Presidential cousin Billy Bush is supporting controversial media darling Karen Read in her campaign to get cleared in a recent cop killing.
“Hi my love,” Bush, former Access Hollywood host, gushed with excitement Wednesday on his Maine-based podcast as he greeted the Massachusetts woman being sued by the family of dead Boston cop John O’Keefe.
Then Bush, the Colby College grad brother of Jonathan Bush who’s running for Maine governor, poured it on even thicker, saying, “you look really well-rested.”
Read replied in kind, “Oh, it’s just my makeup,” adding “You’ve got a nice tan.”
Bush cooed back, “I’ve been out in Maine. I’m a Maine guy in the summer.”
“Oh, I’ve heard,” Read replied, “I heard you have a little spot on the coast.”
Then Bush told Read’s parents, who joined her on the podcast, “She looks rested, she looks well, her eyes, her skin, I mean …”
Finally Bush got to what might be the collateral point to his fawning – that he’s behind Read’s efforts to get her name cleared.
Read, acquitted in June of allegedly drunkenly killing her boyfriend cop, has been the subject of widespread national publicity in the well-known case that one TV analyst called “the murder case that captivated a nation.”
Read has become a folk hero for those who claim she was set up by the thin blue line to take the fall for a fatality that occurred during a fight outside a late-night house party in January 2022 involving cops jealous over her relationship with O’Keefe.
Turtleboy, an investigative reporter on the Boston-area’s Howie Carr radio program, can claim credit for the most comprehensive and revealing coverage of the criminal case.
She was up on criminal charges that she backed into O’Keefe with her car outside of a Canton, Massachusetts house on a wintry night, killing him, after they’d had an argument.
But Massachusetts prosecutors were unable to persuade two juries – the first a mistrial, the second an acquittal – that her car had even actually struck O’Keefe.
He was found dead in the snow in Canton outside a different Boston cop’s house where a party was being held.
While Read was acquitted of murder, the second jury found her guilty of drunk driving. She was sentenced to a year’s probation and a driver-alcohol education program, the standard sentence for first-time offenders.
Read is now on trial in a civil case in a lawsuit brought against her by O’Keefe’s family alleging that she was in fact responsible for killing him.
O’Keefe’s family filed the wrongful-death suit alleging Read “intended the reckless conduct that resulted” in his death.
But Bush made it clear on his North Haven-based podcast that he’s 100 percent a Read fan, believing – as she does – she’s getting railroaded a second time.
Bush is a cousin of former President George W. Bush, whose family also has a presence in Maine, along the Kennebunkport coast. He made national headlines in 2016 when the Hillary for America campaign sought to use his much earlier Access Hollywood interview with Donald Trump speaking randily about women to torpedo his campaign.
Now he’s feasting on Turtleboy’s crumbs.
