I’ve always thought this 2010 photograph from The Sun of Lowell is one of those pictures that’s worth a thousand words.
Now it’s worth 2,000 words, maybe more.
Whatever else happens to Speaker Bob DeLeo, this is his legacy. He’s the unindicted co-conspirator. This is what he gets for his $300,000 in legal fees last year — the lead of his obituary.
“Ex-House Speaker Robert ?DeLeo, who was once named as an unindicted co-conspirator …”
Very appropriately, the photo was taken at a funeral. At the time, we just didn’t know it was ?DeLeo’s.
This picture reminds me of the Three Musketeers, who as you recall, were four guys really, not three.
It was D’Artagnan and his pals, the three musketeers. Charlie Flaherty, Tom Finneran and Sal DiMasi — all for one and one for all and yes, Your Honor, I do understand the charges against me, and ?I am pleading guilty of my own free will, and no I am not under the influence of drugs. …
The new guy on the block was D’Artagnan. D’Artagnan DeLeo.
It doesn’t seem quite fair that Billy Burke and Elizabeth Tavares went down with John O’Brien, the capo di tutti hacki. They were just following orders. It was business as usual at the State House. ?Unfortunately for Burke and ?Tavares, they didn’t draw a jury ?of their peers.
A jury of their peers would have been hacks.
Just because the lawyers say that everybody does it, that doesn’t make it right. And the fact that D’Artagnan DeLeo and Pierre Petrolati and the sanctimonious judges like Robert Mulligan and all the rest of them weren’t in the dock didn’t mean squat to the non-hack jury.
The Probation Department was a racketeering enterprise and it smelled to high heaven. So the jurors took it out on the only targets they had.
Some are already wondering if O’Brien can now be flipped to testify against D’Artagnan DeLeo. Look, if Eric Holder was going to permit Carmen Ortiz, et al. to ?indict another Democrat speaker, they would have signed off on it a year ago.
How much time is O’Brien looking at, anyway? His lawyers say 18 months, tops. His family is all hacks — O’Brien’s downfall started in this newspaper, remember, when we reported he was raising money for his neighbor Tim Cahill, who reciprocated by hiring both O’Brien’s fainting wife and one of his good-looking daughters.
The State House is organized crime, and since it’s our money, not theirs, the bosses don’t mind taking care of the family you leave behind when you go to the can. John O’Brien won’t be the first hack to dummy up and reap a rich reward. Why do you think we never got Crash Murray’s cell phone records? Somebody got taken care of, but good, and it was all legit. Totally unethical, but totally legal.
The real question is, does some Republican lawmaker have the stones to file a complaint against DeLeo with the House Ethics Committee? Nothing will come of it, of course — right, John Fresolo? — but at least it will keep the heat on him to some degree, and it’ll run up his legal tab even further.
It’s better than nothing. Not much, but a little.