Extortion charges against mayor’s aides dismissed

BOSTON (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday dismissed charges against two Boston mayor’s aides accused of bullying music festival organizers into hiring union workers by withholding city permits.

Judge Leo Sorokin’s ruling comes days before Kenneth Brissette and Timothy Sullivan’s closely watched extortion trial was set to begin in Boston’s federal courthouse. Prosecutors, who complained the judge’s proposed jury would sink their case, didn’t fight the dismissal, but indicated they would seek an appeal.

Prosecutors said Brissette and Sullivan told organizers of the 2014 Boston Calling music festival — Crash Line Productions — that if they didn’t hire from the union, workers would picket and bring a giant inflatable rat, “which would be a problem for both Crash Line and the mayor.”

Crash Line ultimately agreed to hire a handful of union workers and got the necessary permits, court documents say.

Prosecutors disputed the judge’s proposed jury instructions on the definition of “obtaining” property — in this case, wages from the union jobs — under anti-extortion law.

The judge said the government would have to show that the men personally benefited from the hiring of the union workers, but prosecutors said that reading was too restrictive and would prevent them from putting on their case.

In court documents, prosecutors suggested the men may have personally benefited because Democratic Mayor Marty Walsh was backed by several unions during his campaign and “some members of his administration assumed that unions would be among his preferred constituents.”

Walsh was head of an umbrella group of local construction unions before he took office in 2014.

In his ruling Thursday, the judge called the matter an “unusual case” and said the dispute over the legal standard should be settled first to spare the court and the public the expense of a trial.