"Nifonged" Part 2: The Real Conspiracy of Silence

According to the Moulton Report, "the Penn State state emails" were turned over by July 7, 2011, proving a key obstruction of justice allegation was false and that Fina suppressed this evidence to charge Curley and Schultz with failure to report.   

By

Ray Blehar

In Part 1 of the series, the evidence indicated that Frank Fina's expectation that Curley and Schultz would "flip" was among the reasons behind his use of unreliable evidence.  Fina's reliance in pressing charges on flimsy evidence was much worse than that of Durham DA Mike Nifong, who was eventually disbarred over his misconduct in the Duke lacrosse case. In Part 2, the Moulton Report and a lot of other evidence reveal the misconduct on the part of Fina and then-Penn State Counsel Cynthia Baldwin during the Sandusky investigation -- in the lead up to the eventual Conspiracy of Silence case.

On November 1, 2012, the Conspiracy of Silence  (CoS) presentment levied allegations of obstruction justice against Graham Spanier, Gary Schultz, and Tim Curley.  While a long list of allegations were included in the presentment, many of which were not crimes, the key allegation of obstruction of justice was the lack of compliance with Subpoena 1179.

GJ Subpoena 1179 (Sandusky case), issued on December 29, 2010 requested:  

"Any and all records pertaining to Jerry Sandusky and incidents reported to have occurred on or about March 2002, and any other information concerning Jerry Sandusky and inappropriate contact with underage males both on and off University property. Response shall include any and all correspondence directed to or regarding Jerry Sandusky."

That allegation was blown away by the Moulton Report's timeline, specifically:

"July 7, 2011. Tpr. Rossman receives a thumb drive containing Penn State emails."

Trooper Scott Rossman and OAG Agent Anthony Sassano were the two investigators assigned to the case in July 2011.  Obviously, Rossman's receipt of the Penn State emails proves the charge of a "total lack of compliance" was false. 

Additionally, the notebook of former PSU President Rodney Erickson appears to confirm that Penn State had Schultz's notes by at least January 31, 2012 -- a little under a year before the obstruction charges were filed.

The analysis performed by Eileen Morgan made a very strong case that Penn State provided the OAG with the Schultz file in early January 2011 and that Fina utilized it in the grand jury examinations of Curley and Schultz.

However, the falsity of the obstruction charges doesn't stop there.  Not by a long-shot.

Smoke and Mirrors

PSU Policy AD49, effective July 19, 2010, clearly states that the General Counsel (Baldwin) was responsible for answering subpoenas: 

"LEGAL DOCUMENTS INCLUDING SUBPOENAS:

Baldwin "stonewalled" the PSU Three

All legal documents including subpoenas are to be referred to or routed through The Office of General Counsel. The Office has the prerogative to send them to other parties after receipt. The Office of General Counsel shall establish all procedures for handling and addressing legal documents."

The entire obstruction of justice and criminal conspiracy ruse is based on the assumption that Baldwin followed through on her responsibilities.  

Baldwin's grand jury testimony (pages 16-21) was clear that she met with each man one-on-one to discuss the subpoena.  

The evidence tells a different story.

Baldwin not only stonewalled the PSU Three about the subpoena, but of all of her knowledge of the evidence relevant to the Sandusky case.  

The Baldwin Stonewall

1998 Incident:  According to the Freeh Report (page 83), Baldwin obtained a copy of the 1998 police report on January 4, 2011.  Based on the consistent lack of recall of the 1998 incident by Paterno, Curley, and Schultz, it is quite obvious she didn't share the report to help prepare them for their appearance. Similarly, Spanier recalled almost nothing about the 1998 incident when he appeared at the grand jury in April 2011. 

2002 Incident:  Subpoena 1179 clearly identified 2002 as the date of the McQueary incident, but when under questioning at their pre-grand jury interviews, neither Curley nor Schultz got the date correct. Curley guessed 2000, while Schultz believed the incident was in 2003.  At Spanier's April 2011 grand jury appearance, he correctly stated 2002, although he said he wasn't sure of the date, but recalled it was about three years after Sandusky retired.

Subpoena 1179:  Baldwin did not advise Penn State officials of their responsibility to search for materials relevant to the subpoena.

Curley: According to Curley's omnibus pre-trial motion, he twice met with Baldwin, once at the Outback Bowl in Tampa, Florida (prior to the issuance of the subpoena) and once in State College, Pennsylvania to discuss his appearance at the grand jury.  Curley's motion makes no mention that Baldwin advised him to search for materials responsive to the subpoena.  

Paterno:  Scott Paterno, son of legendary coach, Joe Paterno, stated that Baldwin resisted providing him with his father's subpoena to testify and didn't provide it until April 2011.  He also stated that Baldwin never asked his father to search for any documents.  The Paterno family later volunteered numerous documents regarding Sandusky to assist in the Freeh investigation.  

Schultz: According to Schultz's omnibus pretrial motion, in December 2010, Baldwin informed him that he was subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury in January 2011.  Schultz agreed to let Baldwin accept service of the subpoena on his behalf. Schultz's affidavit made no mention of Baldwin informing him to search for Sandusky related materials. 

Spanier:  According to Graham Spanier's New Yorker interview, he was not told to search for documents by Baldwin.  

"In that period from January, February, March, she [Baldwin] only gave me a report that these folks are going to the grand jury. She told me somewhere along the way that they were interviewing staff in the football program, and she would be there for all the interviews. But she never told me what was asked about in the interviews, never told me what came up with Curley and Gary Schultz in their testimony."


Motions To Quash: Baldwin never filed a motion to quash the Subpoena 1179 nor did she make any other formal appeal to the OAG for relief.  As such, the OAG was likely expecting many documents to be produced. 

According to the presentment, PSU had only turned over a handful of documents prior to the testimony of Curley, Schultz, and Paterno.

In consideration of the evidence above, Baldwin was either a completely incompetent attorney or she was intentionally undercutting PSU officials.  The circumstances of her hiring appears to point to the latter.

But what do Baldwin's follies have to do with Frank Fina? 

Unwitting Targets

During the January 2011 grand jury, Sandusky case prosecutors Eshbach and Fina didn't ask Curley, Schultz, and Paterno if they were informed about Subpoena 1179 or if they conducted searches to find relevant information. 

Fina: No questions about Subpoena 1179  

Given the allegation that Penn State had turned over just a handful of documents just TWO DAYS before the testimony of PSU officials,  it strains credulity that Fina and Eshbach didn't ask anyone a question about that subpoena or any questions at all about searching for documents related to Sandusky.  The only person asked about documents was Schultz, likely because Baldwin had already passed his notes to them.

Based on the evidence, it is almost certain that the Commonwealth knew Baldwin had not informed Curley, Schultz, and Paterno about their responsibilities to gather information in response to Subpoena 1179. 

This is not a case about a bunch of incompetent lawyers, but more likely a case of Fina, Eshbach, and Baldwin collaborating to extract sworn testimony from Penn State officials who had no idea they were targets of the Sandusky investigation.  

More Lies About Emails

Page 23 of the presentment alleges that Penn State did not use its established procedures or personnel to conduct the searches for emails.  The allegations (below) are false, as # 3 and #4 were disproved by the testimony of Penn State employee, John Corro, who works for Security Operations and Services (SOS).

On July 29, 2013, Corro testified (on page 89 and 90) that in April 2011, he recovered the emails based on the searches for Curley, Schultz, and Spanier, then provided them to Baldwin (page 91).  

Corro further elaborated (pages 91 and 92) that he provided three USB keys to Baldwin, one which contained the entire set of emails and two that were of specific searches. 

When asked if he saw Subpoena 1179, like the others, Corro stated had not. He had only seen a few lines of it as part of another document,  but understood that he was searching for information related to the Sandusky investigation.

According to the agreement made at the Spanier GJ colloquy on April 13, 2011, Penn State was ordered to provide the entire history of emails from PSU officials dating back the University's implementation of email (i.e., prior to 1997) for Spanier, Curley, Schultz, and Paterno.   

Due to the system cut-over in 2004, the search for emails responsive to Subpoena 1179 (citing 2002)  required Penn State to access the archived files where Gary Schultz's 1998 and 2001 email files were located.  Corro didn't testify to any issues with accessing the archived files.

Penn State was to provide the full set - everything found -  to the grand jury judge and then a "culled set" specifically related to Sandusky to the OAG. 

Baldwin agreed to provide everything by April 15, 2011.  

No evidence to date identifies the exact date on which Baldwin provided the USB keys to the grand jury judge and/or the OAG, however, the testimony of Corro, and statements by Fina and Eshbach reveal that all of the 1998 and 2001 the emails were in the OAG's possession by April 2011. 

As for Louis Freeh's alleged discovery of the 1998 and 2001 emails...the evidence reveals that it didn't happen.

Summary of Evidence

The bottom line is that Fina, et al, knew that Penn State had indeed used the SOS to gather materials responsive to Subpoena 1179 and that Spanier, Curley, and Schultz were not guilty of obstructing the investigation by failing to turn over information.  To wit:

1. Schultz was retired from Penn State when Subpoena 1179 was served and had no access to the Sandusky file in his old office or to his 1998 and 2001 (archived) emails. According to an affidavit filed by Schultz, he informed Baldwin of the possible existence of the Sandusky file.  Any failure to provide those materials was because of Baldwin, not Schultz. 

2. Spanier did not possess materials responsive to the subpoena. 

3. There has been no evidence provided to date, aside from a reference in Erickson's notebook, that Curley possessed any evidence responsive to the subpoena.

The only other conspiracy to obstruct justice charge is wholly dependent upon the Commonwealth's legally impossible task of proving that Mike McQueary informed Curley and Schultz that a crime was being committed.  

In other words, the Commonwealth has nothing.

And let's face it, if there was any material/inculpatory evidence to be found, Louie Freeh would have put in his report.

Fina vs. Nifong

One of the reasons Durham County DA Mike Nifong was disbarred was for failure to disclose evidence that negated the guilt of the defendants.  Nifong failed to provide the complete results of the DNA tests that concluded two of the three defendants were not involved in the alleged rape of Crystal Mangum and made numerous misrepresentations about the nature of the evidence before the court.  The withholding of evidence was in violation of former Rule 3.8(d) of the Revised Rules of Professional Conduct.  The misrepresentations were in violation of Rule 8.4 (c). 

Fina's case is a bit different than Nifong's, however the same rules of conduct apply.

The fact that the Penn State emails were in the Commonwealth's possession by at least July 2011 (if not April 2011)  is proof that the Commonwealth knowingly lied about Penn State's failure to comply with Subpoena 1179. 

Given that the emails (and the Schultz file) included the date of the 2001 incident witnessed by McQueary, the evidence also proves that Fina, et al, purposely misstated the year of the McQueary incident in order to charge Curley and Schultz with failure to report in November 2011. 

The Sandusky prosecution team of Fina and Eshbach filed numerous documents with the court misrepresenting the date of the Victim 2 incident as March 1, 2002.  It was not until May 7, 2012 that Fina and McGettigan's Motion to Amend the Bill of Particulars to provided the correct date of February 9, 2001.

The evidence shows that Fina, et al, made numerous misrepresentations to the court during the Sandusky proceedings, in initially charging Curley and Schultz, and during Baldwin's grand jury testimony in October 2012.

Conclusion

The evidence regarding Penn State's provision of the email evidence is exactly the type of information that Frank Fina and his cohorts likely feared would be exposed when their "flip" strategy failed.  

While Moulton's investigation didn't highlight it, there is little doubt that his investigative team uncovered the email ruse.  If not for the toxic politics of the Sandusky case -- and the pre-emptive strike by Fina -- AG Kane might have already went public about Fina's deception.

No doubt, there was a "conspiracy of silence" related to the Sandusky case, but not by the people accused of it.


Next: Freeh "Fail"

McQueary With More Inconsistent Testimony at Preliminary Hearing

Mike McQueary's testimony has proven to be consistently inconsistent in the Sandusky case.

By
Ray Blehar

The two things in life that are certain are death and taxes.
-- Benjamin Franklin

And now we can add a third thing to that list -- Mike McQueary's testimony will be inconsistent.

Eileen Morgan has already covered McQueary's inconsistencies about what he saw and how he reacted to February 2001 the shower incident.  And the accounts between the November 4, 2011 grand jury presentment, the December 16, 2011 preliminary perjury hearing and at the June 2012 Sandusky trial all differ in varying degrees.

Now that the preliminary hearing has concluded and the transcripts made available for review, the list of inconsistent things have now expanded to who he talked to about the incident, his dissatisfaction with Sandusky's presence in the football building,  and never before mentioned discussions with Joe Paterno.  Note that the media only reported the latter because it contains the key word -- Paterno.

But, what I found even more remarkable is what Mike remembers and doesn't remember.

"Rocket Scientist"

At the first preliminary hearing in December 2011, Mike McQueary could not remember the exact words he used to describe the act with his father, but at the latest hearing he recalls saying "you don't have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what was going on."  This is quite a change from the "extremely sexual and over the lines" terminology he used at the 12/2011 hearing.   Where did these new words come from?

Answer:  John McQueary.

While John McQueary also used the terms "extremely sexual" in his 12/2011 preliminary hearing testimony, John introduced the "rocket scientist" term at the Sandusky trial on 6/12/2012 (page 10).  His exact words, in typical John McQueary, confusing fashion, were:

"He said it didn't take a rocket scientist or something like that.  He might not have said rocket scientist to figure out what was going on."

Remember, this is the same John McQueary who testified that he had never been to the Dauphin County courthouse -- where he testified at the 12/2011 preliminary hearing.

When pressed about what he said to Dr. Dranov, he could not remember the exact words.  So, apparently "rocket scientist" was a code word shared only by Mike and his father (unlike the term "horsing around" which John said was archaic and Mike wouldn't have known about and that it was never used in the McQueary home).

Interestingly enough,  the "rocket scientist" word was never used in Mike's discussions with Joe Paterno, Tim Curley, or Gary Schultz.

More interesting is the fact that McQueary could not remember much at all about what he said to his father and Dr. Dranov on Friday night, but is absolutely sure what he told Joe Paterno the next morning and he's absolutely sure what he told Curley and Schultz at least 10 days after he talked to Paterno.  Those certain words were:

To Curley and Schultz:
12/16/2011: "extremely sexual and over the lines" (p. 32)
7/29/2013:  "a sexual situation, molestation incident" (p. 18)

To Paterno:
12/16/2011: "extremely sexual in nature" (p. 24)
7/29/2013:   "very bad sexual act, molestation act with a minor" (p. 9)

As Jim Clemente postulated, it is impossible for anyone to remember the exact words they used in a discussion ten or twelve years ago.  And it's absolutely incredible that the state continues to pursue perjury charges on statements that cannot be corroborated by another witness.

Which brings up the next point - corroboration.

Where were the corroborating witnesses?

As one should have expected, the media declared the prosecution the round one winner for meeting the exceeding low burden of having enough evidence to go to trial.  However, no one in the media has given a  thought to the point that the Commonwealth brought forth no one to corroborate McQueary's story.

Why?

The only corroborating witness is John McQueary.  Not exactly the most reliable witness (he needed considerable help from Judge Cleland to struggle through testimony at the Sandusky trial).

We know from earlier court proceedings that Dr. Dranov does not corroborate Mike's testimony and he (Dranov) - at one time - would have been the only other witness that could have corroborated Mike's story.   Mike testified at the 12/2011 preliminary hearing that the ONLY persons he told about the incident were his father, Dranov, Paterno, Curley, and Schultz.

But now the list has expanded...

At the Sandusky trial, Mike testified that he told his family members and his girlfriend, who defense attorney Caroline Roberto named as Ms. Long.  Apparently, Mike believes he may have called her during his trip from the Lasch Building to his father's home.

Mike also admitted at the preliminary hearing that he told former equipment manager, and now football operations director, Kirk Diehl about the incident.

And there are at least three other people - outside those now named - who received a contemporaneous report of the 2001 incident and have yet to be called as witnesses in the case.

What are the chances that these people will come forward and testify that they were told (by McQueary) Sandusky was molesting children -- and that they too remained silent?

I'd say those chances are quite slim.

Other revelations

The media jumped all over McQueary's testimony about his discussions with Paterno as if it were manna from heaven.

I found it particularly interesting that a USAToday column cited Wes Oliver, a professor from Duquesne University who had been following the case, who stated he could not gauge the truthfulness of McQueary's testimony because the grand jury transcripts are not available.  Apparently, this "close follower" missed the December 2011 preliminary hearing.

Another "close follower" of the case, Christoper Mallios, a former prosecutor, said McQueary's testimony provided the burden of proof to take the case to trial.

The statements both men were referring to was McQueary's assertion that Paterno met with him over the years and said Old Main screwed up and that Paterno would say - through the years - that Sandusky was a sick guy.

Of course, McQueary's latest revelations are absolutely nothing but hearsay, but the media bought them because it fits the current false narrative about the scandal.  However, a check of the 12/2011 preliminary perjury hearings and Mike's lawsuit against PSU pretty much slams the door on the honesty (or dishonesty) of these claims.

On page 104 of the 12/2011 preliminary hearing, McQueary is asked, "The questions you say you raised with people about why Jerry was still around there, did you raise that question before or after you were contacted by agents of the Attorney General's Office?

McQueary's answer: "Almost certainly after."

The Whistleblower lawsuit filed by McQueary against PSU makes no mention of the alleged conversation between McQueary and Paterno on November 9, 2011, in which McQueary alleged that Paterno stated the "Old Main screwed up" and he'd be scapegoated.  One would think that information would have been mentioned in the lawsuit.  Pages 6 through 8 recount the events from the release of the grand jury presentment to McQueary's dismissal from his coaching duties.  The discussion with Paterno was not mentioned.

What Did Joe Paterno Say?

Those who follow this close closely know that Joe Paterno stated in his final interview that he told Tim Curley about the incident and left if for Curley to resolve.  Paterno never mentioned following up with Mike McQueary or checking back with him.

Moreover, in his interview with Agents Sassano and Feathers in October of 2010, just a month before the grand jury presentment, Paterno never mentions any follow-up discussions with Curley or McQueary.  Partial transcript follows (my emphasis added):

SASSANO: And do you know what happened after that with regards to Mr. McQueary and/or Mr. Curley?

J. PATERNO: Nope.

SASSANO: Did Mr. Curley get back to you at some point in time after that to advise you what actions were taken…

J. PATERNO: No, no, I didn’t, I had other things to do, we had… As I said, Jerry was not working for me.

SASSANO: Right.

Conclusion:  The existing documentary evidence in this case demonstrates that McQueary's latest revelations are unsupported and, are likely, unsupportable.  No witnesses, save his father, will back his stories.