Michigan's solicitor general says the state may file more indictments against former Gov. Rick Snyder in the Flint water case

• Former Michigan governor Rick Snyder was charged last week in connection with the Flint water crisis during his tenure.
• Current Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud told Insider that the investigation is ongoing, and the state may bring more indictments against him.
• She also said she hoped that the case shows how everyone should be treated equally under the law, and that "your position of power, or your title alone, does not shield you from that."

On Wednesday, the Michigan Attorney General's office charged 11 people who made ruinous decisions that led to the water crisis in Flint.

The accused include Rick Snyder, the state's former Republican governor, who oversaw the decisions that injected improperly treated water into the city's homes.

The charges are the culmination of more than six years of tangled investigations, which have been set back with false starts and mishandled evidence. And they are severe: Snyder's top health official, Nick Lyon, faces nine counts of involuntary manslaughter.

But to some, the charges against Snyder - two misdemeanors for willful neglect of duty - are remarkably soft.

Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa Hammoud told Insider that they're not done with Snyder yet.

"Nothing is out of the possibility when you're talking about a criminal investigation," Hammoud said.

In an interview on Friday, Hammoud said the investigation into the people responsible for the city of Flint's crisis was still ongoing, and that superseding indictments may be filed as new evidence comes to light.

"Like any criminal case, as this case goes on, new evidence comes up, new evidence comes forward," she said. "We're not going to turn a blind eye to that."

Snyder and Lyon have both pleaded not guilty.

'Everybody should be treated equally under the law'

Snyder is the first governor in the state's history to be charged based on his activities in office. Prosecutors say he failed to declare a state of emergency over Flint's water troubles and failed to properly supervise his appointees - two charges of willful neglect of duty that each carry a sentence of up to a year in prison and $1,000 in fines.

Snyder's administration, in 2014, exposed Flint's 100,000 residents to water with high lead levels. It coincided with an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease that killed 12 people and sickened at least 87 more.

Bill Schuette, the state attorney general who served in Snyder's administration, investigated the issue and filed several charges. While several members of Snyder's administration were charged - some of whom pleaded guilty - Snyder himself had not been.

But Hammoud rebooted the investigation after she and Dana Nessel, the current attorney general, took over in 2019. At the time, they said the underlying evidence wasn't properly analyzed the first time around.

Hammoud declined to comment directly on how the case was handled before she came to office in 2019. But she said that she understood that the public's trust into a public office, like her own, wasn't something she could take for granted. She said she wanted to do her due diligence and make sure the state of Michigan pursued the criminal cases it was supposed to pursue.

"I understand that we can't please everybody," she said. "And I understand that we're not entitled to the people's trust blindly. But people are entitled to vigorous action."

And while the charges against Snyder are only two misdemeanors, the overall scope of the charges is more significant than what her predecessor pursued. Lyon, for example, had previously been charged with two manslaughter counts instead of nine.

Hammoud said her office simply looked at the evidence, presented it in front of a grand jury, and went with the indictments the grand jury agreed to.

"When we conducted this investigation, we couldn't go in there with preconceived notions or say, 'Alright, this is what we want,'" Hammoud said. "We wouldn't say, 'Give us the most egregious crimes, and this is what we want.'"

She said she hoped the charges against Snyder and other public officials sent a message.

"To public officials or those who want to go into public office: If you commit a crime, especially when it comes to your duties of serving the people, you are not immune from our laws under the criminal justice system, no matter who you are," she said.

"Everybody should be treated equally under the law," she continued. "And when you commit a crime, your position of power, or your title alone, does not shield you from that."

Snyder's attorney has called the charges "a politically motivated smear campaign."

Hammoud said that, despite the cases' history, she hopes that people look at the evidence and see that it's about the people of Flint, not partisan politics.

"I hope that anybody, no matter who they are, where they fall on the political spectrum, can look at Flint and know that this has nothing to do with partisanship," she said. "Because it has everything to do with the people."