News, Culture and NPR for Central & Northern Michigan
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
91.7FM Alpena and WCML-TV Channel 6 Alpena are off the air. Click here to learn more.

MSP investigating graphic and racist voicemail left for State Rep. Cynthia Johnson

Dodge Charger Michigan State Police car by Corvair Owner is licensed with CC BY-SA 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

Michigan State Police are investigating a graphic and racist voicemail left for State Representative Cynthia Johnson, but she says she will not back down.

The Detroit lawmaker has been here before. Late last year, Johnson faced criticism and drew a rebuke from state Republicans, after a heavily-edited video made the rounds on conservative media, where she responded to death threats she had received. It appeared Johnson was advocating violence against Trump supporters. The full video gave proper context to her statement. And for a while things quieted down, but now the threats against her have started again.

“It'd be more fun more sportin’ like if you'd run and we could shoot ya.”

Johnson says nothing has changed. She’ll always speak truth to power.

“I don't care who you are, if you do wrong and it's going to harm people, our people, any people, I'm going to expose you period.”

Michigan State Police would only say they are looking into the matter.