Prosecutors: Union activity not linked to City Hall permit case

Federal prosecutors are fighting to keep the case against two City Hall insiders alive, arguing that the case has nothing to do with union organizing, according to filings.

Defendants Kenneth Brissette and Timothy Sullivan told a judge they were indicted on a theory of culpability that has since been invalidated by both a jury and a federal appeals court.

But federal prosecutor Laura Kaplan disagrees.

“If the defendants had threatened to withhold permits or a licensing agreement in order to obtain wages and benefits for their friends or relatives, surely there would be no question that such conduct would constitute extortion under the Hobbs Act,” she wrote. “While their ‘friends’ in this case happen to be union members, that is legally irrelevant, since the defendants were not union members nor were they acting as union agents within the meanings of federal labor law.”

Brissette and Sullivan face charges they pressured a production company into hiring unwanted union workers for the 2014 Boston Calling music festival at City Hall Plaza. Brissette, Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s director of tourism, sports and entertainment, and Sullivan, chief of staff of intergovernmental affairs, face up to 20 years behind bars if convicted. Their trial is set to begin on March 26.

The defense teams are pressing Judge Leo Sorokin for access to the minutes from the federal grand jury that charged their clients last year in order to find out what prosecutors told grand jurors to persuade them to return indictments — and whether it now justifies dismissing the case.

Kaplan said the defendants should not see the instructions.

“Defendants’ request for disclosure of the legal instructions is really another way for them to argue that there is insufficient evidence to support the allegations that they were involved in a conspiracy to extort Crash Line of its wages and employee benefits and wages and benefits pursuant to a labor contract,” she argued.

Last fall, a federal appeals court threw out the extortion convictions of Teamsters Joseph Burhoe and John Perry, finding they had a legitimate labor objective. Last summer, a federal jury acquitted four other Teamsters accused of menacing the cast and crew of the hit Bravo series “Top Chef” for trucking jobs that had already been filled by nonunion hires.