judge off the November ballot over strict compliance with affidavit requirements. The affidavit asks a candidate to affirm qualifications and campaign finance compliance. It does not ask whether a unit of government has terminated the candidate’s contract for legal services for cause, and it does not ask whether the candidate has been the subject of a documented performance termination by a court-adjacent program.
That is the asymmetry worth naming. Michigan will disqualify a judicial candidate over the form of a document and will not ask that document a single question about how the candidate performed the last public legal work they were paid to do.
First, amend the judicial candidate affidavit to require disclosure of any contract for legal services with a governmental unit terminated for cause within the preceding ten years, with the terminating body and date. This is a one-line addition to a form that already exists, already carries a certification, and is already strictly enforced.
Second, direct counties administering indigent defense contracts to publish for-cause terminations proactively rather than on request. A county that ends a public contract over missed court appearances has created a public performance record about a lawyer paid with public money, and retrieving it should not require knowing it exists.
Third, have the State Court Administrative Office maintain a single public page per judicial race listing each candidate’s bar number, discipline history, and any disclosed government contract terminations. Not commentary, not a rating. A page.
None of this screens anyone out. All three changes are disclosure, not disqualification, which is the only version of this that survives contact with a nonpartisan judicial election and with the reasonable objection that unelected bodies should not be filtering ballots. Voters would still decide. They would simply decide with the same information the county already had in March 2023.
Clutch Endorses Christopher Burnett
This section states the publication’s opinion. It is separate from the factual findings and sourced allegations reported above.
Because of everything that has now come to light, Clutch Justice endorses Christopher E. Burnett for Allegan County’s 57th District Court.
This is not an endorsement built on access, agreement, or an absence of criticism. Clutch has criticized Burnett in the past and has published reporting that subjected his record to scrutiny. Burnett took that scrutiny in stride. Rather than attacking the publication or treating examination of his record as illegitimate, he commended Clutch for having “dug deep.” That response matters. A judge who can face an adversarial press without trying to discredit the press is demonstrating respect for free speech, public scrutiny, and the role independent reporting plays in judicial accountability.
Colleagues describe Burnett to Clutch Justice as a “good guy” who wants to do the “right thing” for the community. Those descriptions are character assessments, not substitutes for a record. The more consequential evidence is how Burnett behaved when the scrutiny was directed at him: he did not demand immunity from criticism. He acknowledged the work behind it.
As a whistleblower who was retaliated against for bringing sham plea deals and Brady/Giglio violations to light, I feel better having someone like Chris Burnett at the helm. I know what it costs when people inside the justice system treat scrutiny as a threat. His willingness to accept criticism, respect the work behind it, and keep serving the community gives me greater confidence in his temperament on the bench.
Rita Williams, founder of Clutch Justice
One Allegan County voter placed the race within a broader transition on the county bench. Emily W. Jipp began serving on the 48th Circuit Court in January 2025, and Burnett joined the 57th District Court later that year. The voter’s assessment is political opinion, not a finding about any judge:
“As new judges like Emily Jipp and Chris Burnett arrive on the Allegan County bench, people need to be especially mindful about their vote to prevent judges who will behave like Marge Bakker from staying on the bench. The clock is ticking because she’s getting older and she’ll be on the way out the door soon. Good judges are coming in. Allegan has really needed this.”
Allegan County voter, identity withheld
Judges wield public power. They should understand that criticism, investigation, and a free press are not personal attacks to suppress but features of the system they are sworn to protect. Burnett’s willingness to take criticism in stride does not erase the criticism. It shows the temperament to receive it.
That is a quality this publication has tested directly, and it is a quality the bench needs more of.
An endorsement is not an instruction to stop asking questions. Voters should read the records discussed in this investigation, review Clutch’s prior coverage of Burnett, examine both candidates’ experience and public claims, and reach their own informed conclusion. Burnett’s campaign materials are available at VoteJudgeBurnett.com.
Where This Stands
Holzgen’s account is one person’s account. It is now attached to her name, which is worth something and is not worth everything. It has not been tested, contradicted, or adjudicated, and Siver has not answered it or anything else Clutch Justice has asked him about.
The general election is in November. Clutch Justice has requests pending with Kent County and with the Ottawa County court, and the invitation to the campaign remains open on every subject raised in the original investigation and in this one. Any response received will be published in full.
The documents were always there. The only thing that changed this week is that someone who lived inside them decided the protection was not worth the silence.
The communications described here were published publicly by Rebecca Holzgen, a participant in them, who authorized Clutch Justice to use them and to name her. Her extensive screenshots are contemporaneous primary evidence of what the participants wrote to one another. They are not government records and do not constitute a legal ruling, but their private origin does not diminish their value as direct evidence of the workplace exchanges. Clutch Justice has reproduced their substance in prose and used short quotations to protect unrelated private information.
Other participants are described by role and are not named. A minor child referenced in related court filings is not identified, and no detail about that child appears here. Contact information visible in the published screenshots has not been reproduced.
A second former employee provided an account in messages reviewed by Clutch Justice. His identity is known to the publication but is withheld at the editor’s direction. The article attributes his allegations to him by role, separates them from the independently verified Attorney Discipline Board roster, and does not publish identifying details visible in the source material. Two women named in a later message about alleged threats are also withheld; the source expressly conditioned identification of one of them on her permission.
Clutch Justice’s endorsement of Christopher E. Burnett is an editorial judgment, not a reported finding. It does not retract or amend the publication’s prior critical coverage of Burnett, which remains part of the record voters are encouraged to review.
Clutch Justice requested comment from the Siver campaign one week before publishing the August 17 investigation and received no response. A further request covering the matters in this article has been sent. Nothing in this article establishes a violation of law, a professional conduct violation, or a judicial fitness determination. Michigan Attorney Discipline Board public records show no discipline associated with bar number P69751.
Sources
SourceRebecca Holzgen, public Facebook post to an Allegan County community group, accompanied by an extensive collection of workplace message and email screenshots spanning the February 2023 illness, group exchange, resignation, payroll dispute, and later communications. Published by the source and used with her written permission.
CommentRobert Anthony Alvarez, public comment on Rebecca Holzgen’s Facebook post, August 18, 2026; screenshot reviewed by Clutch Justice.
ProfessionalAvanti Law Group, Robert Anthony Alvarez attorney biography, confirming more than twenty years of employment, wage, discrimination, retaliation, and civil-rights litigation.
SourceFacebook Messenger exchanges between Rebecca Holzgen and Thomas Siver, February 14, 2023; group message thread created by Thomas Siver, February 14, 2023; email thread between Rebecca Holzgen, Thomas Siver, and the office human resources contact, February 15, 2023; email dated by the source to July 2023.
CampaignSiver For Judge, “SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT,” public post distributed to multiple Allegan County community Facebook groups, August 2026.
ClutchRita Williams, Kent County Terminated Thomas Siver’s Indigent Defense Contracts for Cause. He Is Now on the Ballot for District Judge., Clutch Justice, August 17, 2026.
PrimaryCounty of Kent, Notice of Contract Termination, letter to Thomas Siver, March 8, 2023. Obtained by Clutch Justice.
FOIAWyoming Police Department, body-camera recording of November 14, 2023 welfare check, produced in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
ImageWyoming Police body-camera still, visibly labeled “Welfare Check” and dated 2023-11-14.
LawPayment of Wages and Fringe Benefits Act, 1978 PA 390, MCL 408.471 et seq., including MCL 408.474 (withholding fringe benefit compensation at termination) and MCL 408.477 (deductions from wages).
OfficialOffice of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, appointment of Christopher Burnett to the 57th District Court, July 21, 2025.
OfficialAllegan County, 57th District Court, listing of the Honorable Christopher E. Burnett as district court judge.
ClutchRita Williams, Strict Compliance, No Exceptions: Court of Appeals Keeps Judge Namita Sharma Off the November Ballot, Clutch Justice, August 16, 2026.
PrimaryMichigan Attorney Discipline Board, public discipline search, P69751.
PrimaryMichigan Attorney Discipline Board, annual reports and hearing-panel rosters for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024, listing Thomas D. Siver on the Kent County roster.
ReportLee Dryden, West Michigan lawyer disbarred by ADB panel, Michigan Lawyers Weekly, December 11, 2019. The report identifies Thomas D. Siver as a member of Kent County Hearing Panel No. 5; the Attorney Grievance Commission was represented by counsel in the proceeding.
SourcePrivate text-message exchange with a former Siver employee whose identity is known to Clutch Justice and withheld from publication; screenshots reviewed August 2026.
SourceFollow-up text-message screenshot from the same former employee describing fear of reprisals, willingness to speak privately with the Attorney Grievance Commission, an alleged threat to put sugar in his gas tank, and a secretary whom he said was prepared to testify about further alleged threats. Names withheld.
OfficialMichigan Attorney Grievance Commission, public explanation of its role and complaint process; Michigan Attorney Discipline Board annual reports describing formal hearing-panel procedure.
CampaignCommittee for Judge Burnett, campaign website, accessed August 18, 2026.
ClutchRita Williams, A New Robe, A Demanding Docket: Christopher Burnett’s Path to the Bench in Allegan County, Clutch Justice, July 21, 2025; last updated August 16, 2026.
OfficialAllegan County, 48th Circuit Court judges page, confirming that Emily W. Jipp began her term January 1, 2025.
SourceAllegan County voter, analysis provided to Clutch Justice; identity withheld.
How to Cite This Article
Bluebook (Legal)Rita Williams, A Former Siver Employee Put Her Name on the Record. The Campaign Answered a Different Question., Clutch Justice (Aug. 18, 2026), https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/18/siver-former-employee-record-campaign-response/.
APA 7Williams, R. (2026, August 18). A former Siver employee put her name on the record. The campaign answered a different question. Clutch Justice. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/18/siver-former-employee-record-campaign-response/
MLA 9Williams, Rita. “A Former Siver Employee Put Her Name on the Record. The Campaign Answered a Different Question.” Clutch Justice, 18 Aug. 2026, clutchjustice.com/2026/08/18/siver-former-employee-record-campaign-response/.
ChicagoWilliams, Rita. “A Former Siver Employee Put Her Name on the Record. The Campaign Answered a Different Question.” Clutch Justice, August 18, 2026. https://clutchjustice.com/2026/08/18/siver-former-employee-record-campaign-response/.
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