Robert Davis of Detroit: Embezzlement, FOIA Suits, and Sanctions

Robert Davis is a Detroit-area political activist, former Highland Park school board president, and convicted embezzler who has spent more than two decades using Michigan’s Open Meetings Act, Freedom of Information Act, and election-law petition rules to challenge public officials and candidates across southeast Michigan. He has filed more than 100 lawsuits in the last decade alone, won some genuine transparency victories, and been sanctioned repeatedly by courts that have called his filings frivolous and vexatious.¹

The Highland Park Embezzlement Conviction

Davis won a seat on the Highland Park School Board in the summer of 2002 and eventually became its president. Between 2007 and 2010, while serving on the board, he directed the district to issue payments to companies controlled by associates, who then funneled the money — nearly $200,000 in total — to an entity Davis controlled called “Citizens United to Save Highland Park Schools.” He spent the funds on personal expenses and did not report the income on his federal tax returns.²

Federal prosecutors later alleged that the flood of lawsuits Davis filed against the board and its members during this same period — nearly two dozen between 2008 and 2009, costing the district more than $105,000 in legal fees — was designed in part to intimidate the board and conceal the theft.¹

Davis was indicted on 16 federal counts of theft in April 2012.³ On September 2, 2014, he pleaded guilty to two charges: unlawful conversion of school district funds and filing a false federal income tax return.⁴ U.S. District Judge Arthur Tarnow sentenced him to 18 months. He reported to the Federal Prison Camp in Montgomery, Alabama, on March 13, 2015, and was released on February 3, 2016. He resumed his activist work almost immediately.¹

Transparency Lawsuits Under OMA and FOIA

Working most often with attorney Andrew Paterson, Davis has used Michigan’s Open Meetings Act and Freedom of Information Act as his main tools for forcing government bodies into public view. Several suits produced real results.

In 2011, Davis sued the Wayne County Airport Authority after it hired Turkia Mullin as CEO without the required public deliberation, forcing compliance with the Open Meetings Act. A year later, during the lead-up to Detroit’s bankruptcy, his litigation compelled state-appointed officials overseeing the city’s finances to hold their meetings in public, including discussions about the appointment of emergency manager Kevyn Orr.¹

His best-known ballot win came in 2013, when Davis and activist Tom Barrow successfully challenged Mike Duggan’s candidacy for Detroit mayor on residency grounds. Duggan had not been a registered voter in the city long enough to qualify and was forced off the primary ballot. He went on to win the general election as a write-in candidate.¹

Davis also sued the Detroit Downtown Development Authority for holding secret finance committee meetings during negotiations over the Pistons’ move to Little Caesars Arena. The DDA settled, paid $5,000 in legal fees to Paterson, and agreed to open all future finance committee meetings, ending a two-decade practice of closed-door sessions.¹

Ballot Eligibility Challenges

Davis has become one of Michigan’s most persistent challengers of candidate ballot eligibility. His approach is to scrutinize nominating petitions and Affidavits of Identity for technical defects under Michigan election law and argue that strict compliance is mandatory: a missing date, an unchecked box, or a name that doesn’t precisely match voter registration records should, in his reading, disqualify the candidate.

In 2022, he won a sweeping decision in Highland Park when the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled that nonpartisan candidates were required to affirmatively state “no party affiliation” on their Affidavits of Identity under a 2021 statutory amendment. Because the Secretary of State’s form had not been updated, most candidates left the line blank. The ruling removed 10 of 14 candidates for city offices from the August 2022 primary ballot, including mayoral candidate Carlton Clyburn Jr.⁵

In 2025, Davis challenged Detroit mayoral candidates Saunteel Jenkins, James Craig, and Fred Durhal III for failing to include the mayor’s term expiration date on their nominating petitions, alleged that Durhal used inconsistent names on his paperwork, and sought to disqualify City Clerk Janice Winfrey based on an unpaid campaign filing fee from 2010. The Detroit Department of Elections rejected the challenges as immaterial. His suit in Wayne County Circuit Court was dismissed in June 2025, and a parallel action in the Michigan Court of Claims was dismissed after the court found Davis, a Highland Park resident, lacked standing to challenge a Detroit election.⁶⁷

In May 2026, Davis filed a new round of challenges to the Highland Park mayoral race, suing to remove candidates J. Douglas Hollie, incumbent Glenda McDonald, and Elen Robinson from the August primary ballot. Wayne County Circuit Judge Kathleen McCarthy granted an order removing Hollie, finding that the name on his affidavit was not his legal name and that he had misidentified the office jurisdiction. McDonald and Robinson were allowed to remain. Davis said he would appeal.⁸

The Wayne County Retaliation Suit

Davis was previously employed as a staffer by the Wayne County Commission. In 2023, after his contract was not renewed, he filed a federal lawsuit against Commissioners Martha Scott and Alisha Bell and Wayne County itself, alleging the decision was retaliation for his campaign finance complaints and his 2022 challenges to several judges. Those challenges had targeted Wayne County Circuit Judge Patricia P. Fresard and others for allegedly failing to properly disclose party affiliations on their Affidavits of Identity.⁹

Central to the case is a group called “Back the Bench,” which Davis alleges was organized by retired Macomb County prosecutor Donn Fresard, Judge Fresard’s husband, to raise funds for attorneys defending the challenged judges. Davis contends Donn Fresard failed to register the group as required by state law and violated a county ethics ordinance. In a September 2025 deposition, Donn Fresard invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination when asked about the group’s fundraising and testified that he believed not renewing Davis’s contract was “in the best interest of the county.”⁹

Sanctions and Filing Restrictions

The volume of Davis’s filings has pushed courts to impose escalating restrictions. Since 2016, he has been sanctioned three times in Wayne County Circuit Court for frivolous lawsuits, including $23,000 in sanctions for a suit challenging four judges’ ballot eligibility and $35,000 tied to an attempt to remove two others. A judge on the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals once described filings by Davis and his attorney as “repetitive, vexatious, and frivolous.”¹⁰

In 2024, the Wayne County Board of Commissioners took the unusual step of suing Davis to obtain a blanket order from the chief judge prohibiting him from filing new lawsuits or FOIA requests without prior court approval. The commission asked that he be required to post a $10,000 bond for each lawsuit and $2,000 for each records request. Judge Kathleen McCarthy ordered a $2,000 bond in a specific FOIA case, citing “concerning abuse” of the court system, but noted that only the chief judge had authority to impose a broader prohibition. The attempt to restrict FOIA requests was described as unprecedented, with no existing Michigan case law where a court has barred a person from filing new public records requests without permission.¹⁰

Davis’s longtime attorney, Andrew Paterson, was separately suspended from the practice of law for 100 days in April 2024, in part due to filing cases deemed frivolous.¹⁰

How Davis Is Viewed

Davis operates under the banner of a nonprofit he founded called “A Felon’s Crusade for Equality, Honesty and Truth,” which he describes as a vehicle for pushing transparent, honest government.¹

Opinions split sharply. Attorney David Fink has called him a “glory hound” who files lawsuits “at great cost to the public.” Former school board member John Holloway attributed Davis’s behavior to “greed.” Ingham County Circuit Judge William Collette, on the other hand, described some of Davis’s cases challenging Michigan’s emergency manager laws as “justified and needed,” crediting him with challenging the “Republican power base in Lansing.” Even some critics acknowledge that he reads statutes carefully and identifies real violations others overlook.¹

As of mid-2026, Davis continues to file challenges, pursue appeals, and pull candidates and officials into courtrooms across southeast Michigan.⁸

1
Detroit Free Press. A Felon’s Crusade: Robert Davis vs. Everybody
2
FBI. Highland Park School Board Member Sentenced to 18 Months for Stealing School Funds and Filing False Income Tax Return
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Michigan Public. Robert Davis
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U.S. Department of Justice. Highland Park School Board Member Pleads Guilty to Conversion of School Funds and Filing False Tax Return
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Michigan Courts. Robert Davis v. Highland Park City Clerk, Docket No. 164564
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Michigan Court of Claims. Robert Davis v. Jocelyn Benson, Case No. 25-00083-MZ
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Detroit Free Press. Robert Davis Challenges Jenkins, Craig, Durhal Detroit Candidates
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ClickOnDetroit. Court Challenge Threatens Highland Park Mayoral Ballot Ahead of August Primary
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Deadline Detroit. Activist Robert Davis’s Latest Legal Battle Involves Judges, County Commissioners, and an Ex-Macomb Prosecutor
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Detroit News. Judge Weighs Restricting Critic From Suing, Requesting Records From Wayne County