The attorney defending Cambridge city councillor Paul Toner, who was charged in March in connection with the area’s “brothel” case, is making a bid for a council seat. Toner has opted out of a reelection bid, meaning one seat is guaranteed to go to one of a dozen challengers in the year’s 20-candidate field.
Tim Flaherty is running for office because he believes he can “help move Cambridge forward during a time of significant change while maintaining the best of our past,” according to a press release. He declined to comment when contacted.
A lifelong Cambridge resident, Flaherty applauded his city’s investments in education, biotech, health care, clean energy, housing and accessibility, according to the press release. Yet Flaherty said that he still sees room for improvement.
“Our politics are too often polarized,” Flaherty said, according to the press release. “We need people on the City Council who can get past that polarization and find areas of common ground and compromise. We are stronger together, and we can make more concrete progress when united than divided.”
To remedy this issue, Flaherty said his “mature and seasoned leadership” will bridge the divide that plagues his city, according to the press release. Aside from working in the legal field as a prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney, he says he’s helped many minority-owned businesses get started in Cambridge.
“These professional experiences have taught me how to work with a diverse range of individuals regarding complex, high-stakes situations and find creative solutions in the legal and business arenas,” he said, according to the press release.
This isn’t the first time Flaherty has run for office. The Cambridge attorney ran for state Senate in 2007 against Anthony Galluccio, the Democratic incumbent. He ultimately placed third in that race. After Galluccio resigned from office, Flaherty placed another bid for the special election and the regular election, losing each to now Sen. Sal DiDomenico.
Years later, Flaherty in 2014 made headlines after he tried to stop a victim of a hate crime from testifying against his client with an offer of $2,500 in cash, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Flaherty pleaded guilty to related charges in 2016. As a result, he was placed on probation for a year; during that period, he was not allowed to practice law. In 2018, the Supreme Judicial Court reinstated Flaherty to practice law.
This post was updated Aug. 25, 2025, with more specific language about the 2016 case against Tim Flaherty.
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I wonder how Tim would balance his (lucrative!) law practice with being a city councilor.
I wonder how he would describe how he has grown and changed in the ten years since he engaged in very serious witness tampering.
Finally, I wonder if he is sending his son to Cambridge public schools, or if he is going to BC High, as Tim himself went. That matters to me.
>>“We need people on the City Council who can get past that polarization and find areas of common ground and compromise.”
Translation– he wants to have more ‘conversations’ about bike lanes. Hard pass.
Wait. He pled guilty to witness tampering, and he wants our votes. Really?
Here we go again with Cambridge Day profoundly distorting legal import of somebody’s actions. First we had Toner and now Flaherty. Even your link, in the words of the US Attorney’s office, does not ever use the term BRIBE. An offer of money to a victim by a person accused of a crime is lawful and actually pretty common place. It is called an accord and satisfaction. Look it up!!!! What the US Attorney settled on was the statements telling the victim to not answer the prosecutor’s calls and direction to inform the prosecutor that he no longer was interested in pursing the criminal case. Truth is, that is pretty mundane and I have never seen any attorney prosecuted for this. At all times, the attorney is correct in stating that no one ever has to speak with a prosecutor (or police) other than identifying yourself. That right is embedded in our constitution and is called the right not to incriminate yourself as guaranteed by the First Amendment. I have been a criminal defense attorney for 35 years. I am admitted in Mass, CO, and Fl and clerked on the U S Court of Appeals.
It’s funny that Paul Toner correctly realized that the brothel scandal killed his reelection chances but his lawyer somehow thinks he has a shot.
Maybe we shouldn’t elected people convicted of bribery to positions of public trust?
Here we go again with Cambridge Day profoundly distorting legal import of somebody’s actions. Even your link, in the words of the US Attorney’s office, does not ever use the term BRIBE. An offer of money by a person accused of a crime is lawful and actually common place. It is called an accord and satisfaction. What the US Attorney settled on was the statements telling the alleged victim to not answer the prosecutor’s calls and direction to inform the prosecutor that he no longer was interested in pursing the criminal case. That is pretty mundane and I have never seen any attorney prosecuted for this. At all times, the attorney is correct in stating that no one has to speak with a prosecutor (or police) other than identifying oneself. That right is embedded in our constitution and is called the right not to incriminate yourself as guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. I have been a criminal defense attorney for 35 years. I am admitted in MA, CO, and Fl and clerked on the US Ct of Appeals.
Anything to put the brakes on rampant overdevelopment.
MightyMouse is right… it was not bribery. He pled to lesser charges to make federal witness tampering charges go away.
“Timothy R. Flaherty, 51, of Cambridge, was indicted in May 2015 on federal witness tampering charges. Today, he pleaded guilty to related state charges in Middlesex Superior Court in order to resolve the federal charges.”
What did Flaherty do?
“Flaherty contacted the victim of the case and offered him cash in exchange for informing state authorities that the victim was too busy to pursue the case and no longer wanted to assist in the prosecution of Flaherty’s client.”
To me, a non lawyer, that sounds different than “accord and satisfaction” which usually involves a debt or contract. If someone requests payment so that a client does not face prosecution, isn’t that extortion? The opposite – when a client offers to pay, while not rising to MightMouse’s view of bribery, did seem to run afoul of witness tampering rules.
Excellent news! Not bribery, just witness tampering! Somehow, that doesn’t change things for me.
trussell, you profoundly misunderstand the law at issue. MGL c.276, s. 55 clearly pertains to criminal cases and is quite common. It does not apply to contracts as you seem to imagine. “Witness tampering” is never a lesser included of “bribery” as you describe. Informing anyone he/she needs not to speak to a prosecutor is quite appropriate and guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment. You may not like it, but this is our law.
“Technically he didn’t bribe anyone” isn’t exactly a winning slogan in my book. He also doesn’t seem to have any policies and is just taking the centrist road for the sake of being a centrist. We’ve seen that in candidates before, doesn’t usually work out for them!