During her regular monthly appearance on GBH’s “Boston Public Radio” Tuesday, Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey pushed back at a recent Boston Globe report which suggested her office has steered clear of prosecuting cases referred by the state’s Office of Campaign and Political Finance.
“Our office takes these referrals seriously,” Healey said. “We put in the same work to review all the material and all the evidence for each and every referral that’s sent our way from OCPF. And we base our decision based on the facts and the law.”
"If there were an appropriate case for either civil or criminal enforcement, we would have done that,” Healey added.
According to the Globe, OCPF sent Healey evidence of 13 cases of possible campaign-finance lawbreaking during her first six years in office, none of which has resulted in a lawsuit or prosecution.
Healey was also asked, during Tuesday's interview, about the possibility of an independent investigation in the death of 16-year-old Mikayla Miller of Hopkinton, which was ruled a suicide by the state medical examiner. Miller’s mother and others have questioned the integrity of the investigation currently being led by Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan, and in a May 20 appearance on Boston Public Radio, Gov. Charlie Baker suggested that an independent investigation would be appropriate and that Healey could lead it.
Healey, however, said that right now, any such move would be premature.
“Her family deserves answers,” Healey said. “[But] the entity with explicit statutory authority, the entity required to investigate unattended death is the district attorney’s office. District Attorney Ryan’s office has an active investigation ongoing right now.
“It is hard for me to comment about any details of the case while it is ongoing, but certainly I have been in touch, and we are closely monitoring and awaiting what comes out in terms of information,” she added. “In terms of what happens from there, I think we need to let DA Ryan’s investigation continue and be completed.”
Asked by co-host Jim Braude if her office has any role to play in the possible removal of Boston Police Commissioner Dennis White — who was placed on leave over past domestic-violence allegations shortly after taking that role, and is now fighting Acting Mayor Kim Janey’s administration in court in an attempt to keep his job — Healey said, effectively: no.
“I think it’s clear that this shouldn’t have happened. He should not have been put into this position in the first place,” Healey said. “The fact is, it’s now in litigation. The community deserves answers. … This was a huge failing, and there needs to be transparency. There needs to be accountability.”
Healey did not respond to a listener who asked whether U.S. Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, who appointed White at the very end of his tenure as mayor of Boston, should resign if he knew of the allegations against White before picking him to lead the BPD, as former BPD Commissioner William Gross recently claimed in a court filing.
Healey also weighed in on a recent Globe Spotlight report suggesting that Baker and Marylou Sudders, the state’s secretary of health and human services, were more closely linked to management problems at the Holyoke Soldiers Home than they have acknowledged, and that the Baker administration’s investigation into a lethal COVID-19 outbreak there effectively protected them from full accountability.
“It certainly is an eye-opening and heart wrenching account of the many failures that led to the devastating and deadly COVID outbreak at the Soldier’s Home,” Healey said.
“We’ve criminally charged Bennet Walsh and David Clinton, who was the chief medical officer,” she added. “Our case against them is ongoing. … “The [story] was disturbing, and more information I think was made available publicly that had not been out there, and I think people need to answer for that. Families who lost loved ones, as well as the public, deserve answers.”
