| News Service Brief
With rumors swirling on Beacon Hill about the possibility of forthcoming indictments from the U.S. Attorney's office related to an investigation into patronage at the state Probation Department, Senate President Therese Murray on Tuesday declined to say whether she paid a Boston law firm for legal advice related to the probe.
"I hire outside counsel whenever I need to for professional services, so it's not something new. Go back and look at my statements from the past several years," Murray told reporters on Tuesday after detailing a new Senate prescription drug abuse bill.
Murray's year-end campaign finance report disclosed that the Plymouth Democrat paid $4,920 to Collora, a Boston-based law firm, from July through October in three separate expenditures for professional services. Asked if the payments were related to the probation investigation, Murray said she couldn't discuss an ongoing investigation.
"There's a lot of questions that I get that I don't feel I can go to Senate counsel to answer because it's not Senate business so I count on professionals to give me that advice and I pay them to do that," Murray said. Pressed again whether she sought advice on how to handle the Justice Department inquiry, Murray said, "I can't talk about that. That's an ongoing investigation, and I'm very, very supportive of that," Murray said.
On its website, Collora says it has one of the biggest groups of trial lawyers in the Northeast and focuses on "representing both individuals and commercial entities in complex civil litigation, professional licensing and discipline matters, and defense against allegations of 'white collar' criminal conduct." |
