Friday, February 21

Fina & Baldwin Are Just the Beginning

The decisions to suspend Frank Fina's law license and to publicly reprimand Cynthia Baldwin are  just the beginning of a long line of disciplinary actions to come against current and former OAG officials

By
Ray Blehar
Feb 21, 2020. 9:27 PM EST, Updated Feb 23 at 11:04 AM EST

Image result for Fina Baldwin punishedOn February 20th, the Supreme Court meted out some long overdue punishment for former Penn State University (PSU) General Counsel Cynthia Baldwin and former Deputy Attorney General (DAG) prosecutor Frank Fina.   

Fina will lose his law license for one year and one day, which forces him to reapply for a license.  

Baldwin will be publicly scolded on April 21 at 10 AM at 819 City County Building at 414 Grant Street in Pittsburgh.


Thursday, February 6

Diary: The Incredible Shrinking Schultz File

Kathleen McChesney's diary and other evidence prove multiple copies of the Schultz file existed and that information was removed from it to frame PSU officials

By
Ray Blehar
February 6, 2020, 7:25 PM EST, Update 2/7/2020 at 9:54 AM EST

The diary of Kathleen McChesney and other evidence confirm that Louis Freeh's investigators not only didn't find the so-called Schulz secret file, but that multiple copies of Schultz's file were held by numerous groups and that records were removed in an effort to subvert justice.

First, a diary entry of March 30, 2012 states:
"Concerned about Schultz sensitive files not having Sandusky stuff, thick file missing - lots of people said there was file there."

Evidence shows that "lots of people" handled the Schultz file, including the Penn State University (PSU) General Counsel (GC), the Office of Attorney General (OAG), members of the Special Investigations Task Force (SITF), the Freeh Group and lawyers from the Duane Morris and Reed Smith law firms. 

In the PSU v. PMA case, Schultz's former administrative assistant Joan Coble was deposed and asked to verify information purportedly from the Schultz file.  The PSU legal team included Freeh Exhibit 2F as part of the Schultz file.

According to all available court filings, that exhibit was not among the information turned over to the OAG by Schultz and Belcher, but it was purported to be part of the file in 2016.

This is another smoking gun of evidence mishandling on the part of Fina and Baldwin.  Fina got away with similar sloppy evidence handling in the Computergate and Bonusgate cases. 


Wednesday, February 5

Gladwell Gets Backlash Over Paterno Statue Statement

Critics of Gladwell prove that the lies of the November 2011 grand jury presentment and Freeh Report need to be corrected


By
Ray Blehar
February 5, 2020, 12:10 PM EST

When Malcolm Gladwell announced his support for returning the Paterno statue to its rightful place outside Beaver Stadium, he received a hearty round of applause.   The audience in the State Theater agreed with Gladwell's assessment that Joe Paterno was not trained to detect a serial pedophile and that the legendary coach followed the rules of his University and was punished unfairly.

Gladwell also received some criticism for his position on Paterno and, as it turns out, the criticism is rooted in the lies of the November 2011 grand jury presentment and the Freeh Report.

Image result for paterno statue"

Actually, the criticism predated the event at the State Theater. 

Back in September 2019, Tom Ley, a reporter for Deadspin, called Gladwell's argument the "oldest, dumbest defense of Paterno."  Then Ley used this nonsense to support his position (emphasis is mine):

"Gladwell isn’t doing anything here that Joe Posnanski and Sally Jenkins didn’t already do years ago, which is to excuse Paterno’s failure to call the cops...who couldn’t possibly be expected to understand or properly respond to being told that his longtime assistant coach was seen raping a boy in the Penn State showers."

Ley's knowledge of the case seems to be based exclusively on the November 2011 grand jury presentment because he has no idea that the record was corrected at December 2011 preliminary hearing.  At that hearing, McQueary testified he never told Joe Paterno about a rape and went even further to stated never used the words rape or sodomy to describe the incident in the showers.

McQueary's early clarification about what he told Paterno didn't make headlines and the AP  placed it near the end of its report.  That said,  there is no excuse for Ley to be ignorant of the fact that Jerry Sandusky was acquitted of the rape in that episode and/or that McQueary gave multiple versions of the event in question.