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The Woburn police chief announced the results of an internal affairs investigation on Friday, Oct. 21, following recently unearthed accusations that Donnelly was involved in the Unite The Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Video from the event shows him guarding Richard Spencer, the white nationalist as he greets fans. Donnelly resigned from the police department on Monday.
The group Ignite The Right was the first to connect Donnelly to the rally and several racist and antisemitic posts he allegedly made online under a pseudonym.
The internal affairs investigation found that Donnelly, who went by the name Johnny O'Malley online and in person to hide his identity, was once a member of Identity Evropa, a group the Anti-Defamation League called a "white supremacist group focused on the preservation of 'white American culture' and promoting white European identity."
The group changed its name following the Charlottesville rally to the American Identity Movement, and members called themselves "identitarians" rather than racists, the Southern Poverty Law Center wrote.
Donnelly, who is also a real estate agent at the Donnelly Group of Century 21 North East, refused to take part in the investigation.
The investigation's findings could complicate many of the cases Donnelly helped prosecute. Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan announced last week that her office was "thoroughly reviewing" those cases.
The Committee for Public Counsel Services wants every case he worked on thrown out.
"It is our belief that every single case Officer Donnelly has ever touched, in his seven years of apparent disservice to the Woburn Police Department, should be dismissed," the group of public defenders wrote in a letter to the Woburn police chief Robert Rufo.
Rufo said his department would pass the findings to the Massachusetts Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission which will determine if he can ever serve as a police officer in the state again.
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