In a major victory for free speech and a stinging defeat for political retribution, the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission overturned the termination of Joseph Abasciano, a former Boston Police Department (BPD) officer accused of misconduct related to tweets he posted on January 6, 2021, while attending the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington, D.C.
The unanimous decision allows Abasciano to retire medically, with his federal lawsuit against the city still pending.
Officer Abasciano, a former U.S. Marine with commendations for his service in Iraq and over a decade of distinguished work in Boston’s toughest neighborhoods, found himself under scrutiny not for his actions but for his conservative political views.
Abasciano’s case arose from a series of tweets on his anonymous account, @mailboxjoe, that neither identified him as a BPD officer, where he described attendees as “patriots” and referred to the Vice President as a “traitor.”
“I sent out some anonymous tweets while traveling home. Apparently, I was not so anonymous. It appears my conservative activism and attempts to expose (Democrat) union corruption exposed me and my anonymous Twitter account,” Abasciano told The Gateway Pundit.
He was terminated in 2023 following a second investigation into anonymous tweets he posted while returning home from the January 6 rally.
Notably, the Commission highlighted that Abasciano did not participate in any violent activities during the Capitol riot. Internal investigations initially cleared him of misconduct.
However, under Mayor Wu’s administration, a second investigation was launched, leading to Abasciano’s termination.
Wu, who campaigned on progressive policies and aggressive measures against January 6 participants, made targeting Abasciano a key campaign promise.
Abasciano told The Gateway Pundit:
“My union leadership made false allegations about what I said and where I was that day. This launched a full internal and federal investigation. The result of the original investigations found I was involved with absolutely no criminal activity and my tweets were constitutionally protected.
Then-candidate for Mayor and now-mayor Wu made a campaign promise to terminate me for attending the rally. Mayor Wu was ultimately elected, and her first act was to try to implement vaccine mandates and passports.
I, along with others, immediately challenged her mandates. I, along with another Sergeant (Shana Cottone), were blamed or credited for stopping the implementation of the Wu mandates. Wu first passed me over for promotion.
Then when I filed a discrimination complaint, she moved to terminate me based on my J6 tweets. Simply put, I was purged from the ranks because I pushed back against the City of Boston’s progressive machine.”
Now, the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission unanimously ruled that the City of Boston lacked “just cause” to terminate former Boston Police Officer Joseph Abasciano over anonymous tweets he posted following the January 6, 2021, rally in Washington D.C.
According to the press release:
Boston Police Officer Joseph Abasciano, who was terminated in 2023 for anonymously tweeting about the January 6, 2021 events in Washington D.C. has had his termination vacated by a decision of the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission on December 19, 2024.
The Civil Service Commission found that:
“[T]he evidence confirmed that [Abasciano] did not engage in misconduct on January 6, 2021, that there was not just cause to justify any discipline against him … and that the BPD had not shown, beyond speculation, that his tweets negatively impacted the BPD’s operations or public mission.”
The Civil Service Commission found that a 2021 investigation that cleared Abasciano of any disciplinary violations was conducted more thoroughly than a second investigation conducted over a year later under the incoming Mayor Michelle Wu administration.
The Commission determined that the second investigation was not sufficiently supported by credible evidence and “exudes a tinge of being result oriented.”
Essential to the Commission’s finding was that the tweets were intrinsically constitutionally protected speech that could not be the subject of discipline because there was no evidence that Appellant’s political opinions in the tweets harmed the mission or operations of the BPD.
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