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.”
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