A Bar Harbor man who sued police after he was arrested at a protest outside conservative legal activist Leonard Leo’s home on Mount Desert Island received $62,500 in a settlement with the officers who handcuffed him and took him to jail.
Eli Durand-McDonnell was arrested as he and others were protesting in Northeast Harbor in July 2022 over Leo’s influence in getting the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn federal protections that made abortion legal.
The members of the Mount Desert Police Department who made the arrest were Lt. Kevin Edgecomb and Officer Nathan Formby.
The Bangor Daily News obtained a copy of the settlement through a request under Maine’s Freedom of Access Act to Mount Desert.
Aside from the dollar amount, which is being paid to Durand-McDonnell through the town’s insurer, the four page settlement includes standard provisions such as a release of Mount Desert and its representatives from further legal claims and a prohibition against either party in the suit from publicly disparaging the other.
Durlin Lunt, town manager for Mount Desert, and Kasia Park, the attorney who represented Edgecomb and Formby, declined Friday to comment on the settlement.
Durand-McDonnell, his attorney Matthew Morgan, and representatives of Leo did not immediately respond Friday to separate requests for comment.
When he was arrested on July 31, 2022, Durand-McDonnell, 25, was charged with disorderly conduct, but Hancock County District Attorney Robert Granger later dismissed the misdemeanor charge.
Granger characterized the case as a low priority for his office and said prosecutors should “tread very carefully” when considering whether protected political speech crosses the line into a breach of the peace.
Two months later, Durand-McDonnell sued Edgecomb and Formby in federal court, alleging that they violated his rights to free speech and arrested him under false pretenses.
The day of his arrest, Durand-McDonnell was accused of cursing at Leo and his family as they walked down Main Street in Northeast Harbor. Later that afternoon, Durand-McDonnell joined protests outside Leo’s home of his work to get conservative judges on the U.S. Supreme Court. Such protests intensified that summer after the Supreme Court overturned Roe. v. Wade.
After Leo complained to police about getting yelled at by Durand-McDonnell, officers located and arrested him on the disorderly conduct charge. A criminal complaint accused him of knowingly accosting Leo and yelling obscenities and making offensive gestures at his family. Leo later said that Durand-McDonnell had cursed at his 11-year-old daughter, but the protester said his comments had been directed at Leo.
Durand-McDonnell was released on bail later that evening from Hancock County Jail, with conditions that he not have contact with Leo. However, the bail conditions made no mention of the conservative activist’s family.
Morgan later filed a motion to dismiss the charge on the grounds that it violated his client’s right to peacefully protest, arguing the allegations were insufficient and that he never should have been arrested.
Scrutiny and criticism of Leo has been a national issue.
He came under fire last year for directing nearly $100,000 in secret payments to Ginni Thomas, wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for supposed consulting work, according to The Washington Post.
Before that, Leo made headlines when Politico reported that he leveraged his work with The Federalist Society — a nonprofit whose tax status prohibits it from political advocacy — to obtain a $1.6 billion gift for his “dark money network” that has helped to get conservative, anti-abortion justices appointed to the Supreme Court.
