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Everett mayor wins $1.1M in defamation settlement, local paper agrees to shut down
Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria alleged The Everett Leader Herald knowingly fabricated quotes and published false accusations against him.
Everett Mayor Carlo DeMaria and his lawyers announced Monday that they had settled a defamation lawsuit against The Everett Leader Herald for $1.1 million. The 139-year-old newspaper is set to cease publication for good as a result of the defamation settlement.
Three years ago, DeMaria alleged the Leader Herald deliberately worked to disparage his reputation over several years. Through discovery, it came to light that the paper’s publisher and editor, Joshua Resnek, admitted to fabricating quotes and knowingly reporting false information about DeMaria.
Resnek and Leader Herald owner Mathew Philbin established an “extraordinarily blatant conspiracy” where they falsely, and knowingly, published articles falsely asserting that DeMaria had taken payoffs, kickbacks, and engaged in extortion, DeMaria alleged in an amended complaint filed in 2022.
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“Even if the terms of the settlement vindicate me in what I have been saying, and they do, it will never be possible to repair the reputational and emotional damage that has been done here,” DeMaria said at a press conference.
One of the main goals of the conspiracy, DeMaria alleged in the complaint, was to remove him from office and protect Philbin’s business interests. Resnek admitted under oath that, in 2021, the Leader Herald worked to “drop bombs” on DeMaria by using the paper to falsely accuse him of criminal conduct. This was done immediately before the mayoral primary, in an apparent attempt to “tilt the election and remove” DeMaria.
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Resnek admitted to coordinating daily with DeMaria’s political enemies in Everett during this time. False stories were sent to other businesses owned by Philbin to be reviewed, edited, and approved to conform with his business interests before publication, according to the complaint.
“Each week, 52 times a year, I invent the Leader Herald … The mayor is my enemy … It takes me two days away from important writing every week to create this s–t,” Resnek wrote to a colleague, according to the complaint.
A trial was scheduled to begin Jan. 21 in Middlesex Superior Court, but DeMaria agreed to not pursue a trial as part of the settlement. The actual settlement agreement is being kept confidential.
When contacted by a Boston Globe reporter and asked if the Leader Herald has the money to pay the lawsuit, Resnek declined to comment and added: “There could not have been a settlement without payment.”
Lawyers for DeMaria said that the agreement to shutter the Leader Herald is not due to the $1.1 million payout, but a separate condition of the settlement.
Resnek entered into an agreement with Philbin in 2017 that, in addition to a set salary, he would receive a share of any profits of the paper. The Leader Herald was being distributed free of charge, and was supported by advertising revenue. The paper suffered annual losses starting in 2018, and Resnek admitted to being conscious of his financial interests in the paper as he reported and wrote articles.
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Resnek and Philbin were angry with DeMaria for declining to use Everett taxpayer money to buy advertisements in the paper. They believed DeMaria was also responsible for other potential advertisers staying away from the paper, according to the complaint.
They labeled DeMaria “Kickback Carlo” and repeatedly published knowingly false accounts of how the mayor was purportedly breaking the law, DeMaria alleged.
“[I] think I have this fat f–er. I’ve been working for three years to bring him down,” Resnek wrote in a September 2021 email thread to Philbin, according to the complaint. “I feel like I’m about to crush the mayor of Everett two weeks before the hotly contested primary,” he wrote in another email that day.
The Leader Herald’s website was inaccessible to the public Tuesday morning. Everett is the home to two other weekly news outlets, the Everett Advocate and the Everett Independent.
In a blog post, Northeastern journalism professor and local media scholar Dan Kennedy commented on the Leader Herald settlement and compared it to one recently reached between ABC News and President-elect Donald Trump. ABC News agreed to pay $15 million to Trump’s “presidential foundation and museum” to settle the defamation claim.
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“Unlike the matter of Trump and ABC, you will not find a clearer example of actual malice” than the case involving DeMaria, Kennedy wrote.
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