On Friday, the Huffington Post reported that a district attorney in Massachusetts is ordering a review of all the cases handled by Woburn patrolman John Donnelly, who was just exposed as a neo-Nazi who provided security for the leaders of the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
"Middlesex County District Attorney Marina Ryan announced Friday that her office is now 'thoroughly reviewing any pending or closed cases' in which Donnelly, a patrolman in Woburn, Massachusetts, was involved," reported Christopher Mathias. "'We will be issuing a discovering notice disclosing this matter to defense counsel on those cases,' Ryan said in a statement. 'That notice has already been added to our publicly available list of officers subject to exculpatory evidence disclosure.'"
"On Thursday, HuffPost published a report detailing how Donnelly, 33, was among hundreds of white supremacists who descended on Charlottesville in August 2017 for a 'Unite the Right' rally, terrorizing the town while chanting slogans such as 'Jews will not replace us' and violently attacking counterprotesters. The bloody weekend culminated with a neo-Nazi driving his car into a crowd of counterprotesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer," said the report. "Donnelly attended the rally as a bodyguard for Richard Spencer, a prominent white supremacist. Leaked chat logs from a neo-Nazi Discord server show Donnelly played an integral part in planning the weekend’s events."
Donnelly's identity was exposed after online sleuths put an image of him from the rally through facial recognition.
"Donnelly was not only a cop; he was also the president of a 'back the blue' nonprofit called Irish Angel, which raised money for law enforcement causes. He was an award-winning real estate agent in the Boston area," the report continued. "Irish Angel told HuffPost on Thursday that Donnelly had been removed as president of the organization. Century 21, the real estate agency for which Donnelly worked, confirmed on Friday that Donnelly had been fired."
This comes amid heightened scrutiny into current and former police officers' involvement in extremist movements and groups. After the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, several people with ties to law enforcement were exposed as having been involved, including retired NYPD veteran Thomas Webster, who was sentenced to 10 years for assaulting D.C. Metropolitan Police officers, and Thomas Robertson, formerly an officer in Rocky Mount, Virginia, who received 7 years.
