Now, Tracy is claiming that Jones Day’s involvement in the suit represents a conflict of interest.

The firm was previously hired by MSU to independently investigate whether someone associated with the university, including the trustees, leaked the existence of the investigation into Tucker or Tracy’s name. That probe, which ended in December 2023, was ultimately unable to conclude whether someone at MSU was behind the leak, and found no evidence that any trustee knew Tracy’s identity as the complainant before her name became public.

That previous working relationship, Tracy said in an amended complaint filed Saturday in federal court, means that Jones Day has conflicting interests that would require the firm to discredit its own findings or undermine Tracy by “leveraging confidential information” obtained during its previous investigation.

University spokesperson Amber McCann declined to comment on the filing, citing pending litigation.

Ethical standards in the legal profession require attorneys to avoid representing a client when the attorney’s responsibilities to another client, a former client or a third party can jeopardize the attorney’s ability to represent their client. Large firms like Jones Day, which has over 2,500 lawyers across 40 offices, are required to avoid conflicting loyalties within their firm. 

“If one lawyer in a firm has a conflict, all the lawyers in the firm have a conflict, for the most part,” said University of Illinois Chicago Law Professor Megan Bess.

MSU's decision to retain the same firm behind the initial investigation “eyebrow-raising," Bess said, though it's unlikely that Jones Day has a material conflict of interest in the case. It's possible that MSU simply picked the firm because its lawyers would be more familiar with the information relevant to the case, she said.

“Even though MSU paid for them,” Bess said of the 2023 investigation, “in that role, their only loyalty was to the truth.”

One potential concern Bess raised was that the Jones Day attorneys could hypothetically use information they uncovered during the original investigation but never reported to aid their present-day defense.

Terri Chase, the Jones Day attorney representing the university, did not respond to requests for comment before publication. Karen Truskowski, Tracy’s attorney, declined to comment.

The filing also alleges that the university’s handling of Tracy’s complaint against Tucker was “heavily influenced” by another conflict of interest: An apparent desire to satisfy MSU alum and superdonor Mat Ishbia.

According to the filing, the Title IX Coordinator overseeing the investigation into Tracy’s complaint failed to inform Tracy that David Zacks, the now-deceased general counsel for a company owned by Ishbia, was representing Tucker in the investigation. That concealment, Tracy said, “created, at minimum, the appearance of donor-driven influence and institutional bias.”

The amended complaint continues to accuse Trustees Rema Vassar and Dennis Denno, who are named as defendants in their official and individual capacities, of conspiring to retaliate against Tracy and interfere with her nonprofit and speaking venture. It asserts that the trustees’ actions furthering this conspiracy included “filing disparaging pleadings, leaking to media, and disclosing private facts.”

Trustees Vassar and Denno did not respond to request for comment before publication.

Tracy’s updated complaint comes three weeks after the university attempted to have her lawsuit thrown out. MSU’s motion to dismiss claimed that Tracy was seeking to turn the university's firing of Tucker into “her own multi-million-dollar windfall.”