Sunday, April 9

The Leak That Wasn’t

Contrary to popular belief, the Sandusky grand jury presentment was NOT leaked to the media on Friday, November 4th -- but it appears that was the intent.

By
Ray Blehar 

April 9, 2017, 8:57 AM EDT 

When former OAG prosecutor Jonelle Eshbach called Mike McQueary on November 4th, 2011 to warn him about an impending leak of grand jury information, she likely believed he was about to be engulfed in a firestorm.  McQueary testified that Esbach informed him:



"we're going to arrest folks and we are going to leak it out."

The warning came because Eshbach likely believed the draft Sandusky grand jury presentment detailing the horrific allegations against the founder of The Second Mile was going to go live on a public web-site and that by Friday night and that McQueary would soon after be outed, then derided as the world's biggest coward (for abandoning a child who was purportedly being raped by Sandusky).

Much to Eshbach's surprise, the presentment was not leaked that evening. 

A draft presentment was attached to the 37-count Affidavit Of Probable Cause that was registered with the Centre County Prothonotary’s office at 12:21 PM on November 4,   On or about that time, the Sandusky docket (identifying the charges) from the Centre County magistrate was posted on Pennsylvania’s Unified Judicial System.  

To be clear, the Sandusky charges --not the presentment -- were the “leaked” information that the Attorney General's office attributed to a computer “glitch" (they later blamed Centre County Magistrate Leslie Dutchcot for the leak).  

Sara Ganim used the docket for her “exclusive” report that Friday night.  
















The chain of events that led to Ganim's "exclusive" included the docket being posted in the afternoon, the Patriot News calling Judge Dutchot's office demanding it be taken down, its removal from the system, Ganim's story being posted, then the docket being posted again.

Somewhere in that flurry was also a heated exchange between the AG's press officer, Nils Frederiksen and Ganim.  

The presentment was released – legally – the following morning as a link in Frederiksen's press release on the Sandusky case.

Firestorm Delayed

Ganim’s column didn’t cause much of a stir that Friday night and into Saturday.

As it turned out, the PSU beat writers who were supposed to have read the highly inflammatory grand jury presentment on Friday night were instead treated to a boring court docket that didn’t mention PSU football or Joe Paterno.

Rumor has it that with the weekend of no PSU football, the writers stayed in bed all day and watched a Rudy marathon.  

There was little to no mention of the Sandusky case that Saturday in the national media.

However, by Sunday morning, the news of the presentment began to hit the sports media and by that afternoon, McQueary had been easily identified as the graduate assistant involved -- and he was being “hammered” for “running home to his daddy” as a boy was being raped by Sandusky.

Those were the “Findings of Fact” – according to AG Linda Kelly and they were being publicized as if they were irrefutable.  
The firestorm was underway – but had not yet engulfed Paterno and Penn State.  That blaze could arrive on Monday when former Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner, Frank Noonan made remarks off-camera about Paterno's "moral responsibility."


Leaking

While it remains a mystery how the public came to perceive that the grand jury presentment was leaked, it is a fact that secret grand jury information was leaked (to the media) in the Sandusky and the Conspiracy of Silence cases for the purpose of influencing public opinion.

In the Sandusky case, prosecutors Frank Fina and Jonelle Eshbach requested Judge Barry Feudale's permission to investigate the leaks purportedly set a trap to catch the leaker.   The courts, on numerous occasions in 2016 and 2017,  used the Feudale endorsement of the investigation as evidence that Fina and Escbach weren't leakers because they asked a judge to oversee the investigation -- even though Feudale leaked sealed documents in 2015.

Leaks have been pervasive in other cases, such as Bonusgate, Computergate, and the DeNaples case, but the AG and its media sycophants seemingly have little interest in finding those leakers.

Shapiro (foreground) and Ferman (rear) pursued alleged leaks by Kane, but ignored leaks by many others


In the state of Pennsylvania, leakers of grand jury and/or criminal investigative information are pursued only if their leaks expose corrupt and unethical practices by prosecutors, law enforcement, and judges and undo the charade that everyone is entitled to equal justice under the law in the Commonwealth.







3 comments:

  1. "No one is above the law" said Josh Shapiro. Okay, so we're waiting Josh, because you are not upholding the laws fairly at all. You and Risa Ferman are denying innocent Americans their rights. You are trampling all over our laws and values as Americans. You are part of the governmental corruption in this state and this country. This is why you are sentencing and jailing the innocent and ignoring the blatant crimes of your counterparts. But you and Ferman are not fooling anyone any longer---we know what you both are. Take that American flag off of your lapel Mr. Shapiro, because you are a mockery of what true Americans really are.

    Shame on you Josh Shapiro and Risa Ferman for hiding your filthy criminality behind your innocent family members that you use as props in the media. Yes, you both pretend that you are good clean family people, surrounded by your spouses and kids that have no idea what you really are. Does it occur to you that one day they will know just how dirty and dishonest you have been? It's inevitable because the truth is self-evident, it requires no effort to sustain it. You Josh, and you Risa, are working very very hard to sustain lies. As you both add more lies to cover the old lies your burden gets heavier by the day. The simple and obvious conclusion is you are crushing yourselves with this burden and coming clean is the only way for that burden to be lifted.

    I mostly address my comments to you two because you remain in public service and you still have a chance to right the wrongs that you have helped conceal. The others, Tom Corbett, Frank Fina, Frank Noonan, and Linda Kelly are in hiding---not a peep, they've vanished from the public eye because what they did was criminal and they cannot risk more questions from the public.

    And how about you Governor Tom Wolf? You supposedly preside over all of this government desecration of our laws in Pennsylvania, and yet you ignore our pleas and do nothing. Can you, Tom Wolf as an American, justify what you are NOT doing as our elected Governor?

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    Replies
    1. You are preaching to the choir. Send this to every paper in PA and see if a single one will print it in their letters to the editor section. Scrape up $50K from all of us, and take out a full page ad in a PA paper and see if a single one of them will take the money and publish it.

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    2. GV,

      Well no, actually I'm preaching to the three false Americans that are pretending to be our elected public servants here in Pennsylvania.

      And, you are exactly right about the papers. That's why my comment is here. It has a better chance of being read because it actually is published instead of ignored.

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