Michigan House Speaker-elect Rep. Matt Hall on Thursday reiterated his promise to bring oversight to the attorney general’s office in 2025, citing Democratic AG Dana Nessel’s partisan lawfare tactics in recent years.

For the second day in a row, Richland Township Republican vowed to take a magnifying glass to Nessel’s budget when Republicans regain control of the lower chamber on Jan. 8, pointing to numerous frivolous legal pursuits that have been dismissed by the courts.

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“This attorney general is a complete activist,” Hall told reporters at a Thursday morning press conference in Kalamazoo. “Look, I mean she’s bullied and threatened so many innocent Michiganders, tying them up into criminal proceedings for years and then these cases get dismissed.

“I mean, look at the Flint water crisis and how she bungled that for years and years and then nobody got convicted of anything,” he said. “And then you look at St. Clair shores, where she started going after some people that made some innocent mistakes on their election process, and then that got dismissed.

“Time after time after time, this attorney general is using lawfare to go after innocent people in Michigan and losing,” Hall continued. “Look at how that destroys people’s lives being tied up for years in criminal litigation, just because you’re Republican and the attorney general has a political agenda against you.”

The AG ended its office’s criminal prosecutions against Republican former Gov. Rick Snyder, his top aides and other members of his administration in October 2023 after the Michigan Supreme Court rejected the AG’s attempt to revive charges against Snyder.

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“I wish this dismissal would represent the end of political persecutions in Michigan forever,” Snyder said in a statement cited by The Detroit News last year. “Unfortunately, the only way to end political persecutions would require electing attorney generals and prosecutors who believe in facts, have a moral compass, and act with civility.”

Richard Baird, Snyder’s former “transformation manager” in Flint, has since sued Nessel and top former Flint water prosecutors for $2.8 million in damages for depression, pain, suffering, emotional distress and “damages to his sterling reputation” over the overzealous prosecution, MLive reports.

Last week, 40^th District Court Judge Joseph Oster dismissed criminal charges Nessel filed against two volunteer election workers in St. Clair Shores she alleged “broke election rules so significantly they committed a crime.”

The case, which centers on four voters who allegedly voted twice in the August primary with the help of three election workers, continues to proceed with felony charges against others involved.

Republican Macomb County Prosecutor Peter Lucido initially declined to press charges because “appropriate mechanisms functioned as intended to detect the issue,” but Nessel pursued a case anyway, prompting St. Clair Shores Mayor Kip Walby and others to blast that decision as “political theater.”

Lucido prevailed in November over his Democratic opponent Christina Hines, who leveraged the controversy to attack Lucido ahead of Election Day.

Many others have criticized Nessel for politically motivated prosecutions of 15 Trump electors in the 2020 election, a case that continues despite harsh criticism from the judge of the AG’s bungled investigation.

“It’s a politically motivated witch hunt that has no basis in the evidence,” defense attorney John Freeman told the court in June.

Speaker-elect Hall was joined Thursday by Reps. Luke Meerman, R-Coopersville, and Angela Rigas, R-Caledonia, at 600 Kitchen and Bar in Kalamazoo, where they held the latest in a series of press conferences since Republicans walked out of the legislature’s lame duck session on Friday over refusal by the Democratic majority to address a looming crisis in the restaurant industry.

As many as 60,000 Michigan workers in the restaurant and hospitality industry could face layoffs starting in February, when the state will begin to transition tipped wage workers to minimum wage and implement requirements for paid sick leave.

For months, restaurant owners, servers, bartenders and others who earn more than minimum wage under the tipped wage system have called on the legislature’s Democratic majority to take action to mitigate the damage from the changes, which were approved by voters in 2018 and upheld by the Michigan Supreme Court this summer.

With House Democratic leadership unwilling to address the issue, Hall said Thursday, what’s expected to be the last day of the legislative session, that Republicans will make it a top priority when they take over next month.

“According to the Michigan Constitution, the day the legislature starts will be January 8^th, so we’ll swear in on January 8th, we’ll elect me speaker, and then we’ll move on this shortly after that to get this through the House,” he said. “And then we’ll negotiate with (Senate) Leader (Winnie) Brinks and the governor, and I’m confident I’ll be able to negotiate a deal to get it done.”

Hall promised oversight for Nessel, who alleged on X the Republican walkout in the House “is literally criminal.”

“House Republicans, we’re not going to be bullied by the attorney general. We’re a separate branch of government, and we’re the legislative branch, and under Michigan’s laws and constitution we have the authority to look at her budget. We set her budget,” Hall said.

“And her office is out of control, so there’s a lot of changes we’re going to have to make to her budget to stop her from going after innocent Michiganders time after time after time,” he said. “There will be oversight hearings, trying to get her to justify all of these radical things she’s doing.

“I mean, she’s spending your tax dollars to lose frivolous lawsuits. People should be outraged by that. So we’re not going to stand for it, we’re not going to be bullied by her, and it’s even unbelievable she would even make that threat.”