Rep. J. P. Miranda (D-Philadelphia) is facing three felony charges in a Philadelphia political corruption case.
Miranda and his sister Michelle Wilson are charged with perjury, conflict of interest, and conspiracy. Miranda was taken into custody earlier today.
Williams said Miranda tried to hire his sister as his legislative chief of staff in December, 2012.
First reported today by Chris Brennan of the Philadelphia Daily News, the District Attorney’s office was also investigating a “ghost employee” in Miranda’s North Philadelphia office.
Jeff Cole of My Fox Philly followed the alleged ghost employee, Timothy Duckett, for ten days. He was not in the North Philadelphia office for nine of those days.
Duckett was paid $36,000 per year as a full-time legislative assistant.
“When you have employees that are working somewhere else while they’re drawing a salary, that’s just fundamentally wrong. It could include fraud. It could be theft,” District Attorney Seth Williams told My Fox Philly.
Williams held a press conference at 12:30pm to confirm this morning’s rumors.
Miranda is a freshman legislator, winning his seat in 2012 after Jewell Williams retired. He won 95% of the general election vote. Miranda previously worked for City Council President Darrell Clarke, state Sen. Shirley Kitchen and Mayor Nutter.
Loading ...
5 Responses
Nice to see Seth Williams throwing stones from a glass house. I’m not letting Rep. Miranda off the hook but if you’re a Philly Politician then 9 times out of 10 you’re dirty/corrupt (including Seth Williams). This seems like a back-handed way of rigging an election so that Tomas Sanchez the husband City Councilwoman Maria Quinones Sanchez can ease his way into that seat without having to work for it. If Seth Williams was a man of integrity (which he clearly is not) then he’d do a wide scale crackdown on the corruption that is the Philadelphia political machine. But since he’s apart of the machine then he’ll just go after bad-guys who operate outside of the program while overlooking all of the corruption that has plagued the Democratic Party in Philadelphia. This city is a breeding ground for incompetent and corrupt politicians like Seth Williams, Rep Miranda, and the Sanchez’s and its because of people like them why neighborhoods and schools never improve.
Hey Phyllis, crack is whack!
Let’s not rush to judgement.
Praying that this will shift in the favor of Jose and his sister and go away without any further embarrassment.
Timothy could have been on extended leave while out of the office for 9 days and not a ghost employee.
When you are not allowed
To hire your sister
Who ya gonna call?
GHOSTWORKERS!
You left out the most important facts (per the Inky):
Miranda hired the ghost employee to launder money to his sister when the Democratic caucus wouldn’t allow him to hire his sister as chief-of-staff due to anti-nepotism rules.