A Michigan state employee and son of the Detroit mayor appears to be the person who first proposed hiring a partisan Democrat consulting firm to collect sensitive medical information from coronavirus patients.
The Detroit News reported emails revealed Ed Duggan, a Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity senior adviser and child of Mike Duggan, was the one to propose using Kolehouse Strategies to manage volunteer contact tracers, who would then input personal information obtained from virus patients into a data collection system controlled by another progressive firm.
One email cited by the paper showed Duggan introduced Mike Kolehouse to Andrea Taverna, a senior adviser at the Department of Health and Human Services who quarterbacked the contact tracing program on behalf of the Gov. Gretchen Whitmer administration.
After a number of email exchanges, a no-bid contract was signed three weeks later with a Kolehouse entity, Great Lakes Community Engagement. It was canceled the following day by Whitmer.
The News asked why Duggan, a LEO employee, was getting involved in the contact tracing program, and “Health and Human Services spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin declined comment because of Attorney General Dana Nessel’s ongoing investigation into the contract.”
Breitbart News exclusively revealed details from the contract in May, such as Kolehouse’s entity would be paid up to $194,250 to manage 400 volunteers.
Other emails show Whitmer’s team gave the “green light” to hire the firm, according to Bridge Magazine.
“We got the green light from EOG [the executive office of the governor] to move forward with a slightly different organizational arrangement of the contact tracing volunteer work,” Taverna said in an email to other health department officials.
Breitbart News received a similar reponse from Sutfin when she was asked who specifically from Whitmer’s office okayed the scheme.
“Due to the Attorney General’s current investigation, we do not have a comment,” she said.
Kolehouse’s entity was going to house the data with Every Action VAN, which is associated with NGP VAN, another platform utilized by Democrat campaigns.
On Tuesday, Duggan was named Biden’s political director in Michigan, despite never having worked on a presidential campaign in a senior capacity.
Breitbart News reported Whitmer hired the younger Duggan to run her gubernatorial campaign in the city of Detroit.
Upon Whitmer’s victory, Duggan was tapped to serve as the external affairs director on the governor-elect’s transition team. That decision, which local media outlets claimed was a signal Whitmer had chosen a “gatekeeper,” appeared to some as “nothing but a reward” for the Duggan family’s support.
Recent polling indicated Biden is leading President Trump in the state.
Kyle Olson is a reporter for Breitbart News. He is also host of “The Kyle Olson Show,” syndicated on Michigan radio stations on Saturdays. Listen to segments on YouTube. Follow him on Twitter, like him on Facebook, and follow him on Parler.
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