Joseph Abasciano, fired as a Boston cop in 2023 for going to Washington and posting a series of tweets about the "traitors" in the Capitol and across the country before and during the events of Jan. 6, 2021, yesterday sued Boston and its police department, alleging violations of his First Amendment rights to both free speech and religious freedom by a mayor and police commissioner allegedly out to get him.
In his suit, filed in US District Court in Boston, the former West Roxbury resident who now lives in New Hampshire, says his tweets, posted under a pseudonym, were an exercise of his First Amendment rights as a private citizen, his "patriots vs. traitors" theme - which included the hope that an election official in Georgia be "dragged away in handcuffs" - was a paraphrase of some of the writing of Ulysses S. Grant, nobody ever protested them save for one anonymous tweet to BPD, he never threatened Mike Pence or members of congress and he never entered the Capitol building or participated in violence when he and another BPD officer traveled to Washington.
