Boston Mayor Michelle Wu defended the whopping $650,000 legal bill the city paid to help her prepare for a Congressional hearing on sanctuary cities, saying it was necessary amid threats to put her in jail and cut the Hub’s federal funding.
Wu said she would have rather not had to spend the taxpayer funds, but needed legal representation for the “high-stakes” Washington, D.C. hearing, where several House Republicans said they were considering referring the four participating sanctuary mayors to the Department of Justice for a probe and criminal charges.
“It is money that I very much wish we did not have to spend at all, and time from my staff and team that could have gone to much better, much more important things,” Wu said Tuesday on GBH’s Boston Public Radio. “But the stakes are high and we’re still continuing with the document production that has been formally requested.
“When there were threats to put me in jail, to take away funding, I needed to make sure that I was doing everything possible to represent our city well, to represent the policies with complete accuracy,” Wu said, “and having legal representation was a necessary part of that.”
Of the threats of being referred to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution, Wu said, “We follow the laws in Boston.”
Wu’s office previously said the mayor “expects to pay” up to $650,000 in city funds to prepare for last week’s Congressional hearing, where she was grilled alongside mayors from Chicago, Denver and New York City as part of the GOP-led committee’s probe into sanctuary cities and their impact on public safety.
Wu hired the law firm of Cahill Gordon & Reindell, with a D.C. attorney leading a “team” that bills $950 an hour, a cost that will be paid by city taxpayers.
The cost covers legal work related to the March 5 hearing, committee investigation and production of related documents, the mayor’s office said last week.
Prep sessions for the hearing included staff from the Mayor’s Office, Boston Police and other senior advisors and leaders from the Cabinet, as well as an external law firm, the mayor’s office has said.
The mayor also brought along a dozen staff members to D.C., at an additional cost of $8,500, Wu’s office said.
The hefty legal bill generated criticism online and from Wu’s main opponent thus far in the mayoral race, Josh Kraft.
“Mayor Wu said she’s going to DC to defend the city, and I support this. My question is do we need to spend $650,000 of taxpayer funds on a show trial hearing?” Kraft said last week.
Aside from defending the legal bill, Wu spoke at length about last week’s Congressional hearing during her monthly radio appearance, saying that the threats to cut federal funding for sanctuary cities like Boston are “extremely serious.”
“As much as it can seem like a show or production when you’re watching it, Congress has power and people who are in the federal government have real power to enact consequences,” Wu said, “whether that’s on federal funding or whether that is to follow through with some of the threats around prosecution of individual people or the referral to the Department of Justice.
“So we are going to continue to provide the information the committee was seeking,” the mayor added. “A lot of this was not just the presence at the hearing, but documents that they requested about city policies and different things like that.”
President Donald Trump and U.S. Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, who chaired last week’s Congressional oversight committee hearing, are among those making such threats.
Comer said after last week’s hearing that “federal funding is at risk” for the mayors who testified, if “they continue to obstruct” the deportation of “criminal illegals.” He also said the committee’s role is to investigate, and that he would leave the prospect of criminal charges up to the Department of Justice.
Boston’s sanctuary status is enshrined in the Trust Act, a 2014 local law that prohibits city police and other departments from cooperating with federal authorities on civil immigration detainers.
At last week’s hearing, Wu said Boston Police enforce criminal warrants, regardless of immigration status, and defended Boston’s public safety record, citing last year’s low homicide rate, the lowest in roughly 70 years, as evidence that it is the “safest major city” in the country.
She also took a swipe at the federal administration for spreading fear and undermining police work, saying that the “laws on our books promote the kind of community trust that keeps us all safe.”
“It does feel like much, this design to silence people, to say if you just keep your mouth shut or quietly change your policies, then if you do what we want and satisfy the political winds right now, then maybe you’ll have a chance of surviving better,” Wu said on Tuesday.
“But that is not an alternative that, one, is acceptable for our community members, and two, that is how you can live for four years,” the mayor said. “So we follow the laws in Boston. We’re very clear about that, and we tell the truth about what we do, why we do it, and who we do it for.”
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