Former Michigan House Speaker Rick Johnson voted in support of a marijuana business and then accepted a $75,000 loan from an investor with a stake in the deal, according to a Detroit News investigation that comes amid a federal grand jury probe into whether bribes swayed his marijuana licensing board decisions.
Court records reveal a tangled, troubled deal between the Republican farmer from LeRoy who led the Medical Marihuana Licensing Board for two years and Bloomfield Hills-based real estate investment company MSY Capital Partners.
The loan violated the spirit of a state law aimed at preventing corruption, according to the legislator who sponsored the policy, and raised new concerns about secret financial arrangements at the dawn of Michigan’s marijuana industry, which generated more than $2 billion in sales in 2022.
On April 25, 2019 — the date of the final meeting of the medical marijuana board before it was disbanded — Johnson and two other panel members voted to “pre-qualify” JAR Capital LLC for a pot license. One of the investors in JAR Capital was Metro Detroit lawyer Gregory Yatooma.
Then, on June 24, 2019, MSY Capital Partners, a firm run by members of the Yatooma family, loaned Johnson $75,000, according to court records and internal documents provided by MSY. Those documents show Johnson personally emailed Gregory Yatooma on June 18, 2019, seeking a $75,000 loan to “pay off” another short-term loan from a “business associate” and to gain “funds for finishing up spring 2019 planting.”
A 2016 law creating the marijuana licensing board prohibited board members from entering into a contract with an applicant, including those with a 10% ownership interest in an applicant or those who manage the applicant, for four years after their service on the board. While Gregory Yatooma’s name was listed in the JAR Capital application, Gregory Yatooma spokesman Mort Meisner said he was a minority investor of less than 10% ownership in the marijuana company.
But the details of the relationship between MSY Capital Partners, a firm involved in buying real estate for marijuana businesses, and Johnson were “beyond belief,” said former state Rep. Mike Callton, a Republican from Nashville, who sponsored the bill that created the state’s Medical Marihuana Licensing Board in 2016.
“It’s definitely inappropriate,” Callton said.
Johnson did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
This story was published in the Detroit News.