‘THE FIGHT CONTINUES’ AFTER CONVICTIONS
Former top Walsh aides vowing appeal of extortion trial outcome
Two former City Hall officials vowed to fight their convictions on conspiracy to commit extortion after a jury’s verdict was issued to a stunned courtroom Wednesday in U.S. District Court.
Kenneth Brissette, the city’s former tourism chief, and Timothy Sullivan, ex-head of intergovernmental affairs, were both found guilty on the conspiracy count. Brissette was additionally found guilty on an extortion charge.
The pair — who resigned Wednesday, a city official said — were accused of pressuring Crash Line Productions to hire unnecessary union stagehands for a 2014 Boston Calling concert at City
Hall Plaza.
A woman in the courtroom broke into tears and supporters of Brissette and Sullivan consoled each other as a courtroom clerk read the verdict issued by the eight women and four men of the jury. Brissette and his attorneys, with a somber look, did not comment as they left the courthouse.
Sullivan briefly spoke as he walked down the street, saying the ruling was disappointing.
“Obviously glad to have a resolution, not this resolution and just have to fight a little longer to prove what happened,” Sullivan said. “I did nothing wrong.”
“The fight continues,” his attorney, Thomas Kiley, said outside the courthouse. “It’s a sad day in the sense that we only got half a loaf today, but it was a significant half a loaf.”
Federal Judge Leo Sorokin will hear a motion for acquittal, and defense attorneys can file a motion for a new trial by Aug. 21.
Prosecutors argued to jurors that Brissette and Sullivan forced Crash Line to hire union stagehands three days before the concert as a form of payback to a union that was a political ally of their boss, Mayor Martin Walsh.
Walsh, who was named on a witness list, did not testify in the trial and said in a statement he was “surprised and disappointed” by the verdict.
“I have always believed that their hearts were in the right place,” Walsh added.
The government called several current and former city officials to testify, some under immunity, about their relationship with Brissette and Sullivan and their knowledge of the pair’s dealings with Crash Line, a deal a prosecutor called a “shakedown.”
Attorneys for Brissette and Sullivan didn’t deny their clients asked Crash Line to hire the union stagehands, but argued their request wasn’t “wrongful,” a burden to meet for the Hobbs act charges. Defense attorneys argued their clients were attempting to avoid a picket and inflatable rat meant to symbolize bad employers at the concert if union workers weren’t hired.
U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling, in a press conference after the verdict, declined to comment when asked if he thought the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office or the Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office should have handled the case.
“My point is not to be critical of the Suffolk DA’s office or the AG’s office,” Lelling said. “But just to note that when it comes to these kinds of cases, it’s usually we do them or nobody does them.”
Lelling did not say if other investigations arose from this case, and said Walsh’s name being brought up was inevitable given the defendant’s positions, but didn’t comment further.
Steven Tolman, president of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO where Sullivan was formerly a director, knocked the verdict.
“I can say without question that this decision is an outright attack on working people and the people of Boston,” Tolman said.
Neither the union from which stagehands were hired nor Crash Line organizers responded to requests for comment.