Boston’s Black Muslim Democrat Councilor Indicted for Corruption

Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson has all the checkmarks of identity politics that makes her an ideal candidate for representing today’s woke Democrats. She is black, female, Muslim, illegal immigrant, and of course a Democrat. But one important attribute added recently to her profile outshines the rest – criminally corrupt.

On Friday, December 6, Tania Fernandes Anderson was arrested by the FBI for wire fraud and theft from federally funded programs. According to a Department of Justice (DOJ) press release, the 45-year-old City Councilor of Boston, MA, was indicted on “five counts of wire fraud and one count of theft concerning programs receiving federal funds.”  The PR stated that Anderson engaged in a kickback scheme involving a relative of hers that she hired in 2022 as a salaried employee. She lied about it to the council in an email, stating the staffer was not a relative.

Through a kickback scheme involving the staffer in question, Anderson got at least $7,000 from the relative who – as her favored staffer – received significantly higher bonus pay on her directives. The relative would then pay Anderson this money as cash in June 2023 in a bathroom inside the City Hall. Media sources, including Boston.com and LifeZette among others, reported after Anderson’s indictment that she had hired her sister as well as her son in 2022.

The commission found that she had improperly hired her sister as director of constituent services and her son as office manager for her council office.

In May 2023, when the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission found out about this conflict of interest violation, Anderson was fined $5000 in civil penalty payment. Despite this penalty for ethics violation and open nepotism to her credit, Anderson was reelected as a city councilor in 2023.

When she was first elected to the Boston City Council in November 2021, leftist media celebrated Anderson’s victory as another history-made moment. GBH – a partner of NPR and PBS, showered praise on her as “beaming in a black hijab covering her hair” and – in Anderson’s own words – “undocumented” Muslim from Cape Verde who is a “dynamic black woman.” The story wrote that her victory reminded of “Massachusett’s role as the state where Malcolm X converted to Islam and was incarcerated.”

But when leftist ABC News showed a video of Anderson’s arrest by the FBI outside her Dorchester home on Friday, it left out the otherwise shining woke feathers that embellished her earlier portrayal in leftist media.

Anderson, if convicted on all counts of fraud and theft, faces a combined maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and a fine of $500,000. But given that she is an immigrant, woke, black, female, Muslim Democrat, what are the chances?