From Justice Clarence Thomas, to Justice Brett Kavanaugh, to now, Maine District Attorney Matt Foster–another Republican and another long dismissed sexual abuse allegation publicized just 5 days before the election.
Matt Foster’s attorney Walter McKee called the woman’s old allegations “baseless.” Years ago Foster fully cooperated and submitted to two lie detector tests given by separate examiners.
“That showed that he was telling the truth that he never, ever engaged in any improper behavior at all. The matter was completely closed, correctly, at that time […] It is dumbfounding to see this kind of attack come against Matt, who was totally cleared of any wrongdoing, something this complainant knows full well. It is clearly an effort to smear Matt” said McKee.
Foster himself categorically denied the allegations. “I stand by everything I said in these examinations, and which I have said from day one: I never engaged in any of this conduct,” Foster said. “I am outraged that these false statements are being made about me. I will not stand for it a moment longer.”
Foster was an Ellsworth Maine defense attorney who defended many innocent people that were prosecuted by former assistant district attorney Mary Kellett. He ran and won the DA election in 2014 to replace a disgraced administration that had a record of engaging in prosecutorial misconduct.
Not only were the disgraced prosecutors against Matt Foster, but even the former Attorney General Janet Mills tried to undermine Foster’s reforms by withholding funding he needed to hire new prosecutors for his office.
From the beginning, Foster was up against a corrupt system which did not want any changes to the status quo of the lawless cancer that fed on the lives of countless innocent and disadvantaged Mainers in Hancock and Washington counties. The feminist activists, the police, the advocates, the investigators, and even defense attorneys have not appreciated Matt Foster cutting back frivolous prosecutions which deprived many people of their very lucrative income streams. No one has reported about that.
It is also about the corrupt power and influence, which radical feminist groups, some in law enforcement, and in the media, have enjoyed during the previous DA administration. If there is one thing my own legal saga, my historic Bar Complaint, and my unprecedented Civil Rights Lawsuit showed me, it was that the former prosecutor in my case was only one cog in a well-greased wheel that with impunity could at any time crush anyone through the media, the police, and the court system.
What Matt Foster did was clean up that District Attorney’s office for the first time in its history. He also curbed the abuse of prosecutorial discretion and weighed the actual evidence and justice in cases rather than just trump up and fabricate charges to prosecute people.
Foster publicly reaffirmed that his job as prosecutor was to seek justice and not merely a conviction. He has declined to prosecute many cases for lack of evidence. For that, Matt Foster has been despised by the establishment and by the special interest groups, all who feed off prosecutorial corruption and people’s suffering.
Some law enforcement agencies have come out to endorse Foster’s opponent, who promises to bring back many more prosecutions of “he said/she said” cases, especially more cases referred for prosecution by local feminist groups. This would be a return to disgraced former DA’s office policies which were aided and abetted by organizations like Next Step, but which many people called a “Modern Day Witch Hunt.”
Washington County Sheriff Barry Curtis and Representative William Tuell, have voiced criticism of Foster as part of their campaign to split the district to create their own District Attorney office in their much smaller and poorer county. It is not clear whether those efforts could result in re-employing former county prosecutor Paul Cavanaugh, who lost the DA race to Matt Foster in 2014, and subsequently failed to even get appointed DA in another jurisdiction.
Cavanaugh was the Washington County prosecutor in the previous DA administration, and was found by Federal Court to have engaged in defamation while acting as prosecutor. In 2018 four top prosecutors from that 7th District Attorney’s office settled my civil rights lawsuit with me. Paul Cavanaugh, Mary Kellett, Michael Povich, and Carletta Bassano became the first prosecutors in Maine’s history to settle a civil rights lawsuit for subjecting me to what the Judge described as the “living embodiment of what Franz Kafka wrote about” in his novel The Trial. These are the individuals who ran the 7th District Attorney’s office for decades until Matt Foster took it over and cleaned it up.
And while Washington County Sheriff Barry Curtis voices concerns for holding criminals accountable, his own deputy privately offered to help my accuser ex-wife, withheld a crucial exculpatory video tape, ignored a court order, and 10 years and two criminal trials later was finally caught giving false testimony about the withheld evidence. I would like to know what Sheriff Barry Curtis did to hold his own deputy accountable for perjury and withholding exculpatory court ordered evidence from an innocent person?
But today, it is reformer DA Matt Foster, the man who put an end to the culture of corruption in Ellsworth who is being publicly smeared using old allegations that were fully investigated and dismissed even by Janet Mills’ own Attorney General’s office.
And it is ironic, that after I risked my life and endured threats intended to keep me silent about the misconduct of police and prosecutors, that the media in Maine has not been interested in reporting details of what I fought so hard to prove, and sacrificed so much to expose.
Perhaps DA Matt Foster said it best in his recent closing statement at the candidates forum:
“The people of Hancock and Washington Counties have a choice, they can vote to reelect me and my team to serve them competently and justly, or they can vote to send District 7 back to where it was before my administration–in trouble. The choice is clear. I’d appreciate your support and your vote on November 8.”
And I say, Amen to that.
Vladek Filler Blog 