Sen. Wilkerson: ‘Back off my children’

Howard Manly

In her first public defense against charges of campaign finance improprieties and what she called “deliberate and illegal leaks” about her son’s arrest record, state Senator Dianne Wilkerson lashed out against state Attorney General Thomas Reilly, arguing that his office “wholly misrepresented the facts.”

Particularly troubling, Wilkerson said as she stood before scores of community leaders at the Morning Star Baptist Church, were the comments made by Reilly to the media in which he alleged that Wilkerson had failed to respond to repeated requests for information over a five-year period.

“I suspect many of you, even my most diehard supporters, must have shaken their heads when you read of the attorney general’s complaint,” Wilkerson said. “In both his press release and his direct comments to the press, Riley stated frustration after repeated requests for information concerning my 2000 campaign filings that I was ‘unwilling or unable’ to produce.”

Wilkerson made it clear that that was not true.

“The substance of the complaint filed by the AG, however, was not over requests made by the AG over a five-year period, was not discussed for five years, nor ever requested and the facts and the documents will bear this out… I do not know whether the AG’s statement was based on his own assessment or what was reported by his staff but what is clear is that the facts were wholly misrepresented to the court and to the public.”

Most troublesome to Wilkerson was the handling of her son, Cornel Mills who recently acquired a job at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office as a civilian homicide investigator. But after he was hired, the Boston Globe published a story on Nov. 11 detailing Mill’s arrest record.

“Particularly egregious about the article is that my son has no convictions, is not a public official and the only newsworthy fact about the story was that he was my son,” Wilkerson said. “But the damage is done and I’m asking you all to back off my children. And my family.”

According to the Criminal History Systems Board’s website, it is a crime punishable by one year in a house of correction and/or a $5,000 fine to willfully request, obtain, or seek to obtain criminal background information under false pretenses. It’s also a crime to willfully communicate or seek to communicate such information to any agency or person not authorized to receive CORI reports. The CHSB may also require civil fines not to exceed the amount of $500 for each willful violation.

Suffolk County District Attorney Dan Conley and Boston Police Commissioner Kathleen O’Toole were unavailable to confirm or deny separate investigations into the unauthorized leaks.

During the news conference, Wilkerson was visibly agitated over what she characterized as a “series of negative, harmful and ugly string of press stories.”

“I do not believe that this is any conspiracy but rather a continuation of the free for all environment that has built up over time,” she said. “As an elected official, I’ve always believed and said that as public officials we should accept a higher level of public scrutiny. But it simply cannot be that the rules are only made for me.”

Wilkerson has been the subject of several investigations since her first election in 1992. The most serious problem occurred in 1997 when she was sentenced to six months house detention and forced to pay a $2,000 fine after pleading guilty to four misdemeanor charges for failing to file federal income taxes between 1991 and 1994.

In 1998 Wilkerson and her campaign committee agreed to pay back unaccounted expenditures and $11,500 in civil penalties.

But in the most recent complaint, filed in September in Suffolk Superior Court, Reilly and the Office of Campaign and Political Finance took pains to demonstrate their patience. “The prolonged noncompliance of Wilkerson and her committee with these requirements… has made it impossible for OCPF to determine, and for the citizens of the Commonwealth to ascertain, how and from whom Wilkerson, as a member of the Senate, raised campaign funds, and to whom and for what purposes the Committee paid those funds out,” the complaint said.

Reilly went even further. He said in a statement at the time that Wilkerson was to blame for not cooperating with his office.

“After repeated attempts by OCPF and my office to have the senator clear up the discrepancies in her campaign account, it became clear that she was not going to do so,” Reilly said. “It is unfortunate that Senator Wilkerson allowed this situation to reach this point, but I am committed to do what is necessary to make sure that our campaign finance laws are enforced.”

In her defense, Wilkerson said that she received a “draft” complaint in December 2004 that detailed several possible violations. Wilkerson also said that she received a letter in July 2005 in which she answered several alleged violations. But what Wilkerson said was a violation of standard legal practices, the most recent complaint contained supposedly new violations that neither Reilly nor the state campaign office made available to her before its release to the public or filed in court.

“Those who insist I must follow the rules must also follow those same rules and the rules don’t allow the Attorney General to pursue action against me without first giving me the opportunity to respond to any questions,” Wilkerson said. “Nor does it allow him to request things from me that no one else is obligated to produce or even maintain.”