According to explosive reporting at the Ann Arbor Independent, a judge had the investigation done against a divorcee of a county prosecutor:
In Jan. 2025, the newspaper received a copy of a Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Case Report dated Dec. 18, 2023. The Case Report shows Judge Van den Bergh, using her title and elected office, contacted the County Sheriff to investigate a litigant appearing before her. Former Sheriff Jerry L. Clayton secretly investigated the social media posts of the litigant, David Scott Mathieu. Photocopies of the man’s social media posts to Nextdoor included in the Case Report, for example, show him asking for “prayers” and “help” in the face of what he claims were biased rulings on the part of Judge Van den Bergh.
In his social media posts, Mathieu also posted a link to an article published on Nov. 5. 2023 by the A2Indy, “Local Trial Court Judge Subject of Complaints to State Judicial Tenure Commission and AG Nessel.” JTC complaints are not made public unless the Commission recommends action. A copy of the JTC complaint had been provided to the newspaper.
In that article, the newspaper also used court records and reported on Judge Van den Bergh’s rulings in Mathieu’s divorce from a Washtenaw County Asst. Prosecutor, Marieh Tanha. […] The newspaper also reported that Judge Van den Bergh had ordered Mathieu, a disabled veteran, to pay hundreds of dollars for each 3‑hour weekly supervised visit with his two small children.
Read the rest at the Ann Arbor Independent. It’s incredible that judges continue to carry out these brazen actions even when being called out by local media.
