WGBH News' Adam Reilly spoke with Morning Edition about the indictment of former state senator Brian Joyce and what it could mean for state politics. This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Joe Mathieu: Lawmakers on Beacon Hill are hoping this week will not be as rocky as last. As WGBH News has been reporting, the Senate Ethics Committee is set to name an independent investigator to look into former Senate President Stan Rosenberg — at least sidelined for now in the midst of this investigation — and his husband Bryon Hefner, for possible influence peddling. Hefner is accused of leveraging his influence with Rosenberg in exchange for sexual favors. And of course we ended the week with this: (audio clip) “Former Massachusetts state Senator Brian Joyce was arrested by federal authorities and charged with multiple counts of using his State Senate office for private gain.”

Allegations in the indictment outlined in a more than 100-page report, and we have a lot to unpack here on a Monday morning. Joining us in studio [is] WGBH News Reporter Adam Reilly, who also hosts our politics podcast “The Scrum.” Good morning. Adam, welcome back.

Adam Reilly: Joe, how's it going?

JM: Well, we've got a lot to talk about here. First of all, tell us about Joyce's time in the legislature — we're talking about a former leader.

AR: Former assistant majority leader in the Senate. He was also, ironically, at one point, chair of the special committee to improve government. [He] spent nine terms in the legislature, from 1998 to 2017. And as you say, [he] was thought of as a pretty influential guy, a progressive legislator, a big name and the charges against him are really kind of dizzying in their scope and complexity.

JM: Well reading through this indictment will make you go cross-eyed. But it does make you want to call Dunkin Donuts for some reason. But what exactly—

AR: —you feel like five hundred pounds of free coffee?

(cross talk)

JM: —a lot of coffee involved here. What's he being charged for?

AR: I mean it is hard to give a comprehensive rundown in the time we have here. There are 113 separate juries involving political corruption, racketeering, money laundering, honest services, wire fraud and mail fraud, misappropriation of federal funds. I think the best way to synopsize it for people who might be catching up with the story now is that, essentially, he's accused of monetizing his role as a state senator and a prominent politician, figuring out how he could get paid for doing what he should have been doing for free by essentially making it clear that if he received kickbacks, bribes, special compensation — which he then kept secret and took great, went to great pains to keep secret.

That’s one of the things I'm amazed by in this indictment — that he would intervene on behalf of the people who were paying him money. Or giving him free coffee, or giving him a Jeep, as is alleged in one of these cases by say, steering cities and towns in his district to hire a particular energy brokerage to consult on energy issues, by paving the way for development with a local planning board, by writing legislation or sponsoring legislation involving things like clean energy or even franchise law, which is why he allegedly got 500 pounds of free coffee. He worked on legislation that would be beneficial to the Dunkin Donuts franchise owner, who allegedly provided him with that free coffee.

It is, as I was thinking about this last night, it's been hard to know what President Trump means or what he meant as a candidate when he says “drain the swamp.” But I think that the behavior that Brian Joyce is accused of is exactly what that phrase conjures to mind for a lot of people. Dishonest legislators doing work, sponsoring legislation, pushing for certain priorities, not because they believe in them or think they're the right thing to do policy-wise, but because they're getting paid under the table and keeping it—

JM: —personal gain.

AR: Yeah, and you know, one thing that I would add, another thing that struck me reading through this indictment — I covered the corruption trial of former House Speaker Sal DiMasi in which he was convicted a years back, and by comparison with what DiMasi was accused of doing and convicted of doing, DiMasi didn't get much money for the crime he was accused of committing. As I recall it was you know south of $100,000 dollars. Brian Joyce figured out, if prosecutors are correct, he figured out a way to make an awful lot of money, offering his influence to the highest bidder.

And he also took incredible steps, as I mentioned a moment ago, to keep this stuff under wraps. You know, setting up sham retirement accounts, for example, to conceal his purchase of common stock in a company that he was working for in secret, sharing certain things with the State Ethics Commission, but sharing just enough to make it seem like he was doing his job right when allegedly, again, he was doing his job completely wrong. He comes across in the indictment — and he has not yet been convicted— but, he comes across as almost a criminal mastermind. And it's so much more complex than what was alleged in the DiMasi case and ultimately proven.

JM: You know, we've been waiting for some time to find out what was going to happen after the feds raided his law offices- this was years ago and it hits the same week, of all weeks, that this is all happening with Rosenberg and Hefner on Beacon Hill. The politics here you're talking about the swamp, not great.

AR: It's remarkable timing but in terms — it's not great in terms of inspiring public faith in government — however, it's also worth pointing out that this is the sort of thing you could imagine the mass Republican Party making hay of if they were looking to, as Mitt Romney did a while back when he was governor, if they were looking to run a great big slate of Republicans against Democrats, [to] try to, you know, increase their handful of seats in the State House. I don't have the sense at this point that any such effort is in the works.

Republicans were not able to capitalize on a number of previous scandals in the State House: Charlie Flaherty, Sal DiMasi, Tom Finneran. I don't know how much leverage they're going to get out of this. You could also ask yourself, “hey, maybe this will be a play in the governor's race. Maybe Charlie Baker will use this in an argument about why the GOP needs to retain the corner office.” I kind of find it hard to imagine Charlie Baker doing that because a big part of his brand has been his ability to work in a collegial manner with the Democrats on Beacon Hill. So it doesn't look good, it doesn't make people feel good about the way the politicians whose salaries they pay make policy on Beacon Hill, but I'm not sure what the actual sort of concrete political ramifications are going to be at the ballot box.

JM: We're about to find out together here. WGBH’s Adam Reilly spending some time with us on a Monday morning. I will say, before we wrap up here, quickly, it'll be also interesting as he was part of Rosenberg's leadership team, right, and just understanding the relationship between Joyce and Rosenberg.

AR: Yeah, I'm not sure how deep that relationship was. That is something I think that people will be looking into, it's a question that will be asked, but I'm not sure. We'll see if there is another shoe to drop. I don't know that this is going to be front of Rosenberg’s mind at this point, but if it is, I mean that would be a world of trouble.

JM: Something to talk about and read about at wgbhnews.org, where you can always find Adam Riley's work. Thanks for stopping by this morning. 

AR: Thanks, Joe.

JM: You're listening to WGBH's Morning Edition.