BAKER OWES US ANSWER
Investigation details should be released
The state Democratic Party, desperate to gain any traction in the governor’s race, is now getting personal — asking Gov. Charlie Baker to come clean about the sexual assault investigation into his son.
This is politics in the postKavanaugh era.
Democrats have failed to link Baker to President Trump. They’ve failed to get their nominee, Jay Gonzalez, close to Baker in the polls. They can’t compete with Baker on fundraising.
So the party of Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton and Keith Ellison, feeding off the #MeToo movement, is trying to draw Baker and his son into a campaign spat in the middle of a public furor over Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Is this a blatant attempt to take advantage of the Kavanaugh frenzy and politicize a woman’s claim that A.J. Baker groped her aboard a Jet Blue flight back in June? Yes, it is.
But does the Democratic Party have a point? Yes.
“Governor Baker should be transparent with the public,” said Veronica Martinez, executive director of the Mass Dems. “Did the investigation that he referenced three months ago happen?
If so, what was the outcome? If no investigation took place, why? The public deserves full transparency.”
Well, we can already answer two of those questions.
There was an investigation — A.J. Baker’s lawyer confirmed that he was cooperating with the
U.S.
Attorney’s office.
What we don’t know is the end result of that investigation, and on that question the Democrats are right. The public does deserve to know the outcome of this case considering it involves the son of the governor.
State police are prevented by law from releasing reports about a sexual assault, so that’s not going to happen. And the U.S. Attorney’s office has a policy of only announcing when charges have been filed — not confirming whether an investigation took place.
But Baker or his son’s lawyer should say whether the case was closed, and if the U.S. Attorney’s office found any evidence of assault. There is nothing preventing them from doing that.
If Baker’s side continues to remain silent, the public will never fully know what happened or if the governor’s son was treated with kid gloves because of the office his father holds. The public will never know if the woman who made the complaint was treated fairly.
Baker cannot be held responsible for what his son did but he can be held accountable for any actions he took to help his son. He has already stated that the case was referred to the U.S. Attorney’s office, and he had no role in the case. But the state police handled the initial complaint, so there was some state involvement in the investigation.
So why the continued silence? The Herald tried to ask Baker about the investigation recently, and he ducked into his SUV. Not exactly the kind of transparency that Baker likes to talk about.
The public does deserve to know the outcome of this case considering it involves the son of the governor.