BREAKING: Walls Closing in on Jim Jones Lyons as Fattmans the Next to Reach Settlement with Attorney General
The record-breaking settlement means Jim Jones now stands alone without a deal.
Jim Jones Lyons is the last bad dog to yet reach a settlement in the case.
The Boston Globe reports that Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell has reached a settlement with State Senator Ryan Fattman and his wife, Worcester County Register of Probate Stephanie Fattman, that will see the couple pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines to avoid criminal prosecution for a scheme they allegedly concocted with Jim Jones Lyons to subvert campaign finance laws.
With their legal matters now put to bed, Jim Jones remains the lone holdout who has yet to ink an agreement with Campbell before she may pursue a criminal trial against him.
Under the terms of the agreement, the Fattmans and their relatives who participated in the scheme will pay more than $207,000 to end the years-long investigation into coordination with the state GOP under Jim Jones to funnel money from the senator’s campaign account to that of his wife. Campbell claimed the move violated laws limiting contributions from one candidate to another.
Just weeks ago the MassGOP under new chair Amy Carnevale reached an agreement in the case, a punishment resulting from Jim Jones’s corrupt instructions that Campbell claims he gave while in charge of our party. If Jim doesn’t settle, he faces the prospect of a criminal trial where a grand jury has already been called to mull charges.
Obviously the thought of paying $10,000 or more personally, as other guilty individuals in the case are doing, may be too much for Jim to comprehend. Observers we spoke with suggested that Jim could be squeezing Sen. Fattman or Rick Green to pay his settlement. However, Green has already cut $10,000 to Fattman according to OCPF records, and the combined fines will eat up nearly the entire $231,000 raised in Fattman’s legal defense fund. That does not include the cost of any legal work his attorneys performed over the course of the two-year investigation.
The Attorney General’s Office did not answer by press time whether Fattman’s fund could be used to bail Jim out.
Without a party or ballot question committee to siphon funds from, Jim Jones may finally be running out of options to stave off a looming financial catastrophe.
Those who’ve known Jim for years say he does not have a personal bank account and instead entrusts his wife Bernadette with their mortgage and business transactions. We’re eager to see whether Jim claims he’s unable to pay any fines in the case because, well, Bernadette controls the purse strings.
According to those same sources, Jim sees next year’s Republican State Committee elections as the opportunity he needs to find new sources of income. They say that Jim and resident court jester Geoff Diehl are holding weekly Friday calls with his candidates and have promised them that, come next March, Jim and Geoff will control a two-thirds vote of the committee to oust Carnevale before the end of her two-year term and return the gavel to Jim.
Keep in mind that neither side of the party has controlled anywhere close to the 53 seats necessary to oust a chairman, even after former Governor Charlie Baker famously spent millions of dollars in 2016 and 2020 to influence the State Committee elections. And given that Green is the only wallet in town after Jim drove other friendly organizations like Renew Massachusetts out of business, we doubt he has the bankroll to fund his hapless band of sycophants.
But a grift is only as good as the grifter behind it, isn’t it Jim?