Court case of Max Linn’s former staffer still pending

Feb 13, 2025

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by Bill Trotter/Bangor Daily News

BAR HARBOR—A federal judge has sided with the plaintiffs in the civil lawsuit against a Hancock man accused of embezzling $225,000 from late Senate candidate Max Linn. That man, Matthew McDonald, must now present detailed information of his financial assets to the court on March 18.

Matthew T. McDonald, who was asked by Linn to invest the money in cryptocurrency, was sued by Linn’s widow in 2023 over the missing funds. Linn, a Bar Harbor independent who got less than 2 percent of the vote when Susan Collins was re-elected in 2020, died of an apparent heart attack in December 2021.

Linn’s death occurred months after he and McDonald, a former staffer, had a public falling out. McDonald accused Linn of pointing a gun at him in a dispute over the money and went to court to seek a restraining order against the former Senate candidate. McDonald argued that Linn instead wanted to use the funds to buy drugs from Indonesia that were being touted as COVID-19 cures. Linn denied the accusations.

But McDonald ended up being named as a defendant in court documents. He was indicted by a Hancock County grand jury in April 2023 on a criminal felony theft charge, and then was sued that summer in federal court by Linn’s widow, Hanna Aquino, and by Linn’s estate.

The criminal charge against McDonald is still pending in Hancock County, with a docket call scheduled for June, according to the court clerk’s office.

McDonald did not respond to a voicemail message seeking comment on Tuesday

In November, federal Judge Nancy Torreson granted a default judgement against McDonald in the federal civil case. McDonald, representing himself, had filed paperwork asking for deadline extensions and asked that Aquino’s complaint be dismissed, but never filed a formal response to the accusation. Aquino and a representative of Linn’s estate had sought the default judgment against McDonald.

In a two-sentence letter submitted to the federal court in November 2023, McDonald wrote “based on psychological testing, I am not always cognitively aware of my actions and therefore cannot stand trial.” He also said there is no proof that Aquino and Linn were ever legally married.

Torreson denied the motion, saying that McDonald “has not come close to establishing his incapacity to be sued” and that, even if Aquino and Linn had not been married, she still could be a beneficiary of his estate.

The disclosure subpoena for McDonald, which was issued on Jan. 22, details a list of financial documents that he must bring, if he has them, to his hearing next month in federal court in Bangor.

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This story appears through a media partnership with the Bangor Daily News. This just means that each week, we can share some of their stories and they can share ours. There have been minor modifications to this piece.

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