Key figure in $25M Clare health park grant cooperating with Michigan probe

• Anthony Demasi cooperating in probe of $25M Michigan health park grant as he seeks leniency in separate bank fraud case
• Investigation focuses on grant added to budget by former House Speaker Jason Wentworth and awarded to former aide David Coker
• The Michigan Health and Human Services Department halted the grant in March 2023 after concerns about spending

A convicted felon who helped a former Michigan legislative aide secure a $25 million state grant is cooperating with authorities investigating the suspended Clare health park project, according to new court filings.

Anthony Demasi, a disbarred attorney who worked as a consultant on the project, has provided “hundreds of documents and text messages essential to the success of the investigation,” a Michigan official wrote in a March letter disclosed for the first time last week in federal court. 

The letter was revealed by Demasi as he seeks leniency in a separate bank fraud case, in part, by highlighting his help with the probe into the no-bid grant added to the state budget in 2022 by then-House Speaker Jason Wentworth and later awarded to his former aide, David Coker.

Coker and Wentworth have both denied any wrongdoing, but as Bridge Michigan first reported, state officials suspended the grant last year, citing “red flags” on the project run by a nonprofit Coker formed during the legislative process and subsequently used to pay his own for-profit firm.

Demasi has a "history of cooperating with the government," including in the run-up to his 2010 conviction on federal fraud charges in Chicago, his attorney Chip Chamberlain wrote in a filing last week. 

Related:

• Key figure in $25M Clare health campus controversy pleads guilty to fraud
• Lawsuit over $25M Clare health park grant can advance, judge rules
• ‘Red flags’ surround $25M health campus pushed by ex-Michigan House speaker

And now, as he awaits sentencing in a separate bank fraud case, Demasi “has cooperated with the Department of Michigan Inspector General and Attorney General in one of its pending investigations,” Chamberlain added. 

The Office of Inspector General within the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services launched the Clare health park investigation in 2023 but handed it over to Attorney General Dana Nessel’s office that December.

Demasi has “provided a great deal of assistance, valuable information, and documentation” to investigators, OIG investigator Shawn Ellis wrote in a March letter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office made public by Demasi’s attorney. 

While his office was no longer leading the probe, Ellis wrote that Demasi has "continued to cooperate with ... additional law enforcement agents to facilitate the ongoing investigation."

A spokesperson for the attorney general's office confirmed Demasi's cooperation, telling Bridge Michigan on Friday that his assistance has been "helpful" to the probe. 

The court documents are the first evidence that one of the two central players in the Clare health park project has been cooperating with investigators since Bridge first reported state officials had shut down the grant and launched a probe in May 2023.

As Bridge reported, state officials had not vetted Coker or Demasi before awarding the grant, and some state officials had difficulty figuring out who was supposed to get the money because the legislation — like many pork-barrel grants — was vague.

A lobbyist eventually told workers at the state health department that Coker’s nonprofit was the intended recipient. It was awarded after a state staffer told colleagues that the “grantee is both well connected politically and a bit antsy…”

The state health department sent Coker’s nonprofit $10 million before halting the grant. 

Demasi, a longtime friend of Coker’s, had provided consulting services for the so-called Complete Health Park and was scheduled to get hundreds of thousands of dollars from the project. 

He later sued Coker, alleging Coker failed to pay him and conspired with Wentworth to profit from the project, which included a $3 million land purchase from a family business of current state Rep. Tom Kunse, R-Clare. 

Kunse, who later publicly questioned the grant, said he sought legal advice before completing that sale, which was finalized two weeks after he took office in January 2023.

Wentworth, who was term-limited out of office at the end of 2022, has called Demasi’s claims "absolutely garbage," "ridiculous" and “false.”

Coker, too, has argued that everything was above board with the project, which he had pitched to the state as an effort to combat high rates of poor health among Clare County residents. 

It was to include a pool, fitness areas, athletic courts, fields and medical offices. A centerpiece of the initial phase: a 24-lane bowling alley, according to documents and interviews.

"There's nothing underhanded, nothing shady," Coker told Bridge in May 2023. "This is being done for the public, essentially by the public. Someone has to do it."

Demasi, who spent over four years in federal prison on securities fraud in the 2010s, in April pleaded guilty to two bank fraud charges stemming from his fraudulent use of credit cards he got using the name and data of young employees of his. 

Demasi was set to be sentenced on those charges Thursday, but the hearing was delayed until Sept. 12.