12/17/2014
This post was updated at 10:18 p.m. Tuesday to offer some additional context in the long-running battle between Attorney General Kathleen Kane and members of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams' team.
PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams filed criminal charges against two state lawmakers from the city Tuesday, but his most scathing comments were aimed at Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.
Williams and his staffers slammed Kane at several points in their press conference Tuesday for not only failing to pick up the trail of a "press-and-play" public corruption probe, but also for going out of her way to say that probe was tainted by questions of race and entrapment.
The district attorney went further, asserting Kane had done a disservice to the criminal justice system in Pennsylvania by "pouring gasoline (of racism) on the fire" without any tangible evidence to support it.
"If anything was flawed, it was not the investigation," Williams said. "It was the internal review (of the sting case) that the Attorney General conducted."
View full sizeAttorney General Kathleen Kane
Kane, a Democrat elected in 2012, inherited the sting case, in which several public officials were alleged to have pocketed illegal cash payments from an undercover agent posing as a lobbyist, from her predecessor, Linda Kelly.
All sides agree that work on the case had already stalled under Republican Kelly's direction, and when Kane took office in January 2013 she decided not to pursue it.
After months of bitter public sparring after the case's existence was reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer last March, Williams's office sought and received the investigative files from Kane's office to see if it could make it's own case.
Williams said that move was warranted because the public deserved closure on serious allegations raised against public officials.
Williams said the Philadelphia grand jury and his prosecutors have "found ultimately that if anything was flawed, it was the Attorney General's work," Williams added, in a reference to Kane's characterizations of the case.
Charged Tuesday were Reps. Ron Waters and Vanessa Lowery Brown, both Democrats from Philadelphia, becoming the second and third defendants in the revived investigation. Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge Thomasine Tynes was charged in October.
Both lawmakers were arraigned in Dauphin County on charges of bribery, conspiracy, conflict of interest and other ethics act charges. They were each released on their own recognizance pending further action in the case, which Williams noted will proceed in Dauphin County court since most of the illicit transactions took place in Harrisburg.
Kane had famously pronounced the allegations against Waters, Brown, Tynes and two other lawmakers not charged to date "dead on arrival."
The Attorney General, currently under scrutiny by a special prosecutor in an unrelated leaks investigation, stood by that decision in a statement release by her office Tuesday afternoon that seemed to ascribe her differences with Williams on the merits of the sting case mostly to prosecutorial discretion.
"Upon taking office, we were left with an investigation that had been underway for more than two-and-a-half-years with little to no activity in the 9 months prior to General Kane's swearing in," Kane's statement said.
"Elements of that investigation troubled us upon review, including a deal to drop all charges against an informant indicted for defrauding a state food program for low-income children and seniors out of $430,000.
"That said, prosecutors disagree all the time on the merit of pursuing various cases and Attorney General Kane supports the efforts of all District Attorneys to obtain equal justice under the law," the statement concluded.
Williams, however, seemed to be launching two prosecutions in his remarks: the official one aimed at Waters and Brown, accused of pocketing $12,750 in unreported cash payments between them; and an informal one against Kane's initial criticisms of the case and the people who prosecuted it, several of whom now work for him.
"The only three reasons I can come up with why the Attorney General dismissed this case was either pure incompetence, to gain political favor, or as a grudge against other personalities," the Philadelphia DA said.
The latter category is clearly true.
Kane has been engaged in a high-stakes and increasingly personal battle with Frank Fina, the OAG's chief of criminal prosecutions under Tom Corbett and Kelly and the original supervisor of the sting case, for two years now.
Their fight has its initial roots in Kane's campaign-year accusations that the Corbett Era OAG's Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal investigation was stage-managed for political purposes.
Fina works in Williams office now, though he has not been actively involved in the revival of the sting case.
Williams noted Tuesday that he asked his prosecutors to examine all of Kane's criticisms during their follow-up probe, to see if they might prove fatal to the case. On all points, he said, they found the criticisms "empty."
"The only thing that was dead on arrival or half-assed in this investigation was that report," said Williams' assistant Mark Gilson, in a reference to the internal review Kane said she relied on in making her determination to drop the case.
Gilson has headed the probe for Williams' office, which asked for and received the case files this summer.
In a point by point rebuttal, the prosecutors said:
* There is no evidence to suggest the elected officials targeted by informant / lobbyist Tyron Ali in a mostly-white state government were targeted because of their race.
Williams said the grand jury, of which about two-thirds of the members identify as African-Americans, was especially sensitive to questions of race in the wake of the police shooting of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Mo. this summer.
"The jurors said they wanted to know more," Williams, who is also black, said. "That because of what happened in Ferguson, because of what happened in New York... if this was the result of racism, they wanted to expose it. That wasn't the case."
Despite the presumed production of the OAG's full case file, Williams said his staff has never found an affidavit raising the question of racial targeting that Kane claimed she had reviewed from agent who'd participated in the case.
Williams said the evidence he has shows Ali simply walked through doors that opened to him as he began building his reputation in what started as an potential probe of the lobbying world in Philadelphia and Harrisburg.
Ali was introduced to Waters, according to Tuesday's presentment, by Waters' daughter. Waters then helped Ali make the acquaintance of other Philadelphia lawmakers, who eventually introduced him to Rep. Brown.
"The legislators themselves targeted each other," Williams said. "Because they brought the confidential informant to people that they thought would play ball. People that wanted or needed cash."
* On the entrapment issue, Williams said that the representatives charged Tuesday have both admitted that they knowingly accepted cash in exchange for promises of political influence.
Williams noted that both lawmakers made those admissions during personal appearances before the Philadelphia grand jury, apparently in hopes of bolstering their own hopes for leniency as the case goes forward, and their testimony is backed up by audio and videotapes recorded by Ali.
"I'm winning this fight without throwing a punch," Gilson said later, in a reference to the combinations of the recorded evidence and the defendants' confessions.
Williams also cited an internal email from one senior official in Kane's own office who - despite the attorney general's public protestations to the contrary - stated that "no legislator was entrapped."
* Williams also debunked Kane criticisms that the case was flawed by an extravagant leniency deal for the informant.
Ali was initially charged with embezzling more than $400,000 in public funds through a human services contract.
In a detail that should have been readily available to Kane's staff, Williams said the OAG's investigation eventually found Ali's criminal culpability was actually less than $100,000.
That was, in Williams' view, "sufficient to provide leverage needed to gain his cooperation. But hardly so extreme as to justify dropping a major political corruption probe at precisely the point where the evidence was complete and compelling."
Williams said his office's investigation into the sting files - most of which were developed from meetings in 2010 and 2011 - is ongoing, and may result in additional charges.
source
Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams holds a news conference in Philadelphia on Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2014 to announce the filing of charges, and expected guilty pleas, of two Philadelphia-area state representatives, Ronald Waters and Vanessa Lowery Brown, on bribery and related corruption charges. Behind Williams are ADAs Ronald Eisenberg, left, chief of the DA's appeal unit, and Mark Gilson, who will be the prosecutor during the state representatives' trial. (AP Photo/The Philadelphia Inquirer, Clem Murray)
This post was updated at 10:18 p.m. Tuesday to offer some additional context in the long-running battle between Attorney General Kathleen Kane and members of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams' team.
PHILADELPHIA - Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams filed criminal charges against two state lawmakers from the city Tuesday, but his most scathing comments were aimed at Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.
Williams and his staffers slammed Kane at several points in their press conference Tuesday for not only failing to pick up the trail of a "press-and-play" public corruption probe, but also for going out of her way to say that probe was tainted by questions of race and entrapment.
The district attorney went further, asserting Kane had done a disservice to the criminal justice system in Pennsylvania by "pouring gasoline (of racism) on the fire" without any tangible evidence to support it.
"If anything was flawed, it was not the investigation," Williams said. "It was the internal review (of the sting case) that the Attorney General conducted."
View full sizeAttorney General Kathleen Kane All sides agree that work on the case had already stalled under Republican Kelly's direction, and when Kane took office in January 2013 she decided not to pursue it.
After months of bitter public sparring after the case's existence was reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer last March, Williams's office sought and received the investigative files from Kane's office to see if it could make it's own case.
Williams said that move was warranted because the public deserved closure on serious allegations raised against public officials.
Williams said the Philadelphia grand jury and his prosecutors have "found ultimately that if anything was flawed, it was the Attorney General's work," Williams added, in a reference to Kane's characterizations of the case.
Charged Tuesday were Reps. Ron Waters and Vanessa Lowery Brown, both Democrats from Philadelphia, becoming the second and third defendants in the revived investigation. Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge Thomasine Tynes was charged in October.
Both lawmakers were arraigned in Dauphin County on charges of bribery, conspiracy, conflict of interest and other ethics act charges. They were each released on their own recognizance pending further action in the case, which Williams noted will proceed in Dauphin County court since most of the illicit transactions took place in Harrisburg.
Kane had famously pronounced the allegations against Waters, Brown, Tynes and two other lawmakers not charged to date "dead on arrival."
The Attorney General, currently under scrutiny by a special prosecutor in an unrelated leaks investigation, stood by that decision in a statement release by her office Tuesday afternoon that seemed to ascribe her differences with Williams on the merits of the sting case mostly to prosecutorial discretion.
"Upon taking office, we were left with an investigation that had been underway for more than two-and-a-half-years with little to no activity in the 9 months prior to General Kane's swearing in," Kane's statement said.
"Elements of that investigation troubled us upon review, including a deal to drop all charges against an informant indicted for defrauding a state food program for low-income children and seniors out of $430,000.
"That said, prosecutors disagree all the time on the merit of pursuing various cases and Attorney General Kane supports the efforts of all District Attorneys to obtain equal justice under the law," the statement concluded.
Williams, however, seemed to be launching two prosecutions in his remarks: the official one aimed at Waters and Brown, accused of pocketing $12,750 in unreported cash payments between them; and an informal one against Kane's initial criticisms of the case and the people who prosecuted it, several of whom now work for him.
"The only three reasons I can come up with why the Attorney General dismissed this case was either pure incompetence, to gain political favor, or as a grudge against other personalities," the Philadelphia DA said.
The latter category is clearly true.
Kane has been engaged in a high-stakes and increasingly personal battle with Frank Fina, the OAG's chief of criminal prosecutions under Tom Corbett and Kelly and the original supervisor of the sting case, for two years now.
Their fight has its initial roots in Kane's campaign-year accusations that the Corbett Era OAG's Jerry Sandusky child sex abuse scandal investigation was stage-managed for political purposes.
Fina works in Williams office now, though he has not been actively involved in the revival of the sting case.
Williams noted Tuesday that he asked his prosecutors to examine all of Kane's criticisms during their follow-up probe, to see if they might prove fatal to the case. On all points, he said, they found the criticisms "empty."
"The only thing that was dead on arrival or half-assed in this investigation was that report," said Williams' assistant Mark Gilson, in a reference to the internal review Kane said she relied on in making her determination to drop the case.
Gilson has headed the probe for Williams' office, which asked for and received the case files this summer.
In a point by point rebuttal, the prosecutors said:
* There is no evidence to suggest the elected officials targeted by informant / lobbyist Tyron Ali in a mostly-white state government were targeted because of their race.
Williams said the grand jury, of which about two-thirds of the members identify as African-Americans, was especially sensitive to questions of race in the wake of the police shooting of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Mo. this summer.
"The jurors said they wanted to know more," Williams, who is also black, said. "That because of what happened in Ferguson, because of what happened in New York... if this was the result of racism, they wanted to expose it. That wasn't the case."
Despite the presumed production of the OAG's full case file, Williams said his staff has never found an affidavit raising the question of racial targeting that Kane claimed she had reviewed from agent who'd participated in the case.
Williams said the evidence he has shows Ali simply walked through doors that opened to him as he began building his reputation in what started as an potential probe of the lobbying world in Philadelphia and Harrisburg.
Ali was introduced to Waters, according to Tuesday's presentment, by Waters' daughter. Waters then helped Ali make the acquaintance of other Philadelphia lawmakers, who eventually introduced him to Rep. Brown.
"The legislators themselves targeted each other," Williams said. "Because they brought the confidential informant to people that they thought would play ball. People that wanted or needed cash."
* On the entrapment issue, Williams said that the representatives charged Tuesday have both admitted that they knowingly accepted cash in exchange for promises of political influence.
Williams noted that both lawmakers made those admissions during personal appearances before the Philadelphia grand jury, apparently in hopes of bolstering their own hopes for leniency as the case goes forward, and their testimony is backed up by audio and videotapes recorded by Ali.
"I'm winning this fight without throwing a punch," Gilson said later, in a reference to the combinations of the recorded evidence and the defendants' confessions.
Williams also cited an internal email from one senior official in Kane's own office who - despite the attorney general's public protestations to the contrary - stated that "no legislator was entrapped."
* Williams also debunked Kane criticisms that the case was flawed by an extravagant leniency deal for the informant.
Ali was initially charged with embezzling more than $400,000 in public funds through a human services contract.
In a detail that should have been readily available to Kane's staff, Williams said the OAG's investigation eventually found Ali's criminal culpability was actually less than $100,000.
That was, in Williams' view, "sufficient to provide leverage needed to gain his cooperation. But hardly so extreme as to justify dropping a major political corruption probe at precisely the point where the evidence was complete and compelling."
Williams said his office's investigation into the sting files - most of which were developed from meetings in 2010 and 2011 - is ongoing, and may result in additional charges.
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