Staying Mum

Officially, Jennifer Belveal leads Foley & Lardner’s Government Enforcement Defense and Investigations practice in Detroit. Unofficially, she says, “People pay me to be nosy and find out the truth.”

Fascinated by mysteries and the facts that unspool from them after some concerted, intelligent digging, Belveal, who has had her eyes trained on the law since she was 12, finds a certain “glamor and glitz” in getting to the bottom of things.

“I spend my professional time investigating facts and then trying to figure out how to solve the problems that those facts create,” she says. “I get to investigate things without wearing a badge. I’m sure if you asked my kids, who are now 19 and 22, they’d likely tell you I honed my investigations skills on them.”

Her work spans the globe, in areas like theft, fraud, public corruption and bribery, even matters of national security. “The common thread to all of these cases is that they involve power in one form or another, whether it’s the abuse of power or people trying to get power,” Belveal says, “which usually plays out in the form of money, sex, or both.”

Although the facts she uncovers can be bombshells, Belveal works in stealthy quiet.

“My best work the public never hears about, because if a matter goes well, I investigate it, and I help resolve or solve a problem without anyone ever knowing,” she says. “The cases that I get the privilege of working on are often highly sensitive and carry great importance. The reputation and the livelihood of [my clients] are completely on the line in what is often a win- or lose-all situation. Most people have no idea what I’m working on unless it happens to be one of those cases that becomes public.”

One example was the Volkswagen “Dieselgate” scandal, in which the German car manufacturer was found to have been cheating emissions tests in the U.S. via “defeat device” software in diesel engines. Belveal represented a pool of employees who were witnesses to the alleged fraud. Another example is her representation of a witness in the University of Michigan’s $490 million sexual assault settlement for victims of Dr. Robert Anderson.

Staying mum while everyone is talking about your work can be a challenge. In the late 2000s, Belveal represented a witness in a federal public-corruption case involving a Detroit city official who was accused of taking bribes.

“I had a key witness who allegedly paid the bribe to this official, and it was all over the news, every single day, for weeks, if not months,” she says. One day, as she was driving home from work, the hosts of the radio station she was listening to were discussing the case.

“The radio show host said, and I will never forget this, ‘I wonder who this businessperson’s slick attorney is, because that guy pulled off a miracle to get his client immunity,’” Belveal recalls. “The host went on to say, ‘I want to meet you, Mr. Attorney. So if you’re out there listening, please call.’ I wanted to call and say, ‘Excuse me, it’s Ms. Attorney, and I wasn’t slick—I worked awful damn hard to marshal the facts in a way that was extremely helpful to the government and their prosecution of this official.’ But I guess I missed out on a marketing opportunity.”       

A similar restraint was on display in the fall of 2023.

“It’s about to be Michigan State football time, people are talking about coach Mel Tucker and looking forward to the season, and I thought to myself, ‘If you had any idea,’” says Belveal, who took his case and was months deep into an investigation by the university into sexual misconduct allegations against the head football coach. “This was well before anything went public. I would just have to excuse myself from all conversations [about Michigan State football].”

On Sept. 10, 2023, USA Today published a story about Tucker and his alleged misconduct toward Brenda Tracy, a rape survivor and advocate who works with schools to educate athletes about sexual violence. Tucker was suspended without pay and eventually terminated prior to any hearings, a decision Belveal says was inconsistent with the university’s own statement about how the process would proceed.

“Mel Tucker’s case was probably the most intense public media frenzy of any of the matters that I’ve ever worked on,” she says. “And that is because of the public’s insatiable interest in the power dynamics of that case, which involved the two keys: money [Tucker’s contract] and sex. Representing Coach Tucker was extremely challenging because it was thrust into the spotlight, resulting in this avalanche of inquiries and opinions all over the place, both in metro Detroit and nationally. Of course, the story is not over.”

Tracy alleges that during an Apr. 28, 2022 phone call with Tucker, he masturbated and made sexual comments to her, both of which she says were uninvited. Tucker has always maintained his actions on the call, and their relationship to that point, were consensual.

Belveal spent nine months investigating the case, which at publication time was still in progress. Though she has spent her career separating herself from her work, this time has been harder. “I went to Michigan State as an undergraduate, and I am a Spartan in my heart of hearts,” Belveal says. “Personally, it has been a huge weight to deal with a university that I love and have always very much supported. … Right now, it’s really difficult to muster a ‘Go Green’ given what my client’s been through, and is still going through.”