An attorney representing thousands of children affected by the water crisis in Flint, Michigan is catching heat for comments he made about the city during a podcast.
In a resurfaced podcast clip, attorney Corey Stern can be heard calling Flint a "s-hole" on a 2018 episode of the "Race Wars," per the Atlanta Black Star.
Stern made the comment while discussing his love for U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders.
“In 2016, when Bernie ran against Hillary … I had a T-shirt, my kids had T-shirts, we were all Bernie people,” Stern said in 2018. “So, I like Bernie. In 2016, I’m like in Flint, Michigan, fighting for these kids. I’m spending time there; it’s a s–hole, and nobody wants to be there. I’m there every week.”
During the podcast, Stern also suggested that a settlement for the young children affected by the water crisis be structured so that they “have some steady stream of income" over their lifetime.
“Especially if these kids had arrested development once they had the lead poisoning, you got a 13-year-old ….now he got a $2 million check, it’s gonna be some dead prostitutes,” the podcast host said.
“And a lot of cocaine,” Stern added as laughter is heard on the podcast.
In a statement, a spokesperson for Veolia North America, one of the Flint contractors that Stern is suing, said the attorney “was exposed for making derogatory comments about his clients and the city of Flint, even as their case has made him and his fellow lawyers nearly two hundred million dollars.”
Stern said the contractor was attempting to "shift the narrative" by taking his comments out of context.
“For years, Veolia has used a public relations machine to shift the narrative from their role in the Flint Water Crisis. In Veolia’s latest PR maneuver, it is peddling to the media a four-second snippet from a five-year-old podcast," Stern said.
“In that podcast, which lasted over an hour, I talked at length about the damage caused by childhood lead poisoning and the tragic outcomes likely to occur for kids in Flint. But, Veolia denies that any children were lead poisoned in Flint and even denies that the water was unsafe. Instead, Veolia continues to attempt to distract from its role in the Water Crisis by attacking the lawyers representing the victims."
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