State Ethics Commission Finds Joe Early Violated The Law By Orchestrating Troopergate Coverup For Judge’s Daughter 3 Years After TB Broke Story
Three years ago we broke the biggest story in the history of TB – Troopergate. A story in which the daughter of Dudley Judge Tim Bibaud had her OUI arrest report scrubbed by the state police, per orders of Worcester County DA Joe Early, in order to cover up the embarrassing fact that she she offered State Trooper Ryan Sceviour sexual services in exchange for letting her go, and asked him if he knew how many guys she had to felate to get the heroin she had on her.
DA Early with Judge Timothy M. Bibaud at his swearing in as the presiding judge in Dudley District Court. pic.twitter.com/fQRkt4VUZ3
— Joseph D. Early Jr. (@worcesterda) December 6, 2013
That story directly led to the resignations of Mass State Police Colonel Richard McKeon, Deputy Superintendent Francis Hughes, Lt. Colonel Dan Risteen, and Major Sue Anderson, for their part in punishing the three state troopers who would not follow Joe Early’s orders and redact the embarrassing parts of the arrest report.
Joe Early is the only person involved who was never held responsible, because he’s an elected official. Since his father was a Congressman for 18 years in Worcester, and he’s got a D next to his name, he felt no need to drop out of the race, despite the fact that the Telegram and Gazette urged him to resign. He knew he could count on very dumb people to vote for him, and they did in November of 2018.
But the jig is finally up:
The State Ethics Commission’s Enforcement Division has alleged that Worcester County District Attorney Joseph D. Early Jr. and Former State Police Col. Richard McKeon, among other officials, violated conflict of interest law when handling the arrest report involving a judge’s daughter. The commission issued orders to show cause on Wednesday, alleging the violation by Early and McKeon as well as Senior First Assistant District Attorney Jeffrey Travers and former State Police Major Susan Anderson.
On October 16, 2017, Alli Bibaud, who is the daughter of Judge Timothy Bibaud, was arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol and drugs. A trooper’s report of the arrest included sexually explicit statements allegedly made by Bibaud as well as a statement that her father is a judge. The statements were later scrubbed from the report. The commission wrote in a statement that the effort to replace the original arrest report with a revised report omitting Bibaud’s embarrassing statements was in violation of the conflict of interest law.
“After receiving a copy of the arrest report, Travers allegedly notified Early that the report contained the daughter’s sexually explicit statements and statement that her father was a judge. Early, the chief law enforcement officer in Worcester County, then called McKeon to alert him to the contents of the report. The following day, Early allegedly told McKeon that McKeon could revise the report to remove the sexually explicit statements and the reference to the judge,” the commission wrote in a news release.
McKeon allegedly issued an order through the Massachusetts State Police chain of command, advising the trooper who wrote the arrest report to revise the document by removing the sexually explicit statements and the statement in which Bibaud identified her father as a judge.
McKeon allegedly ordered the revised arrest report to be delivered to Early’s office. That’s when Early allegedly directed Traver’s to go to the clerk’s office and replace the original report, according to the commission.
“The conflict of interest law prohibits public employees from using or attempting to use their official positions to obtain an unwarranted privilege that is not properly available,” the news release read.
“Early, Travers, McKeon, and Anderson allegedly violated this section of the law by using their positions [to] cause the arrest report to be revised or replaced, as the removal of the sexually explicit statements and other embarrassing statements would be an unwarranted privilege for the judge and his daughter. This privilege would not be properly available to other people in similar situations,” the release continued.
“Early, Travers, McKeon, and Anderson allegedly violated this section of the law through actions they took in connection with the revision and attempted replacement of the original arrest report,” the release reads.
When investigations into how Bibaud’s arrest were announced, Gov. Charlie Baker at the time maintained that the directive to scrub details from the report came down from McKeon. But an investigation by Attorney General Maura Healey’s office in 2018 showed pressure to redact the report came from Early’s office.
“DA Early and Col. McKeon had several telephone conversations regarding the Alli Bibaud arrest report on October 18, 2017,” the Attorney General’s Office wrote in its 2018 findings. “In those conversations, Early asked McKeon what the Colonel was going to do about the report. Col. McKeon said that he thought ‘that ship had sailed. Early responded that the DA’s Office would be moving to redact the report.”
“Well, it was after that I had the conversation with Joe Early, and all indications were that this was the appropriate thing to do,” McKeon told the AG’s investigators. “I must say that he was previously my boss. He’s the prosecuting District Attorney in that county, and he was in charge of the prosecution of this case. And I was led to believe that everything that I was about to do was not only the right thing, but it was the appropriate thing to do.”
Both the arresting trooper who objected to revising the report, as well as the supervisor who signed off on the original report, had been issued negative observation reports by their superiors for including “inappropriate, negative and derogatory statements” in the original report.
Early told the Attorney General’s Office that he was concerned that Bibaud’s statements about sex acts needlessly stigmatized a person struggling with addiction and were likely to generate prejudicial pretrial publicity, and did not contribute to establishing probable cause for the charges.
The Commission will schedule public hearings on the allegations within 90 days. Bibaud later admitted to the OUI charge from the incident.
About time.
Fun fact – the Globe, Telegram, and Masslive showed zero interest in this story when it was first pitched to them. It was only after they realized that it was a major story of corruption that directly led to the resignation of four of the highest ranking members of the MSP that they suddenly were interested in it. Notice that none of these media outlets today will link or cite TB, even though this story simply would not exist or have ever been published by anyone had we not done all the work for it.
It’s great to see that the State Ethics Commission is smarter than the voters of Worcester County. Early would never have done this if he wasn’t friends with Tim Bibaud. He used his position of authority to strong arm the Mass State Police into doing something unethical, which they were not excited about doing. Everyone has paid the price for this except for Joe Early, and he masterminded the whole thing. This wasn’t a victimless crime meant to help out a recovering drug addict. Alli Bibaud posted months later on IG, showing that she clearly had not changed.
This was just the spoiled daughter of a judge using the privilege that no one else would get, in order to save her from embarrassment. But three state troopers who were reprimanded for doing their job and being ethical. Joe Early used his power to harm them, and he did so because he thought he was untouchable. Turns out he’s not.
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