Hampden DA blames lawsuit over seized property on made-up George Soros conspiracy
A reporter asked Anthony Gulluni about a lawsuit. And then things got weird.
It’s been more than a decade since the Massachusetts drug lab scandals were first uncovered, and the specter of this corruption continues to haunt the commonwealth. Rulings by the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in 2017 and 2018 forced prosecutors to throw out more than 30,000 wrongful convictions for drug charges. Prosecutors obtained the convictions using evidence that was tainted by the misconduct of two chemists at state crime labs who pleaded guilty to criminal charges after their malfeasance was brought to light. One chemist at a Boston crime lab admitted to faking test results while a chemist from an Amherst lab admitted to stealing drug evidence for her personal use.
However, The Republican reports that victims of these wrongful convictions are still fighting to get back millions of dollars worth of cash, cell phones, cars, and other property that law enforcement took from them.
Police and prosecutors seized the property using a process called civil asset forfeiture, which allows them confiscate property and keep or sell it to pad their budgets. In theory, the property must be linked to a crime. However, the standard of proof for civil asset forfeiture is much lower than the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard used in criminal cases. And since asset forfeiture cases are considered civil rather than criminal, low-income people are not provided with lawyers to help them navigate the legal system.
According to The Republican:
The state’s Supreme Judicial Court said those whose cases were thrown out could get automatic refunds for most of the money paid related to the criminal cases, like court fees, but not for property taken through civil asset forfeiture. [...]
While the state’s highest court ruled against automatic forfeiture returns in the vacated cases, it said each person could file individual motions to attempt to get their property back.
Requiring the victims to file individual motions would be an incredibly costly and time-consuming process. And it’s likely that for some victims, hiring a lawyer would cost more than the value of the seized property, rendering their efforts meaningless.
The victims turned to the federal courts, but they’ve experienced a big setback:
Boston attorneys William Fick, Daniel Marx and Northampton attorney Luke Ryan filed a class action lawsuit [in] 2018 in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts. The suit’s defendants include the commonwealth, the attorney general, the governor and all the state’s district attorneys, including Hampden County’s Anthony Gulluni. […]
Earlier this year, a federal appeals court dismissed the case because of the 11th Amendment, which prohibits individuals suing a state in federal court, Judge Julie Rikelman wrote in the Jan. 21 opinion for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
The lawyers for the victims are now working on a request for the US Supreme Court to review the case. There’s no guarantee that the Supreme Court, which only hears a handful of cases each year, will take up the request.
That brings me to why I wanted to write about this story. The Republican asked Hampden County District Attorney Anthony Gulluni about the lawsuit, and here’s what he said:
“These are efforts funded by George Soros and the ACLU, so they’re just going to keep spending money until there’s nowhere to spend it,” he told The Republican on Wednesday. “So they’re going to appeal to the Supreme Court. It won’t get accepted. It won’t go anywhere.”
When asked why he thought they were involved, Gulluni said: “Money. It’s called money.”
Gulluni was unavailable Thursday for additional explanation.
Soros is a billionaire left-leaning philanthropist, and The Republican has no evidence Soros is involved in the case.
I also asked a spokesperson for Gulluni to clarify these comments and provide evidence that Soros was funding the lawsuit, but I did not receive a response.
However, one of the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Luke Ryan, told me: “On top of being factually baseless, the district attorney’s comments about this litigation being funded by George Soros are patently offensive.”
Ryan shared a link to an article published by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which says that dismissing groups and causes by making false claims that they are funded by Soros, who is Jewish, is an antisemitic trope often deployed by right-wing figures. (Gulluni is a Democrat.)
So yeah, this whole thing is pretty weird, right? It’s weird that a top law-enforcement official in Massachusetts would falsely claim that people are suing his office to get back their property because they’re secretly being funded by a wealthy Jewish boogeyman. And it’s weird for that official to just cryptically refer to “money” when pressed for evidence, as though that somehow explains anything. That’s definitely weird. Some might even call it bad!
In fact, not only is Soros not involved in the lawsuit—neither is the ACLU. None of the lawyers representing the plaintiffs work for the ACLU and a spokesperson for the group told The Republican that it wasn’t involved. Gulluni just made the whole thing up.
People should probably find it concerning that an elected official with the power to seize people’s property with little due process and to prosecute people is a weird liar who spreads groundless, antisemitic conspiracy theories to deflect criticism.
In December, The Republican and New England Public Media ran a series about how law enforcement has been using civil asset forfeiture in Western Mass. When interviewed for that series, Gulluni compared himself to Robin Hood, saying he was “taking [property] from bad sources and giving it to good.” He also said that the people whose property he seized shouldn’t be entitled to legal representation.
But Gulluni is a walking counter argument to his own words. The fact that he is willing to just brazenly tell weird lies to a reporter about litigation against his office is a pretty good argument for why we can’t assume police and prosecutors use their powers responsibly and why people deserve legal protections from these pirates.
UPDATE (6/4/2025): On Monday, The Republican updated its story with a statement from Gullini’s office:
Payton North, a spokesperson for Gulluni’s office, said on Monday that Gulluni was speaking broadly “about asset forfeiture and the role of high-profile donors in criminal justice reform, noting George Soros has historically funded left-leaning efforts around issues pertaining to law enforcement. It was an offhand remark made in an informal setting, not meant to be interpreted as accusatory or evidence based.”
I have some questions about this! I sent Gulluni’s spokesperson an email that says in part:
I find this hard to believe. How is an interview with a reporter that will be quoted on one of the most popular news sites in Massachusetts “an informal setting”? Was this an open-ended interview or was it set up to discuss the lawsuit? If the latter, why did DA Gulluni bring up George Soros at all if he had nothing to do with the topic of the interview? And if DA Gulluni’s comments were “not meant to be interpreted as accusatory or evidence based,” why didn’t he just clarify that when the reporter asked a follow-up question? The story says that when he was asked why he thought Soros and the ACLU were involved, he said “Money. It’s called money” instead of saying that he didn’t think they were involved. Could you clarify what that comment was supposed to mean?
Also, is DA Gulluni aware that spreading false claims that groups and causes are funded by Soros, who is Jewish, is an antisemitic trope?
Law Enforcement Misconduct Tracker
When I first started this newsletter, I was aggregating news stories about alleged acts of police misconduct. Eventually I stopped doing that, but I’m going to bring back this feature. I originally limited myself to posting stories about local and state police, but I’m now planning to include other types of law-enforcement officials like prosecutors, sheriff’s deputies, and state prison officers.
Without further ado, here are the stories for last week:
“A former top official in the Norfolk County Sheriff's office is facing federal extortion charges over accusations he forced jail employees to perform free plumbing and electrical work at his home. Tom Brady, 53, served as assistant deputy superintendent of jail operations at the Norfolk County Sheriff's Office until [May], when he was terminated.” (NBC10 Boston)
“A federal jury [on Thursday] convicted now former Transit Police Sgt. David Finnerty, 49, of Rutland, on one count of aiding and abetting the filing of a false report as part of a coverup of the way then TPD officer Dorston Bartlett beat a homeless man with a baton and then filed a fake charge of assault and battery against him for an incident at Ashmont station in 2018.” (Universal Hub)
“A member of the Fall River Police Department was arrested, accused of breaking into a home while intoxicated. Police said David Silvia, 26, was banging on the front door early Tuesday, calling for a woman who does not live at the home. They said he then forced his way inside.” (WHDH)
Also on the police misconduct front, MassLive’s Adam Bass has this important update about the US Department of Justice’s investigation of civil rights violations by the Worcester Police Department:
The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on May 21 it would close investigations into and retract the Biden administration’s findings of constitutional violations of five police departments.
One department not included in the announcement was the Worcester Police Department (WPD), which was subject to a DOJ investigation beginning in 2022.
A report covering the investigation revealed that officers engaged in acts of excessive force and engaged in unwanted sexual contact with women during undercover operations
A spokesperson for Worcester City Manager Eric D. Batista told MassLive there have been no discussions between the DOJ and the city about the investigation since January.
So, at least for now, it appears that the DOJ could still move forward with efforts to rein in the Worcester Police Department.
“Dismissing people who have been stolen from us as criminals”
On Wednesday, I shared my thoughts about how Massachusetts Governor Maura Healey’s cop ideology is driving her right-wing views on immigration. As I noted, the governor praised Donald Trump’s cruel border policies, saying she agreed that we need to keep more migrants out of the country and that she even advised Joe Biden to “act on the border and shut it down” when he was president.
On Thursday, The Boston Globe published a story about advocates criticizing Healey for her lack of action to protect people from federal immigration agents abducting state residents. The whole piece is worth reading, but I wanted to highlight this passage:
The criticism, especially from the left, comes out frequently and often unprompted in interviews with voters, speeches at protests, and social media posts, such as one recent Reddit thread titled, “Is Maura Healey still alive?” […]
Around 50 people gathered at the State House earlier in May to urge Healey to declare ICE a “rogue federal agency,” support legislation prohibiting local law enforcement from holding ICE detainees, and create a “reparations fund” for affected communities. Local officials from communities facing immigration raids, such as Worcester and Chelsea, also signed onto a letter advocates delivered.
Those actions, activists acknowledged, would not necessarily stop ICE activity altogether, but would more clearly signal Healey has their backs.
“Massachusetts touts itself as a liberal, progressive bastion and our governor is basically repeating the same messaging our president is saying — dismissing people who have been stolen from us as criminals and essentially saying that because they’re criminals, they deserve to be taken," said Jaya Savita, director of Asian Pacific Islanders Civic Action Network.
Remember: Before Healey was elected governor, she was the state’s attorney general, which makes her a prosecutor, which makes her a cop. Her ideology is cop.
Library funding cuts to impact Mass
At Media Nation, Dan Kennedy reports that the Trump administration’s funding cuts will soon impact Massachusetts libraries:
The Trump administration’s war on access to knowledge will result in the end of public library access in Massachusetts to a number of academic databases and The Boston Globe. The cuts take effect on July 1.
That’s terrible news. I use the Boston Globe text archive all the time while doing research. It includes decades worth of stories that aren’t published on the Globe’s website.
George Soros is not secretly funding The Mass Dump, so if you’d like to keep this newsletter running, please consider offering your financial support, either by signing up for a paid subscription below, becoming a Patreon supporter, or sending a tip via PayPal or Venmo. Your support pays for commentary like this and original investigative reporting. A monthly subscription is just $5.
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Anyway, what’s all for now.