WASHINGTON -- A Republican honcho on Capitol Hill vowed Wednesday to hunt down the man who was in charge of Flint, Michigan, when the city's water became poisonous in 2014.
Darnell Earley, the former emergency manager of Flint, didn't show up for a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Wednesday, even after its chairman subpoenaed Earley on Tuesday.
"We're calling on the U.S. Marshals to hunt him down and give him that subpoena," Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) said of the former emergency manager on Wednesday morning, to applause from Flint residents in the audience.
Darnell Earley's lawyer, A. Scott Bolden, told The Huffington Post that he and his client weren't given enough time to prepare for Wednesday's hearing. Bolden said he asked the committee to give him some future dates, and the committee issued its subpoena instead.
"I have not heard back from the committee since then -- other than what I saw on TV, that the chairman indicated that he was going to have to hunt my client down like he was an animal," Bolden said.
"My client's not an animal, and neither am I, and neither one of us are running and hiding from the committee," Bolden said. "We're ready, willing and able to participate, just under reasonable circumstances."
Congressional Democrats, for their part, seemed more annoyed that Chaffetz hadn't called on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) to testify.
Wednesday's hearing delved into the poisoning of Flint's water. A Michigan Department of Environmental Quality official told the committee that the water went bad in 2014, after the city switched to getting water from the Flint River and the department told the city not to treat the new water to make it less corrosive. The river water wound up leaching lead from the city's pipes, resulting in elevated lead in Flint kids' blood.
Earley served as emergency manager at the time, though it's not clear exactly what role he had in the decision-making process. Bolden said the choice to switch to the Flint River as city's water supply was made before Earley's tenure, and that local leaders supported it.
"This wasn't some purposeful decision on his part that was met with a lot of opposition; he was simply implementing the plan that was put in place before him," Bolden said.
City and state officials brushed off residents' complaints that the water looked bad and caused rashes, though officials at the city and state level maintained the water was safe to drink from the time of the switch in 2014 until October of last year, when they admitted the water was unsafe.
"There was nothing that was presented to him, nothing that was reported, no test results that were suggesting that the prior decision should not have been made," Bolden said.
Snyder appointed Earley to run Flint in 2013. He served until January 2015, when Snyder tapped him as manager of Detroit's public school system. Earley announced his resignation from the Detroit schools this week.