Corruption would “make Lincoln roll over in his grave.”

[David Lockmiller]

In Nassar Case, Michigan State Wanted Famed Ex-Prosecutor to Both Examine and Defend It

Declaring that the corruption would “make Lincoln roll over in his grave,” former U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald oversaw the prosecution of Rod R. Blagojevich, the idiosyncratic former governor of Illinois accused of trying to get something in exchange for an appointment to the United States Senate seat that Barack Obama vacated when he was elected president.

In the Dr. Larry Nassar case, Michigan State wanted the famed ex-Prosecutor to both examine and defend the university.

Patrick J. Fitzgerald said he found no evidence university employees knew the doctor was molesting patients. Critics say his review was tainted by his dual role.

Last month, Mr. Fitzgerald wrote that no one at the university understood what Dr. Nassar, a faculty member and team physician, was up to until the victims began going to the news media in 2016.

“While many in the community today wish that they had identified Nassar as a predator, we believe the evidence in this case will show that no one else at M.S.U. knew that Nassar engaged in criminal behavior,” he wrote in a letter to the state’s attorney general.

“Michigan State led the public to believe that there had been an independent investigation,” Tom Leonard, the Republican speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives, said on Friday in an interview. “And then as we continued to dig into this, we found out it was not an independent investigation. It was an internal investigation to shield them from liability.”

Over the months since they hired Mr. Fitzgerald, 57, and his team of lawyers, Michigan State officials have highlighted his review — sometimes noting Mr. Fitzgerald’s involvement by name — as a sign of the seriousness of their response. Lou Anna K. Simon, who resigned as president on Wednesday, had portrayed the university’s review as a robust and “tireless effort” that would go on as long as needed. “Even as we examine — through both criminal investigations and a thorough internal review — how something so abhorrent happened here and went on for so long, we are taking action,” she said last April.

Mr. Fitzgerald said recently: “In the course of gathering facts for the representation, the team of attorneys and investigators has conducted approximately one hundred interviews and reviewed a large number of documents.”

Mr. Fitzgerald said that his team took “affirmative steps” not to interview victims of the abuse because of ethics rules restricting contact with plaintiffs in civil cases.

A Michigan State contract with Mr. Fitzgerald’s firm included an hourly rate of up to $990. The ABC affiliate in Detroit reported this month that Mr. Fitzgerald’s firm has billed the university nearly $4.1 million.

What would lawyer Abraham Lincoln have done from beginning to end if Michigan State had made him the same offer in 1858 dollars?