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Abdul El-Sayed Needed Babysitters When He Was Health Director Because he isn't a real doctor, Detroit and Wayne County both had to hire actual doctors to make health decisions By Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is not a doctor. That’s not me saying that, it’s the State of Michigan. Even so, El-Sayed got paid like a doctor, pretended to be a doctor, and broke state law doing so. As executive director of the Detroit Health Department and then of the Wayne County Health Department, El-Sayed was prohibited from making medical decisions because he was not and is not a licensed to practice medicine in Michigan (or anywhere else for that matter.) The state allows non-doctors like El-Sayed to be the chief bureaucrat of a local health department, but only if there is a chief medical officer to make actual health decisions. And so, El-Sayed in his short tenures in both Detroit and Wayne County was babysat by two qualified female physicians, and at least one was paid much less than El-Sayed. (Normally the actual doctor earns approximately 30% more than the bureaucrat.) So while El-Sayed plays physician in campaign commercials, the women were doing the actual work. As it happens, El-Sayed was not even qualified to be chief bureaucrat. Again, according to state law, the director of a health department must have an advanced degree in medicine or public health AND at least three years experience in health administration. El-Sayed did not have the required admin experience, but this is Wayne County, where the law is optional for machine hacks like “Dr.” Phoney El-Baloney. Under El-Sayed, the chief medical officer for Detroit in 2016 was Dr. Joneigh Khaldun. El-Sayed went on to run for governor and lost. He then became a TV doctor for CNN as a Covid expert and got almost everything wrong. Dr. Khaldun went on to become the chief medical executive for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer—and, like El-Sayed, she got almost everything wrong about Covid, including school closings and commingling infected people in the state’s nursing homes. El-Sayed resurfaced in 2023 in Wayne County. Still, he had no certification. No residency. No patients. Insufficient medical experience to satisfy state law. Minor details in the Wayne County Machine. El-Sayed got the job, but still couldn’t make medical decisions or supply health care for 150 children locked in the juvenile jail. Still, he was paid an eye-popping $279,000 a year by the time he left to run for Senate last year. (A few days following his announcement, the county machine granted him a $72,000 “consulting contract.”) As El-Sayed played doctor, the actual chief medical officer, Dr. Avani Sheth, was paid $235,000, or nearly 20% less than El-Sayed. Interestingly, El-Sayed’s successor as executive director of the county health department is paid $180,000—a $99,000 pay cut for the position. El-Sayed claims on his social media posts to despise financial misogyny. But El-Sayed doesn’t seem to mind it when it’s posted to his bank ledger. What to call him? Fake doctor? Paper doctor? Unlicensed physician? Call El-Sayed whatever you want, just know he can’t make house calls.

Mary Sheffield's Ex-Lover Alleges Sex Tapes and Drug Work In a new lawsuit, Marvin Walker claims he gave Detroit's new mayor a job in a marijuana grow house while she served on City Council By Charlie LeDuff @Charlieleduff Detroit City Hall is on fire. It is no longer a question of if—but when and how—Detroit Mayor Mary Sheffield and Police Chief Todd Bettison will be removed from office. The latest: a titillating lawsuit from Sheffield’s former lover and partner in municipal crime, Marvin Walker. In his 47-page complaint, expected to be filed next week in Circuit Court, Walker contends Sheffield was involved in sex tapes, a drug house, and illicit payments. According to the lawsuit, which seeks damages of $50 million, the romantic relationship between Sheffield and Walker began in December 2020 when they “created private recordings depicting consensual intimate moments” and “also exchanged private text messages and other communications concerning personal matters, financial matters, business dealings, and other matters not intended for public dissemination.” Michigan Enjoyer can confirm the existence of these materials. Walker claims that after he and Sheffield had a falling out, Sheffield sent a goon squad to harass Walker into deleting the evidence. That goon squad included Chief Bettison, Deputy Mayor Brian White, and top aide Ray Simpson. After Enjoyer published photographs of Walker delivering obscene bundles of money to Sheffield’s mailbox, Sheffield told the public that Walker was simply repaying her “tens of thousands of dollars” she had loaned him over the course of their relationship. In his lawsuit, Walker claims he never loaned Sheffield any money. In fact, Walker said he got Sheffield a job in a drug house so she could make some cash on the side. An early draft of the complaint promises “videos depicting DEFENDANT SHEFFIELD working inside a marijuana grow facility while she served on the Detroit City Council.” Further, Sheffield allowed Walker to use her city-issued automobile so that he could travel around the Midwest to conduct “business.” Walker also alleges that Bettison, White, and Simpson conspired to strong-arm him into deleting a text message that detailed how Sheffield would write checks from her political charity to Walker’s company for work he never provided. Walker would then cash the checks and give the money to Sheffield. Enjoyer published that story earlier this month. When Walker refused to delete the material, Bettison allegedly told him “that he had friends at the FBI,” according to the lawsuit. Walker understood that to be a threat. Walker refused to delete the damning material. That’s when Sheffield and Bettison launched a war of harassment and subterfuge against Walker—according to the lawsuit—going so far as to padlock his rental property and shop bogus rape cases to the county prosecutor and state police. Neither agency would grant an arrest warrant against Walker. Enjoyer has also learned that the FBI and the Detroit Office of the Inspector General have opened public corruption and abuse of office cases on both Mayor Sheffield and Chief Bettison. Then there is this: Chief Bettison has ordered an internal affairs investigation into the source of the leak of the timeline of the entire Walker affair that was given to Enjoyer. Police investigators have confiscated cell phones and computers from every police employee who had access to the timeline document, including senior command staff. Suffice it to say, Chief Bettison has lost the respect of the department.