Everett Leader Herald attorney’s pretrial filing states publisher admits guilt

Philbin throws Resnek to the wolves before Jan. 21 trial start

By James Mitchell

It’s been said that a person can have more power owning a newspaper than any elected official. Two people believed that saying and decided to use that power to not just unseat a politician, but to destroy that politician’s life.

Beginning in 2017, when Matthew Philbin took possession of the century-old Everett Leader Herald newspaper, purchased by his father, Andrew Philbin, Sr., the patriarch of a once proud Everett family, he decided to use his barrel of ink to vilify and ruin Mayor Carlo DeMaria’s reelection chances in the 2021 election. In order to do that, Philbin needed someone who, for a price, would become his editorial hit man – and that person, whose reputation as a scurrilous journalist proceeded him, would be Joshua Resnek.

Now the editor, reporter and publisher, Resnek would take to his new position like a shark smelling blood – except Resnek’s chum was money. And according to Resnek, “Philbin just pisses money.”

Resnek, who was once an owner-partner in the Independent Newspaper Group with his childhood pal Steven Quigley, was kicked out of the group after taking money from a vendor who held a contract with the City of Boston, according to depositions given by Resnek in this defamation lawsuit. Philbin found Resnek, who was, once again, unemployed after being fired by a well-known Boston public relations firm, to run his new venture.

According to the court filing, Resnek and Philbin began collaborating on fabricating false articles about the mayor, repeatedly stating that DeMaria had committed numerous crimes ranging from assaulting a woman and taking bribes and kickbacks to extorting the city clerk, Sergio Cornelio, for $96,000 over the purchase and sale of property in Everett. By October 2021, DeMaria had had enough and filed a defamation lawsuit against the Philbins, Resnek, Cornelio and the newspaper company, for writing and publishing defamatory editorials and stories for over two years leading up to the 2021 election.

This week, in a Joint Pretrial Memorandum filed by the attorneys for Mayor DeMaria and the defendants, Dorchester Publications, LLC, owner Matthew Philbin, Resnek and Sergio Cornelio, the defendant’s lawyers wrote that “Mr. Resnek admits that he acted with ill will in publishing articles about Carlo DeMaria and wrote articles and editorials about him because he did not want Mr. DeMaria to win reelection as Mayor in November 2021. Mr. Resnek also admits that he wrote articles about Mr. DeMaria with reckless disregard as to whether they were factually accurate, motivated by his ill will and his desire to influence the election of November 2021.”

The memorandum also states that the words Resnek wrote were “entirely his and he has taken responsibility for same, and will do so again at trial.”

But in a ridiculous twist of desperation, the defendants’ attorney claims that Resnek’s brutal attacks over a two-year period, both personal and professional, did not establish “malice” and are “irrelevant and serves no probative value.” The attorneys then ask if Resnek’s “atomic bombs” – as the corrupt publisher called his articles in emails to Philbin – against DeMaria caused any damage to DeMaria’s reputation, and physical and psychological well-being.

The attorneys cite the end result of the 2021 elections, saying that the mayor “garnered 18% more votes after the articles and editorials were written” about him and they did not have an effect and were not taken seriously by members of the Everett community. The memorandum goes on to state that the mayor’s psychological well-being was also unaffected and that his emotional state improved when the articles were written.

Talk about desperate overreach.

The memorandum then attempts to explain away Philbin’s role as owner of the newspaper – claiming that the newspaper’s owner is a multiple business owner who has a staff that oversaw the working of the newspaper – thereby refuting all claims that he conspired with Resnek in the articles. Contrary to the attorney’s claims of Philbin’s innocence by ignorance, hundreds of emails between Resnek and Philbin presented in numerous depositions by the defendants prove that not only did Philbin know about the articles Resnek was writing about the mayor, but also contributed and provided the final approval of the editions’ content.

With the trial beginning on Jan. 21 and expected to last a month, it will be interesting to see how long Philbin’s lawyers can bluff their way out of their client’s years of printing lies and fabrications in order to destroy the person they called their “enemy.”

It’s all there in black and white.