Suffolk DA Hayden fined $5,000 for ethics violation from 2022 campaign 

SUFFOLK COUNTY District Attorney Kevin Hayden admitted to violating state ethics law and paid a $5,000 civil penalty in connection with action his office took during the heated 2022 campaign for the DA’s seat. 

The finding from the state Ethics Commission concluded that Hayden improperly used his office to discredit his political opponent – then-Boston city councilor Ricardo Arroyo – who was challenging him in the Democratic primary. 

The case centers on a press release issued by the DA’s office in the closing days of a hard-fought race. 

In late August 2022, the Boston Globe reported that Arroyo had been investigated as a teenager by the Boston police for two separate allegations of sexual assault. According to the paper, police officials said both cases, one from 2005 and one from 2007, were referred to the district attorney’s office, investigated, and closed without any charges brought. 

Arroyo denied that any assault had taken place and sued the Boston Police Department to obtain its records from the case, saying they would show that the allegations were unfounded.

On September 2, 2022, four days before the primary election and less than two hours before a court-imposed deadline for the city to release the records to Arroyo, the Suffolk DA’s office issued a statement saying it had “reviewed the entire unredacted file regarding the sexual assault allegations” and that “nothing in the file suggests the allegations were unfounded.” The statement went on to say that Arroyo’s “campaign to sabotage the victim’s credibility is shameful.”

The police records released to Arroyo include statements saying the allegations related to the 2005 case were deemed “unfounded.” 

A spokesman for Hayden said at the time that the statement was released that their files do not include records calling the allegations “unfounded,” and said that any determination that no crime occurred does not mean the allegations against Arroyo are untrue. 

The files on the case held by the DA’s office were not the same as the police department records. 

The Ethics Commission ruled that release of the statement from Hayden’s office violated state ethics law by constituting an “unwarranted privilege” that used the resources of the DA’s office for Hayden’s “own personal political advantage.” The ethics finding said that in releasing the statement the DA’s office inserted itself into “a matter in which the DA’s Office was not publicly involved” and that the timing of the statement was aimed at undercutting Hayden’s opponent only days before the election, making it “indisputably election-related activity.”  

“The authority and prestige of a District Attorney’s office and the worktime of its staff are valuable public resources to be used for the public good,” said David A. Wilson, executive director of the Ethics Commission, in a statement. “Their use to discredit a political opponent in order to gain advantage in an election or for any other private purpose is prohibited by the conflict of interest law.”

Hayden testified under oath to the Ethics Commission that he had not seen the statement before its release. The ethics finding noted, however, that he “did not take any steps” to withdraw the statement, despite its “inappropriate political nature.” 

In a statement released Thursday afternoon, Hayden spokesman Jim Borghensani took responsibility for the September 2022 statement. 

“The statement in question was written and released by me with no participation or coordination from the DA,” Borghesani said. “Our office’s communications on this matter were above-board, limited and cautious. Out of great concern for the alleged victims involved, we responded to voluminous media questions with extreme care and without revealing any case details.”

Arroyo, whose campaign was upended by the reports of the years-old allegation and lost the primary to Hayden, 54-46, suggested that Hayden’s improper actions helped him secure the primary victory. 

“We have always maintained that Kevin Hayden betrayed the public’s trust and illegally used the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office to win his campaign,” Arroyo said in a statement. “I am grateful that the State Ethics Commission today proved that he used his office to ‘discredit a political opponent in order to gain advantage in an election’ and for holding him accountable for these illegal actions.” 

Arroyo was also recently fined by the Ethics Commission. In that case, Arroyo paid $3,000 last year after a finding that he violated state ethics laws by representing his brother, a former Boston city department head, in a sexual harassment case brought against his brother and the city at the same time that Arroyo was serving on the City Council. The ethics case – and a federal inspector general report that former US attorney Rachael Rollins improperly tried to aid Arroyo’s earlier campaign for DA – led to him losing reelection to his council seat last November.