- Ex-Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield and his wife will not stand trial until September 2026 after a judge approved delay
- Chatfields face corruption-related charges for allegedly spending fundraised money on vacations and shopping
- Two close associates, Anne and Rob Minard, will stand trial next month
LANSING — The corruption trial for former Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield and his wife Stephanie Chatfield has been pushed back more than 10 months by a local judge.
At a hearing Wednesday morning, Circuit Court Judge Morgan Cole set a trial date of Sept. 21, 2026. It had been scheduled to begin next month. Once it does, Cole suggested the trial could last for up to three weeks.
Lee Chatfield’s attorney Mary Chartier said the delay was due to “scheduling issues” on her end. It means the Chatfields won’t stand trial until almost two-and-a-half years after charges against them were announced by Attorney General Dana Nessel in April 2024.
Lee Chatfield is facing 13 felony counts — including for allegedly “conducting a criminal enterprise,” which is punishable by up to 20 years in prison — while Stephanie Chatfield will be tried on two felony counts. They have both pleaded not guilty.
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The Levering Republican raised millions of dollars while leading the state House from 2019 through 2020, which state investigators said was used in part to bankroll a “lavish” lifestyle using political, nonprofit and state funds.
The Chatfields allegedly used money from those accounts to pay expenses on a family trip to Universal Studios, fund purchases at Ugg stores and pay off credit cards. Prosecutors also allege he broke the law by billing the state for vehicle mileage for trips he didn’t take.
Chartier has called the case against the Chatfields a “political prosecution” that has “nothing to do with integrity,” asserting the misappropriated money is less than $30,000 and shifting responsibility to a law firm hired to review the activity of the nonprofit Peninsula Fund account.
Two senior aides and confidants of the Chatfields, Anne and Robert Minard, are alleged to have worked closely with them in the scheme. They face a string of similar corruption-related charges including embezzlement and are scheduled to go to trial in November.
Authorities began investigating Lee Chatfield more than three years ago when his sister-in-law, Rebekah Chatfield, accused him of sexually assaulting and manipulating her for more than a decade, beginning in the early 2010s when she was a teenage student at the Christian school where he taught.
She first shared her account publicly with Bridge Michigan. Nessel, the state’s attorney general, previously said the probe failed to yield conclusive evidence of sexual assault, and Lee Chatfield characterized it as a consensual affair.
The investigation also shed light on the opaque world of nonprofit account fundraising in Michigan politics, where many elected officials have so-called “dark money” accounts which have little oversight of their fundraising and spending. Nessel has previously called for an overhaul of the state’s disclosure laws to allow less hidden fundraising.
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