State and federal authorities are reviewing a complaint that alleges Gotion executives attempted to bribe Green Charter Township officials to secure a deal to build electric vehicle battery components near Big Rapids.
In a Sept. 30 letter to the FBI, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan, Michigan State Police, and Attorney General Dana Nessel, highlights “engagements by Gotion Vice President of North American Operations, Chuck Thelen, with several now recalled Green Charter Township elected officials … that may violate both federal and state statutes prohibiting the offering of acceptance of a bribe or gratuity.”
The letter, sent by an unnamed Michigan resident, centers on a controversial deal with Gotion to build an EV battery component plant that was approved by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, state lawmakers and the former Green Charter Township board. The deal, which comes with $715 million in taxpayer subsidies, has since sparked strong public opposition, and a recall of the former township board, over an array of concerns, from Gotion’s close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, to the plant’s expected impact on the Muskegon River watershed.
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The township’s new board has worked to unravel the deal, and Gotion sued in U.S. District Court to force the township to comply with the development agreement. Text messages between Thelen and the board members, who were eventually recalled subsequent to the texts, were uncovered as part of that lawsuit, and cited in the complaint filed on Monday, Just the News reports.
The complaint points to former Supervisor Jim Chapman, former Treasurer Denise MacFarlane, and former Trustee Dale Jernstadt, alleging engagements with Gotion “seem to involve the bribery of a public officer.”
Text messages included in the lawsuit on Friday indicate Gotion may have offered Chapman a trip to Hefei, China, while Jernstadt agreed to sell his 72-acre “hay field” to Gotion for $2 million, or 11 times the land’s assessed value. Court documents also revealed Whitmer hosted Gotion High-tech Chairman Zhen Li, a CCP member, at the governor’s summer residence on Mackinac Island in July 2023. Gotion High-Tech is the parent company for Gotion, Inc.
Texts between Thelen and the former township board further revealed a coordinated effort to blacklist businesses and attack those who opposed the Gotion development.
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Michigan-China Economic and Security Review Group Director Joseph Cella, a former ambassador during the President Donald Trump administration, explained the significance of the new court documents in a statement.
“The ‘deal’ with PRC-based and CCP-tied Gotion led by Governor Gretchen Whitmer, The Michigan Economic Development Corporation, The Right Place, and Ferris State University, some in the Michigan Legislature, and others in local government has been corrupted from the outset,” Cella said.
“This letter gives voice to the voiceless citizens who have always known this ‘deal’ was corrupted, and are righteous in wanting to hold actors involved with this ‘deal’ accountable. Their leadership has had a massive impact. They began restoring the consent of the governed by recalling and defeating certain elected officials,” he said. “They continue their important work by asking federal and state law enforcement to investigate potential bribery, public corruption and conflicts of interest, based on recent filings in the lawsuit by PRC-based and CCP-tied Gotion against Green Charter Township.”
Chapman disputed the bribery allegations in a statement to Just the News.
“I have never accepted any enticement of any kind from Gotion or any other group,” Chapman said. “Gotion considered a trip to see their plant for a group of local people. I was on the list but chose not to go. The trip never happened.”
The Gotion plant has faced widespread concerns over its roughly 100-mile proximity to Camp Grayling, one of the nation’s largest National Guard bases that’s used to train Taiwanese soldiers, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The deal, negotiated through secret agreements that shield details from the taxpayers funding the plant, sparked efforts in Congress to blacklist Gotion, which revealed in a Foreign Agents Registration Act filing it’s “partially subsidized through government funding supplied by the People’s Republic of China.”
The Whitmer-backed Gotion plant has also become a hot political issue in critical races for the U.S. House and Senate, forcing Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin and other Democrats to explain their support.
Former President Trump in late July announced he’s “100% OPPOSED” to the Gotion plant.
“The Gotion plant would be very bad for the State and our Country,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “It would put Michiganders under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing.”
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives seemingly agreed when they voted unanimously last month to approve the “Decoupling from Foreign Adversarial Battery Dependence Act,” which specifically names Gotion in prohibiting the Department of Homeland Security from procuring foreign-made batteries from the country’s adversaries.