Not enough questions are being asked of President Biden’s Labor Secretary, Marty Walsh, who was serving as mayor of Boston last summer, when Patrick Rose, former chief of the Boston police union, was arrested on 33 counts of sexually abusing children.
As The Wall Street Journal editorial board puts it: “The dismay has grown as it’s become clear that Mr. Rose’s behavior was known for years and that officials helped to keep it secret. That may have included Marty Walsh, the former union chief, former mayor of Boston and now U.S. secretary of Labor …
It isn’t clear what Mr. Walsh knew or when. But the Boston Globe editorial board called it ‘astonishing’ the ‘lengths to which the [Boston police] department and the now departed Walsh administration went to keep those files under wraps’ ...
The Rose coverup is relevant to Mr. Walsh’s duties at the Labor department. One of his obligations is to enforce rules regarding union transparency. In response to the corruption scandal at the United Auto Workers, the Trump Administration implemented new rules to enhance union financial disclosures. But the Biden Administration has already suggested it will get rid of them. Unions continue to complain about even the current level of financial reporting and will pressure Mr. Walsh to eliminate much if not all, of the paltry, current requirements.”
After Rose was arrested, The Boston Globe reportedly filed requests for records about the charges, internal investigation, and union response. But Walsh’s administration rejected the request, it said, due to privacy concerns.
But, as the Journal reports, “Even when the state supervisor of public records refuted this, the Walsh administration balked—at one point ignoring for two months the supervisor’s order that it better explain why the records should remain secret. Mr. Walsh’s successor, Acting Mayor Kim Janey, finally released a redacted version on April 20, but only after Mr. Walsh was confirmed as Labor secretary. This means the Rose story wasn’t known during Mr. Walsh’s Senate confirmation hearing.”
This week, reportedly 15 unions representing law enforcement officers nationwide will release a blueprint for police reforms, including the unions saying they will scale back support of bad officers. But will they scale back their support of toxic police union chiefs and Labor Secretaries who reportedly enable them?
Liberal bias is well-known among conservatives, with the latest glaring example coming from how the mainstream media went after former President Trump’s first Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta, for reports that Acosta should have done more to prosecute sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Acosta resigned from office amid these allegations. Will the media ask similarly tough questions of Walsh?