On a June day in 2003, Attorney General Mike Cox and a top aide prepared to sit down with Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick in what would become a controversial meeting that left questions hanging over an investigation that cleared the mayor and key staffers of misconduct allegations.
With the meeting set to begin in a couple of hours, a Cox staffer knocked at his door.
“The Detroit police are here,” Cox recalled being told. The staffer said the mayor’s bodyguards wanted to do a security sweep of Cox’s offices.
“I thought it was ludicrous,” Cox said told the Free Press last week while offering his most detailed explanation to date of how the meeting unfolded. “And I said to tell them: ‘This is our office. We’re the Attorney General’s Office and they can go sit out in the hallway, but they’re not walking through our office like it’s some security issue.’ ”
• PART 1: Cox states case on Manoogian probe
The meeting with Kilpatrick, held in a conference room at Cadillac Place, haunts Cox to this day. Michigan State Police, who were conducting a joint investigation, would complain about being cut out of the interview.
The interview wasn’t recorded, though Cox said that was true of most interviews in the probe. Four days later, Cox ended his investigation as the State Police pressed ahead.
In recounting the meeting, Cox said Assistant Attorney General Tom Furtaw, who led the probe, did most of the questioning. Ruth Carter, the city’s chief legal counsel, sat in, representing Kilpatrick.
