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AG Nessel at a town hall this past week.
Speaking at a town hall meeting this past week in West Bloomfield on hate crimes and extremism, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel defended charges filed against pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan Diag last year. She insisted antisemitism was at play when defense lawyers suggested she was biased because she is Jewish.
"Everything that happens with this case involves antisemitism at levels and in areas, frankly, that I've not seen before," she said, explaining the dismissal of seven of those cases nearly a week ago in Ann Arbor District Court.
She said defense attorneys filed motions to have her removed from the case essentially because she is Jewish and, in their view, could not be objective with pro-Palestinian defendants. She had previously called this a diversionary tactic to delay proceedings.
Nessel criticized Judge Cedric Simpson, saying that instead of deciding whether there was probable cause to move the cases forward, he focused on the motion to remove her. She said she ultimately dropped the charges against all seven defendants because the allegations against her were baseless, the judge repeatedly delayed the case, and the circus-like atmosphere had created a major distraction for her and her office.
She added that the cases were likely to end in probation, anyway. The seven defendants faced misdemeanor charges of trespassing and/or felony charges of resisting and obstructing police.
She stated that most of the defendants refused to clear out of an encampment on the U-M Diag last year, and threw tables and chairs to interfere with police making arrests and removing materials. She said those were criminal actions that would have resulted in charges against anyone.
She said the idea of dismissing a prosecutor from a case based on their faith was outrageous.
"Let me make sure that people understand how damaging this motion is to disqualify a prosecutor. Normally, there has to be one of a couple of things: either you have a financial interest in the case, or there’s a personal relationship—like you know those people, your family knows them, or they used to work for you," she explained.
"We have never, in the history of this state... we've never seen a Black prosecutor face a motion to recuse them on the grounds that they couldn't be fair if there were allegations the defendants were racist.
"We've never seen a case where a female prosecutor was disqualified on the claim that she couldn't be fair because the defendants might be sexist. We've never seen a Christian prosecutor removed from a case because a defendant said or did something that could be deemed anti-Christian.
"Yet the first Jewish attorney general in the state of Michigan—according to this motion—could not be fair to these defendants because they were pro-Palestinian activists."
She said the Jewish Federation of Ann Arbor complicated matters when it submitted a statement to the court, calling the attempt to remove Nessel based on her religion horrifying. She said that created a bigger distraction, as the judge then announced an investigation into the federation.
"So now we’re at a point where the Jewish attorney general is being investigated, the Jewish Federation is being investigated—everyone’s on trial except the defendants."
Nessel said last week that the bias claims were similar to those previously made by U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian American, who insisted Nessel handled the pro-Palestinian protesters differently than supporters of other causes like climate change or immigrant rights.
Defense attorneys had argued that Nessel was biased and that, had charges been warranted, the cases should have been handled by the county prosecutor rather than by her office.
One of the defense attorneys in the case, Amir Makled, who fought to have Nessel removed from the case, issued a statement after the charges were dropped.
"This was not about trespass, this was not about felony conduct. We sent a clear message to both Lansing and to Washington, that the people still rule, and that public pressure compels the rule of law to be upheld. This case attempted to criminalize free speech, and today, the state of Michigan agrees."
Nessel said at the town hall meeting that U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell had asked her to look into the cases.
"We don’t charge people based on their beliefs; we don't charge people based on their cause," Nessel told the audience. "We charge people based on their actions, and those actions have to be criminal in nature."
She said she plans to pursue criminal charges against people who vandalized homes and buildings and spray-painted antisemitic messages relating to the Gaza war. If motions to remove her based on her faith arise in those cases, she said, she’ll fight them all the way to the Supreme Court.
Michigan AG Dana Nessel talks about her decision to drop charges against pro-Palestine protesters arrested during the clearing of the encampment at the University of Michigan last spring pic.twitter.com/Tc3eggkhXh
— Brendan Gutenschwager (@BGOnTheScene) May 8, 2025
