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What Turtleboy’s lawyer said about his client’s alleged communication with Karen Read
“The only crime here is the robbery of privacy,” declared Tim Bradl, a defense attorney for Aidan Kearney.
A lawyer for Turtleboy blogger Aidan Kearney issued a sharp rebuttal Wednesday after a newly unsealed affidavit revealed an extensive trail of alleged communication — and possible collusion, investigators say — between Kearney and murder defendant Karen Read.
According to a search warrant application filed in Norfolk Superior Court, where both Kearney and Read are facing pending criminal charges, Read leaked non-public case information to the blogger after the pair began communicating in April.
Their criminal cases have become inextricably linked in recent months; Read is accused of backing her SUV into her Boston police officer boyfriend during a blizzard in 2022, and Kearney is accused of intimidating witnesses in her case. Read is set to go to trial next month, while Kearney remains in jail following his December arraignment on new witness intimidation and domestic assault and battery charges.
Previously:
Authorities seized two of Read’s cell phones last week on the suspicion that she committed witness interference and conspiracy to intimidate a witness through her communication with Kearney, according to the search warrant application.
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For months, Read and Kearney allegedly shared 189 phone calls and swapped countless messages — sometimes through an intermediary. In public, however, Read’s camp and Kearney downplayed their connection.
“The only way [special prosecutor Kenneth] Mello could get a warrant for Read’s phones is if someone lied under oath, and said that Karen and I conspired to intimidate witnesses,” Kearney wrote in a blog post last week, adding, “For the record, they will not find any communications between Read and I, on her phone or mine.”
Read’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment on the new allegations. But Kearney’s lawyer, Tim Bradl, didn’t mince words in a statement Wednesday evening.
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“The only crime here is the robbery of privacy,” he declared.
Describing Read as “a woman fighting for her life as a target of a murder charge,” Bradl asserted that investigators appear to have no evidence tying Read to any witness intimidation or interference.
Read “can share information with whomever she wants, speak out against her enemies, associate with anyone she pleases, and seek to keep it secret if she wants,” Bradl continued. “It is chilling to read about law enforcement poring through defense phone records and texts intended to be private and confidential, and then laying out these protected and legal actions as if they are elements of a crime in an effort to destroy her.”
Read Bradl’s full statement below.
I read the search warrant affidavit unsealed today in the Karen Read matter. It appears to be a single spaced 30 page story about how the state police went to unbelievable lengths (taxpayer funded trip to California!) to try to establish … drumroll … that Aidan Kearney and Karen read communicated with each other. It is an investigation without a crime. It appears to me that there is zero evidence that Karen Read intended or had anything to do with any witness intimidation or interference, and rather is a woman fighting for her life as a target of a murder charge.
She is entitled to wield inalienable rights under the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments to defend herself. She also has a special right under our Massachusetts Constitution, which precedes and is the model for our US Constitution, in its Article 12, “to produce all proofs that may be favorable to [her].” This provision gives her broad rights and privileges to explore all avenues in her defense—a sacrosanct right to defend herself. She can share information with whomever she wants, speak out against her enemies, associate with anyone she pleases, and seek to keep it secret if she wants. It is chilling to read about law enforcement poring through defense phone records and texts intended to be private and confidential, and then laying out these protected and legal actions as if they are elements of a crime in an effort to destroy her.
The prosecution is doubling down on defective theories of witness intimidation that we are in the process of attacking at the SJC in Mr. Kearney’s case. Every freedom-loving citizen in the Commonwealth needs to hope and pray that the SJC finally takes up the matter and takes down the witness intimidation statute, the most odious intrusion on our rights since the bill of attainder or the writs of assistance.
The only crime here is the robbery of privacy.
Tim Bradl, defense attorney for Turtleboy blogger Aidan Kearney
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