Guilty verdicts a stain on Marty’s administration
The convictions of two top aides to Mayor Marty Walsh in the Boston Calling extortion case cuts to the heart of Walsh’s leadership and could embolden prosecutors to look more closely at Walsh’s close ties to organized labor.
The guilty verdicts against Kenneth Brissette for extortion and conspiracy and Timothy Sullivan for conspiracy is a stain on the Walsh administration and a devastating personal blow to Walsh, who has stood by his two top aides and maintained their innocence.
Walsh, the former head of the Building Trades Union, has accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in union contributions during his long political career and as a state legislator filed bills that would have benefited organized labor.
Now that closeness could prompt renewed scrutiny from federal authorities.
Brissette and Sullivan didn’t testify in the trial, but it’s possible that U.S. Attorney Andrew Lelling could try to extract more information out of them in exchange for lighter sentences.
The verdicts were a huge victory for Lelling’s office, which had drawn some criticism for going after Brissette and Sullivan despite the fact that they got no money in the extortion plot.
Prosecutors throughout the two-week trial brought up Walsh’s name and sought to show that Brissette, the tourism chief, and Sullivan, director of intergovernmental relations, were doing Walsh’s bidding when they extorted the music festival promoters to hire unneeded union labor.
Walsh’s policy chief, Joyce Linehan, testified she used private email to keep Walsh in the loop about a push from a labor union to hire their workers for the concert. But she said “it wasn’t fair” to ask them to hire more union stage hands just weeks before the event.
Asked why prosecutors repeatedly invoked Walsh’s name during the trial, Lelling said it was “inevitable.”
“Part of the case involved discussion of one of the mayor’s priorities, which is to support union labor,” he said. “So to that extent, it would have been impossible to not discuss that aspect of the case.”
Brissette and Sullivan have now resigned but the mayor steadfastly kept the two aides on the city’s payroll for nearly three years while their case wound through the legal system.
“I am surprised and disappointed (at the verdicts),” Walsh said in a statement. “I have made clear from the beginning that there is only one way to do things in my Administration and that is the right way. I have always believed that their hearts were in the right place … .”
Hearts in the right place? Please. We’re talking about conspiracy.
The trial was a rocky one for Walsh, who is in the middle of his second term but may face a challenge in 2021 from an array of possible opponents, including rising star City Councilor At-Large Michelle Wu.
Walsh himself was on the witness list but prosecutors decided not to call him, avoiding what would have been an unwanted spectacle and possibly embarrassing questions.
But the testimony exposed Walsh as a mayor whose aides readily sought to use their influence to force Boston Calling to hire nine union stage hands.