TB Investigates

Boston Magazine Interviewed Me About The Rise And Fall Of Monica Cannon-Grant, Universal Hub Publisher Upset That Rachael Rollins Fed Us Information

Aidan KearneyOctober 16, 2022

 

Two years ago we published a blog criticizing Boston Magazine for naming Monica Cannon-Grant one of Boston’s “Best Local Heroes” of 2020.

It was mind boggling for them to do this because just a week earlier we published this blog, which got close to 70K views, and included a video of Monica yelling racial slurs and threatening to murder Congressional candidate Rayla Campbell while accusing her of “riding white penis for a credit score” because her husband is white.

You all know the story by now, so I won’t repeat it, but the entire media was complicit in Monica’s rise to power. It seems Boston Magazine has come to grips with that now that Monica will soon be headed to federal prison, because last month a reporter named Catherine Elton reached out to me about a story she was doing about the rise and fall of Monica. We spoke on the phone for about an hour the first time, and would communicate here and there over the next month whenever she had questions about her story. I told her that her employer was partly responsible for building up this fraudulent soon to be convicted felon, and she acknowledged that fact.

Nevertheless I was happy to participate because the story needed to be told by an institution that once praised Monica. Liberals like to dismiss Turtleboy as right wing propaganda, but hearing it from a media outlet that they trust is important for establishing our legitimacy across party lines.

The story came out last week, and I think it was done fairly. You can read it all here. Elton went to Monica’s house and interviewed her. The cover photo shows the state of disarray in the property (whose value is being destroyed by the minute), as Monica got dressed up for the visit.

 

Many have opined that this article was too sympathetic to Monica, but I disagree. The only part I had an issue with was this:

Her work took on renewed importance in 2015, when she looked on in horror as someone put a gun to her son’s head and pulled the trigger. Though the gun jammed and he managed to escape, Cannon-Grant never forgot that moment and worked even harder to create a safer community.

I guarantee that never happened. Monica is a pathological liar and a drama queen. She has said many times that I send armed Nazis to sit outside her house and threaten her family. I don’t believe for a second that her son, who is actively involved in gang activity in Boston, had a gun pointed at his head by someone who pulled the trigger but forgot to put in bullets.

In my opinion Elton let Monica talk without inserting her own opinions because she knew the readers would reach the same conclusion everyone does when they hear Monica talk. She quoted Monica’s racist rants verbatim and made no excuses for them. She interviewed people who advised Monica over the years and who voiced their frustration that she didn’t listen to anyone’s advice. She even got Diane Wilkerson to roast Monica:

Wilkerson, who is a close family friend and mentor to Crawford, says she called Cannon-Grant and talked to her about the video for an hour and a half, not to attack her but to give her some helpful advice. “She said she was being her true authentic self. ‘A cussing, vile, racist, discriminatory rant is your true self? I don’t think so,’ I said. I told her she was being unprofessional and un-ladylike,” Wilkerson said.

You know you’re a narcissistic ratchet when you’re being called unprofessional and un-ladylike by a woman who will forever be known as the State Senator who went to federal prison for stuffing a bribe from an undercover FBI agent into her bra.

You can hate on Diane Wilkerson all you want, but if there’s one thing you should take advice from her on its things that will put you on the Feds’ radar. And if you’re committing unemployment and mortgage fraud while spending donor money on vacations and nail salons, then you should probably stop making videos where you threaten to murder people for being in interracial relationships. Monica would’ve been able to continue to defraud the community if she had just kept a low profile.

The story also mentions Tito Jackson’s role briefly:

Jackson took her up on the offer. Cannon-Grant volunteered for him and eventually ran his community foundation. He became her mentor, she says. She never received a salary but tells me that because Jackson knew she wasn’t working and had little income, he used some of his donor funds to compensate her for her time. (Jackson declined to comment.)

Tito is one of the only politicians Monica hasn’t publicly blasted for ignoring her, which makes me wonder how much support he is covertly giving her. He showed her how to shake down businesses like the Phantom Gourmet, who gave the gruesome twosome $75K for diversity training after CEO Dave Andelman wrote witty things about COVID lockdowns on Facebook. Tito and Monica spread the vicious lie that 16 year old Mikayla Miller was lynched by white teenagers in Hopkinton, despite a medical examiner’s report showing she committed suicide. He tried to prevent us from protesting against her at VIB’s grand opening in September of 2020.

Now we know that he was paying her, and suddenly he has no comment on the matter. Probably because he’s trying to fleece people to “invest” in his startup marijuana bar at Fanueuil Hall, and can’t publicly be tied to Monica. Wouldn’t surprise me if he’s privately throwing some ends her way, since he seems to be the only one she hasn’t been publicly ripping on.

The article accurately told the story of my involvement with Monica’s fall from grace. It talks about how Jamarhl Crawford, a born and raised black Bostonian who I share nothing in common with politically, reluctantly reached out to me in 2019 abut Monica’s fraud after politicians and other media outlets paid no attention to his concerns.

I remember telling him I’d look into it, but I never got around to it until Monica made the Rayla Campbell video in July 2020. Jamarhl archived every video she posted and put it on on his website Blakstonian.org because she frequently took them down. Without him none of this would’ve happened. Elton told the story about all the work I did researching Monica’s fraud, including public records requests (that the City of Boston only responded to after 11 months because I had the Secretary of State’s Office threaten to sue them), and information that I got from Monica directly herself.

The story points out how I contacted two Boston Globe reporters (Zoe Greenberg and Stephanie Ebert), who had written glowingly about Monica and helped build her up. Neither responded to me, and Greenberg blocked me on Twitter. Like Tito Jackson, they both declined to speak with Boston Magazine about their role in creating this monster.

In a just world they would both be blacklisted for journalistic malfeasance and never allowed to work in the media again. People trusted that their reporting was accurate, and their refusal to tell the truth led to countless people being defrauded. What makes it worse is now that the reckoning has begun they cowardly hide from OTHER media outlets in Boston that helped build Monica up. Receipts:

The Boston Magazine piece included some of my greatest hits:

And I loved this part:

“Kearney didn’t just stay behind a computer screen.”

Let it be known to anyone who thinks that I hide behind a computer – I will confront anyone I blog about directly to their face, anywhere, any time. I fear no one because I am armed with the truth. Monica tried her best to scare and intimidate me, but it only strengthened my resolve to bring her to justice.

The part of the story that has caused the most controversy is when I talked about US Attorney Rachael Rollins helping Rayla and I by letting us know where Monica would be:

It should be noted that Rollins is an opportunistic snake. She called Monica a “passionate skilled community advocate and a friend,” at the 1:20 mark of this video:

She gladly sought and accepted Monica’s endorsement when she ran for Suffolk County DA in 2018. But the second Monica became a political liability she cut ties. Her office frequently would send emails to me like this one, distancing themselves from former campaign workers we blogged about like Rachel Corey:

They did this without me contacting them, because like most elected officials Rollins reads Turtleboy regularly and understands the reach we have.

I’ve publicly talked about how she attempted to weaponize Rayla and I in the past, which backfired on her when we told the world about it. But apparently some are just finding out now, and they’re not happy. One of them is this man:

Adam Gaffin is the man behind the Universal Hub blog, which Boston Magazine once called “Boston’s blog-of-record.” Despite allegedly having the pulse of the city he didn’t once use his website to look into Monica’s obvious fraud, or report on her threatening and racist videos. Like most in the media, he preferred the lie. Adam’s only take from the new story is that Rachael Rollins was “playing footsie with Turtleboy – if you can believe Turtleboy.”

Yea, why would anyone believe Turtleboy? It’s not like I was right about her from the start or anything. But according to Adam Gaffin, Rollins disappoints him because she was feeding information to someone with  a “reputation for racism.”

Hey Adam, if the only people calling me a racist are people like Monica Cannon-Grant, that doesn’t mean I have a reputation for racism. I could point out that you look like every pedophile ever, and therefore have a reputation for pedophilia.

But unlike you I only have an interest in things I can back up with receipts, so I won’t say that.

He doubled down on Twitter:

It’s just so hard for these losers to admit I was right, and I’m good at what I do.

Meanwhile the 5-6 people left who are still supporting Monica are furious with Rollins and Boston Magazine now.

 

LOL. Fash alert. That’s so adorable.

This was Monica’s take on the story:

Shocking that the first thing she did was point out the race of the author, who said nothing critical about her, gave her a chance to share her side of the story, and merely let Monica’s words speak for themselves.

 

Should’ve listened to your own advice Monica:

“You don’t get to touch that money or else you go to jail.”

Although Boston Magazine is complicit in Monica’s initial rise to power, I do credit this reporter with telling the whole story. I just wish they had done that before. What this story does more than anything though is solidify and legitimize Turtleboy as a legitimate source of news that everyone should follow if they want to hear the real news that the media isn’t reporting. But of course, most of you already know that.

 

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Aidan KearneyOctober 16, 2022