Julia Mejia’s Attorney Spent 6 Hours Trying To Get Me To Reveal Sources For Story About Alleged DUI So The City Councilor Can Punish Them For Speaking Out

 

In January I was sued in Suffolk County Superior Court by Boston City Councilor Julia Mejia, who didn’t like the coverage she received in two of the blogs we published about her. This is an outrageous attempt by a powerful public official to silence an award winning journalist who was investigating leads about her alleged corrupt and unprofessional behavior. Mejia hired Attorney Anthony Ellison, the brother of Minnesota AG Keith Ellison, who has a long and documented history of allegedly abusive behavior towards women and his children. Ellison seems to be the preferred attorney for scumbags in Mejia’s social circle, as he also represented City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo after two women credibly accused him of sexual assault, sabotaging his chances of winning the Democratic primary for Suffolk County District Attorney.

These are the headlines of the two blogs Julia is suing me over:

The first blog was published February 15, 2021, and was mostly my commentary on a story that was already reported by several media outlets, that Mejia had live streamed a murder scene outside her house, and behaved in an insensitive manner that upset the family of the deceased. The blog contained no original reporting, and quoted, cited, and linked Boston Live’s initial story about it. Mejia herself acknowledged how inappropriate her behavior was when she took down the video and apologized on Twitter.

In the spirit of accountability, I wanted to apologize to those who were exposed to the post I shared last week. My sincere condolences to my neighbors as they grief their loss. I responded as a parent, a neighbor and someone who uses social media to amplify the realities.
Julia pic.twitter.com/1vtjs3QoKL

— Julia Mejia (@juliaforboston) February 8, 2021

My only commentary on it is that she should resign, since I use the blog as a catalyst for social and political advocacy and don’t pretend to be unbiased.

The second blog about her alleged DUI incident was original reporting. However, it was worded very carefully and included statements of fact. The blog itself never said that Julia Mejia was pulled over drunk driving, or that she smoked crack. The blog was about her violating the First Amendment in case law established from people who sued Donald Trump for blocking them on Twitter, by making her Twitter account private, and thus preventing constituents from reading policy announcements and responding to them.

In order to explain why she made her account private this necessitated pointing out that she made her account private shortly after I messaged her for comment.

I always try to get both sides of the story. Had Boston’s first Afro-Latina she/her single mom responded with a simple “no,” there would not have been a story, since I was unable to obtain a police report about this incident (it was allegedly covered up). But I had heard from dozens of sources, many of them who had proven themselves to be credible sources of information in previous stories I published, that she used her power as an elected official to pressure an officer into not arresting her for drunk driving. I found these reports worth looking into for a number of reasons:

• The volume of politically active individuals who were making the allegation
• Mejia’s past behavior, including a complaint filed against her by a Boston Police Officer last June when he said he felt intimidated by her, when she mentioned that she was a City Councilor to him because she wasn’t happy with the way he was conducting traffic
• The noticeable physical changes to her appearance over the last 3 years
• Recent discoveries about Rachael Rollins and Michelle Wu (both of whom are political allies of Mejia’s) that they frequently violate the law, endanger civilians, and attempt to cover up their crimes

Regardless, the blog was worded extremely carefully:

In the last 48 hours we have been inundated with tips about looking into an alleged drunk driving incident over the weekend in Boston involving City Councillor Julia Mejia. We don’t print rumors or gossip as fact, but the allegations were troubling because multiple sources in the Boston Police Department have alleged that an unnamed Boston Police Officer gave her a pass and allowed her to get a ride home. To be clear, we have no concrete evidence that this happened, as the city is thus far refusing to hand over body cam footage, and she was not arrested. However, the allegations gained credibility due to the volume of tips we’ve received about this, so I reached out to Mejia directly for comment yesterday. 

Alleged.

Allegations.

No concrete evidence this happened.

Volume of tips received.

We don’t print rumors as fact.

Sources in the Boston Police Department.

This is not even close to being libelous, and the fact that a City Councilor in one of the biggest cities in the country is using the courts to try to silence legitimate investigative journalism into her behavior should alarm us all.

I was deposed in early May at my Attorney Marc Randazza’s office in Gloucester by Attorney Ellison. It lasted almost 6 hours and was entirely unproductive. It became clear that Mejia’s goal with this lawsuit is to find out the names of my sources on the Boston Police Department so that she can use her political power to make their lives difficult, much like Mayor Wu did with former Boston Police Officer Shana Cottone when she began protesting outside of Wu’s house. Much like Rollins tried to do to Kevin Hayden. It won’t allow me to upload the entire deposition because the file is too big, so I’ll go over some of the highlights.

Ellison started off by asking me personal and creepy questions about my kids because he believes that when you file a frivolous lawsuit you’re allowed to make inquiries into people’s personal lives that they have to answer.

 

Ellison attempted to find out the names of everyone who funds Turtleboy.

This would require giving him the names of every person who has donated, joined Turtle Club, or bought something in the Turtleboy store. Mejia wants this information to see if any Boston cops support me, so that she can use her political power to hurt them.

He asked me what type of audience I am trying to attract, so I made it clear that I seek people who seek truth.

We are trying to dismiss this lawsuit on what’s called anti-SLAPP grounds. Anti-SLAPP laws provide defendants a way to quickly dismiss meritless lawsuits—known as “SLAPPs” or “Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation”—filed against them for exercising speech, press, assembly, petition, or association rights. Mejia is an elected official who filed this lawsuit because she didn’t like the fact that I exercised my First Amendment rights to mobilize a movement that would end with her being removed from office. Ellison tried to disprove that by pointing out that I never spoke at a City Council meeting and don’t live in Boston. I pointed out that I did one better – I mobilized people to vote her out of office.

I have a strict policy of keeping sources anonymous if they request it, and will not give up the names of sources under any circumstances. If I gave up names every time a frivolous lawsuit was filed by someone like Julia Mejia then no one would feel safe coming to me with information. The only sources who gave me permission to use their names were Shana Cottone and former Boston Live CEO Cam Goggins, whose outlet I quoted in the first blog published about Mejia.

Ellison tried to trip me up and get me to admit that Mejia didn’t hear gunshots outside her house, didn’t live stream a murder scene, and didn’t fail to call 911. But I just pointed out that everything in my reporting came from what Boston Live reported a week earlier, including screenshots of Facebook comments made by the family of the deceased, whose death Julia exploited.

This is what Boston Live reported:

I quoted it and commented on it. I have that right, as much as Julia wishes I didn’t.

Throughout the deposition Ellison played out of context clips from the Live Show to try to prove I lied about what she did. He purposely would not play what came before the clips. I wasn’t falling for it.

 

He tried to get me to admit that Boston Live was not a credible media outlet because he believes them to be conservative. Because apparently when you don’t provide cover for people like Julia Mejia you must be conservative.

 

After that things got weird when Ellison completely changed the subject and decided he was going to defend Ricardo Arroyo’s honor.

That was bizarre. But yes, Ricardo Arroyo is a disgusting and corrupt pervert in my opinion. Maybe he can sue me next.

Ellison repeatedly tried to get me to give up the names of sources, many of which came from Twitter. He wanted to know who PFWV Boston, @miss5507, and “Never Dementia” were because they also tweeted about his sensitive client.

 

In the Karen Read case the prosecution has accused the defense of going on a fishing expedition by asking for Brian Albert’s phone. But what Mejia is doing with me is an actual fishing expedition, and I told Ellison that I knew what he was up to.

 

Then he busted out a text message I had never seen before that said “Cam” on the top, which he purported  was a conversation between Cam Goggins and I. The text message did not look like anything I’d ever seen, and I’ve searched my phone and Twitter DMs for the keywords in it but nothing came up. It clearly wasn’t from me, and he never said who it was from. Krusty Panties (Kate Peter) has been sharing this message on her dying YouTube channel, so there’s a good chance she manufactured it and sent it to Ellison, since I know that she goes out of her way to try to assist people who sue me, and has a documented history of fabricating evidence.

You can tell that’s not me because it’s time stamped “today” and I wouldn’t have the foresight to screenshot our conversation from December if I didn’t know I was getting sued until a month later. She has been sharing that text message a lot:

Two weeks ago Krusty Panties used a fake email account to send me a fraudulent tip about Colin Albert selling drugs out of D&E Pizza in order to prove that I will print unverified fake news.

I can’t imagine having this much time on my hands, or this level of obsession over another human being. But since I don’t take things at face value I emailed this person back and asked for evidence. Kate responded by sending me a fabricated screenshot of what she represented to be a drug transaction.

Obviously I never published anything about this, so it was a big swing and a miss for Krusty Panties, who also claimed that she personally talked to Cam Goggins about my reporting, and gave that text message to Ellison.

She wouldn’t have Cam’s number and likely just made that whole thing up herself, then sent it to Ellison, hoping Ellison would use it as evidence in Mejia’s lawsuit against me. When I showed Cam the video his response was “I never spoke with that thing.”

He searched through his messages and nothing was there with those keywords.

So it’s probably manufactured by her. This is a woman who once put her name on a 2013 federal complaint from another federal lawsuit that had nothing to do with her, and submitted it to YouTube to try to prove to them that she was suing me for copyright. She’s obviously a psychopath with no credibility, but Ellison is used this text message she sent him as some sort of evidence. He questioned me about it:

 

Next he tried to get me to admit that Shana Cottone is not a reliable source of information, but I didn’t fall for it. She’s a civil rights icon, and arguably the most honest person who has ever served on the Boston Police Department.

Then he demanded my phone number and had a boomer moment when he didn’t understand what the number 25 meant.

 

Ellison disputed that the goal of this lawsuit is to silence me, but clearly it is. No one will ever feel comfortable speaking out against corrupt public officials if they have to go through what I’m going through every time they do.

 

 

I texted the mother of my children to let her know that she would need to get the kids at school, and Ellison used that as an opportunity to demand access to my phone.

 

Ellison then brought up the blog I wrote about him.

 

Then he gave me an opportunity to make fun of his client for being a moron, and I had to explain to him what a meme was.

To be clear for all the boomers out there – this is NOT a real image of Julia Mejia smoking crack and drinking Jack.

I thought that was pretty self evident, but apparently Attorney Ellison is unfamiliar with memes.

Things got even weirder when we started talking about notorious Hyde Park crackhead Mike Giannetti.

And finally he brought up Julia Mejia’s bizarre video, in which she said that she’s not a crackhead, and that I am a white supremacist who is attacking her for being a woman of color.

To win a defamation lawsuit you have to show damages on top of malice. Mejia claims that my investigative journalism has caused her fundraising efforts to slow down.

Except this is an easily provable lie. Mejia was only taking in a few hundred dollars a month from May through October. Then suddenly it increased to $24,356.21 right when I reported about the alleged DUI. This was $20K more than she made the previous December, and came close to what she raised in October of 2021 while she was raising money for her contentious City council race.

The blog was GREAT for business for her, as clearly she was using it as a rallying call to donate to her campaign.

“The white supremacists are after the first Afro-Latina she/her Tik Tok girl boss! Better give me money!”

Attorney Randazza filed a 389 page motion to dismiss last week that is too big to upload. It can be found on Masscourts.org under Suffolk County Superior Court. She misspelled my name in the lawsuit (possibly as a result of skipping school so often in Dorchester) so you have to search for Aiden Kearney. But it’s a very well written memorandum.

My question is, who is bankrolling this? There’s no way Ellison is doing this for free, and I can’t imagine Mejia can afford the tens of thousands of dollars in billable hours he’s clearly put into this. Ellison is well known to represent Democratic politicians who are criticized by people like me. Is the DNC paying him? Maybe we should sue Attorney Ellison and ask him a bunch of probing questions to find out. Either way, this lawsuit should be swiftly dismissed, and if you’d like to donate to our legal defense fund you can do so by clicking here.