By
Ray Blehar
April 14, 2017, 12:14 AM EDT
The recent revelations by Mike McQueary that Jonelle Eshbach tipped him that the Sandusky charges were about to be leaked must pose a moral dilemma for Frank Fina.
Back in 2014, Fina wrote a letter to Judge William Carpenter after he learned that Philadelphia Daily News reporter Chris Brennan was in possession of (alleged) grand jury information.
Fina wrote:
"...as individuals who continue to be sworn to secrecy before the grand jury in question, we have an obligation to disclose this apparent breach of secrecy to the Supervising Judge."
Fina resigned from his position in as an OAG prosecutor shortly before Kane took office.
Just after Kane had been sworn in and made good on her promise to investigate the Sandusky investigation, anonymous attorneys and agents who worked on the case threatened retaliation.
Prosecutors Angered Over Kane's Sandusky Investigation
Retaliation accomplished.
However, Fina didn't get out of the fight unscathed.
He was ensnared in the "porngate" scandal that developed from Kane's Sandusky probe. Philly District Attorney, Seth Williams, allowed Fina to stay on but had him attend sensitivity training.
Fina was later reassigned to a less visible job, then resigned. At the time of his resignation, his plans were to go into private practice as a criminal defense attorney.
Given what has transpired over the last five years, I would not be surprised if Fina wrote a letter to a Judge tossing Eshbach under the bus.
Leave the gun, take the connoli.
Fina did the same thing to former PSU General Counsel Cynthia Baldwin when she seemingly assisted him in shafting Penn State officials.
That letter resulted in Baldwin getting retired early, then cutting a deal -- likely to avoid prosecution for obstruction of justice.
The bottom line is that the corruption in Pennsylvania is becoming more and more evident as this case drags out.
Even the PennLies is half-heartedly reporting on the leak.
Josh Shapiro, who vowed to clean things up, now has a flaming bag of dog poop on his doorstep and it was left there by Fina and Eshbach.
And once again, we will see if Shapiro is part of the problem or part of the solution.
I wonder what other kind of slips we would have uncovered if Curly and Schultz went to trail. It's funny how everything goes back to McQueary....and everyone thought this was over. Thx Ray for all your efforts.
ReplyDeleteLITW,
DeleteThanks for reading the blogpost and for the compliment.
It's not close to being over.
I'll also note that the prosecutors steered clear of the Rudy story during the Spanier trial and instead used Dr. Dranov's conference in Boston as how they set the date. I'm guessing the AG knew that story was highly questionable.
You read it here first.
http://notpsu.blogspot.com/2013/02/investigating-investigation-tony-tv.html
Thanks, Ray. Hope readers keeping tabs investigate.
ReplyDeleteRay - The Rudy movie story does seem concocted.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't understand is why Mike McQueary was never cross examined about his phone call to Paterno. McQueary testified that Paterno answered the phone on Feb. 10, 2001, and immediately told McQueary that he had no job for him. Why wasn't McQueary ever asked why there was a job comment by Paterno?
The reason for the job comment was that on Feb. 8, 2001, asst. coach Kenny Jackson announced he was leaving PSU to coach for the Steelers. Paterno thus had an opening for a wide receivers asst. coach. That was the job Mike McQueary got in 2004.
Jackson leaving opened the door for McQueary's coaching career at PSU so how could he not remember that happened the day before the allegedly very memorable 2001 shower incident?
I think the answer is that the 2001 shower incident was not particularly memorable at the time.
Tim,
DeleteThere are a lot of things that don't add up -- in terms of attorneys who seemed to be pulling punches.
That's a great point about not getting the date right because of the KJ job opening. And agree, it was very likely not memorable. Especially given the ever changing details.
In the piece I wrote on Sassano & TV guides, I mentioned that Sassano should have checked March 2003 because McQueary was hired in February 2004. That would have been the last Spring Break he was a GA.