Campaign Finance Prosecutions Stopped Under Healey: Report

BOSTON —In the six years she has been Massachusetts Attorney General, Maura Healey has not taken legal action in any of the 13 cases where evidence of violations of campaign finance law were turned over by the state Office of Campaign and Political Finance.

According to the Boston Globe, which first reported this story, four of the investigations are active and one was turned over to an outside prosecutor after Healey recused herself. In the other eight cases, Healey's office said legal action was "not warranted." Campaign finance regulators, however, say there was evidence of wrongdoing in those cases.

"This has so many gaps. And this is not the statute speaking — these are manmade gaps," Maurice Cunningham, a University of Massachusetts Boston professor who regularly writes about state campaign finance law, told the newspaper. "You can do something serious enough to get referred to the AG and then have no enforcement action whatsoever? It’s really a sweet spot."

Healey's predecessor, Martha Coakley, secured at least three criminal convictions and took action on several other campaign finance law violations during her six years in office.

For more on this story, see the Boston Globe.