When you sign the kind of document our mayor signed to aid the FBI and the Justice Department in its dogged effort during the past 6 years to uncover municipal corruption in Everett and with the city’s casino land deal, eyebrows will be raised, and justifiably.
By agreeing to give the FBI information relative to the investigations that have been ongoing, and which apparently remain ongoing, the mayor is one step short of having signed an immunity agreement which would have made him, literally, immune to prosecution for any crimes he may have committed in return for his testimony about crimes committed by others about which he is aware.
The mayor signed what the US Attorney’s office describes as a “proffer.”
“The government may make derivative use of, or may pursue any investigative leads suggested by, any statements made or other information provided by Carlo DeMaria, Jr. in the course of the proffer,” reads the document, which the Leader Herald is in possession of.
The agreement, however, does not protect the mayor from the information he gave to the government from being used against him.
To that group of individuals close with the mayor, who allegedly had private dealings with him regarding the casino land deal, the proffer should come as a shocking revelation.
The mayor’s loyalty to those friends, associates and consultants he has done business with should and will be questioned.
In this instance, we congratulate the mayor for his willingness to cooperate with the
government as it was and is the right thing to do for him to stay out of the way of a prosecution but also for his willingness to give up the bad guys.
This news will cause some of the mayor’s friends and former consultants a great deal of consternation to understand that their dealings with him may not be exclusively private.
This revelation tells a story about the mayor in a city where loyalty, above all, being a stand up guy, above all, is the measure of the man seated in the corner office.
Questions will be asked and we suspect, the mayor will be hard pressed to give an answer.
Such are the difficulties the mayor is now facing.