Poker, emails and The Donald. See who made this week’s list!
Marc Gergely. The State Representative from Pittsburgh found himself in hot water this week. He was charged with six counts of corruption for allegedly aiding Ronald “Porky” Melocchi’s installation of video poker machines. Rep. Gergely was apparently caught by an FBI sting operation that included a wiretap of a conversation with Melocchi. It’s always particularly upsetting to see cases like this because they erode the public’s trust in government.
Donald Trump. Speaking of what happens when the public no longer trusts government, there’s Donald J. Trump. Earlier this week, the ex-reality TV star scored the endorsements of Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Gale and Congressman Tom Marino. The big surprise, though, was the report from BillyPenn that the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is seriously considering throwing its support to Trump. At the moment, The Donald is doing well although that’s terrible news for Pennsylvania’s junior Senator.
Patrick Reese. No one got worse news this week, however, than Patrick Reese. A close confidant to Attorney General Kathleen Kane (he was even her driver), Reese was sentenced to three to six months in jail for doing Kane’s bidding. The AG wanted her aide to read emails that were supposed to be under a protective order. The price of loyalty turned out to be too high in this case.
Steve Santarsiero. The State Rep. and Congressional candidate scored his biggest endorsement so far on Tuesday when Governor Wolf announced his support. While you would think an FEC complaint two days later would negatively impact Santarsiero, the PA GOP’s move only highlighted the Democrat’s attack against his main rival, Brian Fitzpatrick. While the candidate is selling himself on experience and vision, any attention he can draw from his potential opponents would be more than welcome.
Dwight Evans. Another public official looking to make the jump from Harrisburg to Washington, Evans’ campaign to unseat embattled incumbent Chaka Fattah got a big boost on Monday. The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police endorsed Evans, giving the State Rep. a grand Leap Day present. In fact, at this point, it would be fair to call Evans the front-runner in the four-way PA-2 Democratic primary.
The tweet of the week goes to Jonathan Tamari for finding the flaw in Mitt Romney’s “Time for Choosing” redux.
Because when you need to counter the populist outrage over economic struggles and the political elite, you call Mitt Romney
— Jonathan Tamari (@JonathanTamari) March 3, 2016
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15 Responses
Meet the real fbi, if one dare:
http://rochester.indymedia.org/node/147296
See my sworn affidavit 2007 for evidence of fbi high crimes.
http://www.sosbeevfbi.com/affidavit2007.html
As people discover the immoral, cowardly and macabre character of the agents, operatives, handlers and associates of the fbi/cia (as manifest globally in the killing/torture techniques used by these sociopathic assassins to insure compliance to new world order dictates) we may not reasonably expect a merciful redress from foreign and domestic freedom fighters forced from desperation to employ against US equally aggressive and abhorrent stratagems. Geral Sosbee
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2016/03/431815.shtml
Marie – buggy is the RETARD TROLL.
DO NOT FEED THE TROLLS.
buggy — I told you this already: I don’t like scrawny, pathetic weasels. I like real men. And I would NEVER date a racist.
Marie wants to sleep with Fina. Only in your DREAMS.
Uh oh — Sorry for the ALL CAPS.
WING — NICE TRY. BUT IT WAS FINA THAT LIED TO THE COURT. FINA THAT THE JUDGES CALLED “HIGHLY IMPROPER.”
the entire Penn State Sandusky sex assault mess can be dumped in the lap of one incompetent political appointee general counsel acting as attorney for Penn State– i.e. their erstwhile ‘counsel’ cynthia baldwin. she had no background in criminal law . she was a family division judge who ascended by appointment to the PA supreme court on a promise she would not run for the job. those of us who saw her as a family division judge can tell you she had difficulty making decisions on complex divorce cases. so she gets the plum job as house counsel for Penn State, then failed to convey to top administrators at penn state that she was not their lawyer at the grand jury–; her client was Penn state .. Curley, Spanier et al thought she was representing them individually at the grand jury– maybe she thought she was, too — being a total novice at grand juries and crimes and this area of the law. so Curley et al get charges thrown out because they were never properly advised by her to g et their own lawyers, or who their counsel was. they were never advised by Baldwin there ‘might’ be a HUGE conflict of interest in Baldwin representing BOTH the university AND individual administrators whose lack of reporting of child sexual assault might result in millions in damages cases against penn state? too bad someone can’t file legal malpractice against Baldwin and take the $$$$ this incompetence has cost the taxpayers out of her pension… and needless to say we have not yet seen any disciplinary board charges against her, for undertaking representation in an area in which she was not competent…
How about Kane admitting that she ordered 2 agents not to testify before a grand jury when they were called to do so and admitting that because they did they and by testifying as they did they were insubordinate. Or that Gansler has said no criminal charges would come of the email review. Seems like Kane is just full of surprises.
The PA Corruption Network’s Playbook
The similarities between the prosecution of Kathleen Kane, of the PSU 3, and of the legislative sting case reveal the “playbook” of Pennsylvania’s corruption network. All three involve Frank Fina (the guy the Appellate Court labeled “HIGHLY IMPROPER” after this article was written)
Here’s the article:
The cases of current Pennsylvania Attorney General (AG) Kathleen Kane and that of former Penn State University (PSU) officials (i.e., the PSU 3) are connected by a common thread.
A group of the Commonwealth’s attorneys, judges, political operatives, and their media accomplices — hereafter referred to as the “network” — used trumped up charges, purposely misinterpreted laws, and oversold highly dubious evidence to convict these individuals in the court of public opinion.
After examining the timelines and evidence of these cases, it appears that the network has a well defined playbook for taking out its targets and it works like this:
1. Individuals within the network fear their own heinous acts may be exposed and publicly accuse their opponents of crimes as a means of deflecting attention away from themselves.
2. The network next co-opts individuals close to the target(s) –insiders — to assist in setting up the target(s) to be charged with perjury and other crimes.
3. After the insiders have sufficiently undermined the targets (using various means of deception), the network’s attorneys and/or judges leak damaging information about the targets to the media.
4. The media arm of the network uses the information in an attempt to compromise the targets or to promote guilt by association in the press.
5. At the conclusion of this “framing,” that was mislabeled as a criminal investigation, attorneys go public with charging documents that allege crimes based on misinterpretations of the laws and that are chocked full of questionable testimony from unreliable witnesses, completely illogical scenarios, and dubious evidence. Perjury charges are standard in order to publicly smear the defendants as being dishonest individuals while attempting to pump up the veracity of the Commonwealth’s lousy witnesses (who would be eviscerated at an actual trial).
6. The media accomplices ignore the illegal application of relevant laws, that the charging documents are illogical, the lousy witnesses, and the highly questionable evidence in order to continue treating the allegations as facts and even go as far as to allege the target committed crimes for which he or she has not been charged.
7. The public falls for the deception and believes the targets are guilty of everything and are corrupt individuals — whether they have been charged with a crime or not. Citizen activists, public officials, and other groups and individuals — who are beneficiaries of the corrupt network — jump on the media bandwagon to publicly condemn the targets.
8. Witting and/or unwitting employers recommend the targets be relieved of their duties or actually do so through employment actions — before anything is proven and without conducting a legitimate legal review.
9. When legal proceedings in the cases reveal the false and questionable testimony put forth in the charging documents and the dubious evidence used in the case, the network’s media arm ignores the information and continues to slant the reports so the public continues to assume the targets are guilty.
10. The legal issues from the misapplications of the laws result in appeals to the network’s judges, who refused to rule on simple matters and keep the trials on permanent hold. If the cases make it to trial, the targets will be convicted of lesser crimes — that the media will treat like crimes of the century.
The network’s playbook achieves the goal of protecting its corrupt dealings and/or heinous crimes by never legally proving, but publicly scapegoating the targets in a media firestorm that is high in supposition and light on facts.
To wit: the grand jury and Montgomery County DA Risa Ferman did not find the evidence to charge AG Kane with directly leaking grand grand jury information in the Mondesire case, but you wouldn’t know that if you just read the news headlines.
Instead, they charged her with perjury (part of the playbook), lesser crimes, and for orchestrating the leaks, the latter of which Ferman and others know can’t be proven.
Then again, the network’s playbook doesn’t include actually prosecuting the case.
It really is amazing!
The original case was leaked and then trumpeted by Fina and his cronies. Now – the Superior Court throws out MOST OF THE CHARGES and there is no report.
Seems like the corrupt prosecutors and media are in cahoots!
PPA still not reporting on this — a HUGE story in Pennsylvania:
http://www.wtae.com/news/some-charges-against-penn-state-administrators-thrown-out/37576104
The judges of the Superior Court were very critical of the actions of prosecutor Frank Fina, saying his conduct was “highly improper.” He questioned a witness Baldwin about what the administrators told her after he (Frank Fina) assured a Judge he would not do so. Not surprisingly -Fina did not respond to an email seeking comment.
How much longer do the taxpayers have to pay that POS – Fina? We already knew he used his State computer to send this to his white male buddies:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/zadock1/3580634808
The whole concepts of “e-mails under a protective order” in this case is outright ridiculous. Fina & The Corbett Pervs got their “protective orders” to cover-up their own misdeeds and keep secret their racist e-mails.
Quixotic? That’s a strong word – might be better used to describe an establishment career politician, 16 years in office, running in an anti-establishment year against a Fitzpatrick.
Gee, I wonder which Santarsiero crony encouraged that person to write the op-ed. Of course, we’ll never know, with his smoke and mirrors, loan himself money, desperate style of campaigning.
Add another downward arrow for Shaughnessy Naughton’s quixotic campaign. According to today’s Intelligencer op-ed page, she’s losing former supporters 9and youth vote) “Naughton had her chance; now get out of the way” (Sub required after today)
http://www.theintell.com/opinion/guest/naughton-had-her-chance-now-get-out-of-the-way/article_1e426001-cac8-540a-bb9f-76e66cb5d21e.html