City councilor alleges Ashcroft behind indictment

BOSTON — A Boston city councilor charged with extortion alleges the state’s former U.S. attorney targeted him at the behest of former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

City Councilor Chuck Turner sent an e-mail to supporters before a court hearing Thursday suggesting Michael Sullivan sought indictments against him and former Sen. Dianne Wilkerson, another prominent black politician, because he was trying to ingratiate himself with Ashcroft — for whom he now works.

“I personally believe that former Attorney General Ashcroft said to Sullivan that if he could take down Senator Wilkerson and myself, he would put up the money to open the firm of Ashcroft and Sullivan in Boston where they could try to secure business for Halliburton to serve as a base while Sullivan prepares for his run for governor,” Turner wrote.

The councilor said prosecutions in other states were similarly biased by three unnamed former U.S. attorneys who now work for the Ashcroft Law Firm.

“In other words, the quid pro quo for taking us down was the money to open the office,” Turner wrote.

Sullivan didn’t immediately respond to a call and e-mail to the firm’s Boston office seeking his response. A spokesman at the firm’s Washington office was reviewing Turner’s e-mail.

Efforts to reach the other U.S. attorneys apparently singled out by Turner — Catherine Hanaway from Missouri and Johnny Sutton and John Ratcliffe from the western and eastern districts in Texas, respectively — were not immediately successful. All four teamed up with Ashcroft in April and May.

Turner is a Harvard-educated member of the Green-Rainbow Party. The veteran community activist has been on the City Council since 2000, and his district includes the largely black neighborhood of Roxbury, as well as parts of the Fenway, South End and Dorchester areas.

A staunch supporter of Wilkerson, Turner emerged as a vocal critic of her recent election opponent and complained about the FBI in the aftermath of her arrest in October on bribery charges. At the time, Sullivan’s office released photographs that allegedly showed Wilkerson stuffing bribe money into her bra at eateries across the street from the Statehouse.

She lost her re-election bid and subsequently resigned her seat. Like Turner, she has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

Turner was arrested in November and charged with attempted extortion and making false statements after undercover FBI agents photographed him allegedly accepting a $1,000 payoff during a related probe. He is up for election this fall and has pointedly refused to resign his seat.

He has also resisted efforts to impose a gag order in the case, the subject of a hearing Thursday in U.S. District Court, and has injected racial issues into the case.

“While I certainly don’t want to go to jail, someone has to stand up and challenge the flagrant abuse of power that takes place in many of the courts of this country every day,” Turner wrote in his e-mail. “If I wind up being the poster child for racial injustice in this ‘post-racial era,’ so be it.”

He added that “to cooperate with them by giving up my right of free speech would betray my people’s 400-year struggle to have rights that are respected in this country.”