Longtime Detroit journalist Charlie LeDuff is charged with domestic violence in an incident with his wife at their Oakland County home.
Judge Jamie Powell Horowitz of the 45th District Court allowed LeDuff to be released on $5,000 bail. Under the terms of his release, he cannot contact his wife or return to their home in Pleasant Ridge.
LeDuff remained silent during his arraignment Tuesday. His attorney, Todd Perkins, pleaded not guilty on his behalf.
“This is a man who loves his family,” Perkins told the Free Press after the hearing. He said he and his client tried to keep the matter “as private as possible.”
LeDuff is the host of the weekly podcast “No BS News Hour With Charlie LeDuff.”
He is a controversial print and television journalist known for his unconventional reporting, often driven by opinions and his own personality, and often targeting local politicians. He has worked for the New York Times, the Detroit News, Fox 2 and other media outlets.
He was fired as a columnist at the Detroit News in October after he appeared on the social media platform.)
LeDuff told the Detroit Metro Times he thought the insult was “clever” since his weekly Detroit News column appeared on Tuesdays.
The tagline for the last column he wrote for the Detroit News on October 17 stated that his column appeared on Wednesdays.
“I don't apologize. I don't have to apologize for anything. … I stand by it,” he told Metro Times.
Early in his career, LeDuff apologized for plagiarism after removing passages from a non-fiction book.
He won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 as the author of the New York Times series “How Race Is Lived In America.”
In 2012, he was sued over a story by Cindy Pasky, president and CEO of Strategic Staffing Solutions, while she was working for Fox 2. The broadcaster and Pasky reached an agreement; The station retracted the story and apologized on television.
In 2013, he was accused of urinating in public during Detroit's St. Patrick's Day parade and then biting a security guard, although charges were never filed.
In recent years, LeDuff has been accused of using right-wing rhetoric to attract a conservative fan base, an allegation he denied this month during an appearance on Detroit Free Press investigative columnist ML Elrick's podcast “ML's Soul of Detroit.”
Andrea Sahouri covers criminal justice for the Detroit Free Press. She can be contacted at 313-264-0442 or [email protected].