Posted on Sat, Nov. 14, 2009
By Mario F. Cattabiani
HARRISBURG - Rep. John M. Perzel, once one of Pennsylvania's most powerful politicians, was led in handcuffs yesterday morning into a district magistrate's office.
He was ordered to turn over his passport before being released on $100,000 bail for 82 counts of corruption leveled by the Attorney General's Office.
"This thing has been going on for quite some time. There's hundreds of allegations that have been made. I'm looking for an opportunity to prove my innocence in court," Perzel, 59, a Philadelphia Republican, said as he pushed through a throng of TV cameras and reporters at the entrance of District Judge William C. Wenner's office in Lower Paxton Township.
Perzel arrived at the judge's office shortly after being processed at a police station, where he was fingerprinted and had a mug shot taken.
On Thursday, Perzel, the former speaker of the Pennsylvania House, was charged by Attorney General Tom Corbett with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and conflict of interest.
A grand jury found that Perzel and nine others had misused public money for campaign purposes and then tried to cover it up. Perzel, Corbett said, had spent nearly $10 million in taxpayer funds to create as many as a dozen separate computer software programs designed to give him and fellow GOP politicians an upper hand in elections.
The programs allowed Perzel, who has represented Northeast Philadelphia for 30 years, to analyze vast amounts of data, and target campaign and fund-raising messages to voters more efficiently and effectively.
The 10 people charged on Thursday had ties to the House Republican caucus. It was the second round of charges in Corbett's long-running probe known as Bonusgate. In July of last year, Corbett charged a dozen House Democratic insiders with scheming to award government bonuses to legislative staffers as rewards for working on political campaigns.
Yesterday morning, one by one, the 10 latest defendants came before Wenner for preliminary arraignments.
Perzel arrived at the courtroom about 10 miles north of the Capitol as his former longtime chief of staff, Philadelphia lawyer Brian Preski, was leaving. Preski, charged with 72 counts, declined to comment yesterday, but his attorney, William Winning, said, "Brian has an absolutely impeccable reputation. He has served the Capitol with distinction for many, many years. These charges are not warranted."
Each of the defendants was led into the courtroom with hands cuffed in the front - except for former Rep. Brett Feese, a Williamsport-area Republican and the onetime chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.
Feese's lawyer, Joshua Lock, took his client straight to District Court, bypassing the police station. The tactic spared his client from being photographed and videotaped by news crews while in handcuffs. Lock called the handcuffs "mindless medieval cruelty" on the part of Corbett's office. "It is a French Revolution model of arrest."
K. Kenneth Brown, a senior deputy attorney general and one of three prosecutors handling the latest charges, said Lock's comments offended him. He made no excuses for the process. Sometimes, he said, lawyers who defend people charged with white-collar crimes believe "it's a different kind of a felony."
"A felony is a felony, and if you're a felon you get cuffed," Brown added.
According to the grand jury presentment, one of those charged, Don McClintock, a top Perzel campaign aide, had joked that a day such as yesterday might come.
Perzel, the grand jury found, had routinely assigned House computer technicians to work on his campaigns while on state time. It was so pervasive that McClintock had repeatedly joked to one technician that his own daughter "would even turn on the news and see him being put into a police car," according to the grand jury.
All the defendants were released on bail yesterday - $100,000 for Perzel, Preski, and Feese; $50,000 each for Jill Seaman and Al Bowman, former aides to Feese; $50,000 each for McClintock; Sam "Buzz" Stokes, Perzel's brother-in-law and former aide; Eric Ruth, Perzel's nephew and former House computer aide; and $1,000 for Paul Towhey, who replaced Preski as Perzel's chief of staff; and John Zimmerman, a former Perzel legislative staffer. As a condition of bail, Wenner ordered each defendant to turn over his or her passport, and barred discussion of the case with anyone named in the 188-page grand jury presentment.
It remained unclear when the 10 would return to court for a preliminary hearing, enter formal pleas, and have a judge decide if there is enough evidence to hold them for trial. Those hearings likely will not take place until January or February at the earliest, Brown said.
Contact staff writer Mario F. Cattabiani at 717-787-5990 or mcattabiani@phillynews.com.
Post a comment
Subscribe now! Daily Headlines Newsletter
Philly.com news blogs
today's 
