FBI agents investigating Philadelphia District Attorney
Seth Williams sought information earlier this year on connections between the
city's embattled top prosecutor and Local 98 of the International
Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, including thousands of dollars spent by the
union to send Williams’ daughters to summer camps abroad.
A $6,400 donation from the politically powerful
labor organization covered the full costs of separate trips the girls took
to Spain and Japan in 2015, according to public records and sources familiar
with the probe.
The payment came five months before Williams’ office was called
upon to investigate a work-site brawl involving the
union’s longtime leader, John J. Dougherty, the target of a separate
and long-running federal grand jury investigation.
Williams later would recuse his office from the assault
investigation. Federal prosecutors have not alleged any wrongdoing tied to
Local 98’s funding of his daughters’ travels.
But the FBI’s interest in how the district attorney
covered the costs of the trips suggests a potential point of convergence
between two high-profile public corruption probes – the federal bribery case against the
district attorney and an ongoing investigation into Local
98’s prolific political clout.
It also could provide fodder for potential additional
charges against Williams. In a court filing Friday, prosecutors noted that
their investigation of the district attorney continues, and sources familiar
with the matter said that a superseding indictment is likely before his May 31
trial date.
Williams’ lawyer, Thomas Burke, declined to discuss the
summer camp trips this week. He previously criticized prosecutors’
allegations that his client had solicited gifts worth thousands
of dollars – including trips for himself to California and the Dominican
Republic – from wealthy benefactors seeking help with legal woes.
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Local 98 spokesman Frank Keel described the union’s
decision to cover the costs of enrollment for the sisters – Hope, then 11,
and Taylor, then 15 – as a scholarship, similar to dozens of others the union
distributes to worthy students each year.
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“IBEW Local 98 is arguably the most philanthropic union
in the city,” he said in a statement. “When the requests for contributions [for
Williams’ daughters] were received by the union, the submissions went through
several levels of internal scrutiny, which is the case with every charitable
contribution request.”
Ann Press, president of the Philadelphia chapter of
Children’s International Summer Villages, the group that organized the trips,
said the circumstances surrounding the payment struck her as unusual at the
time.
Parents often seek outside help paying for their
children’s travel, she said, but her nonprofit rarely receives checks directly
from those organizations. Local 98’s $6,400 payment to Children’s International
in 2015 is the only contribution the union made to the group in the last
decade, according to the union’s annual reports filed with the U.S. Department
of Labor.
“Usually parents pay by check well in advance, because we
have to buy plane tickets and pay for other program fees,” Press said. “Seth
Williams did not write a check for his daughters’ participation. His daughters’
fees were covered by an organization we were not accustomed to.”
The FBI’s interest in the summer camps and their
connection to Local 98 surfaced Friday in a search warrant attached to a
government court filing in Williams’ federal case.
The warrant, dated Jan. 5, sought access to three of the
district attorney’s email accounts and messages referring to nearly 40
individuals and entities whose connections with him were under review at the
time.
Most of those names later would be in the 32-count
indictment filed against Williams in March. But the appearance of Dougherty and
Local 98 on the list, along with a handful of political operatives tied to both
Williams and the union, stood out.
Until now, federal authorities have not disclosed a link
between their investigations of the district attorney and Local 98. Unlike a
subpoena, investigators would have had to demonstrate probable cause of a
likely crime to have obtained a search warrant for information connecting the
two.
The warrant also sought any messages in Williams’
accounts referencing Children’s International Summer Villages, which has sent
Philadelphia preteens and teenagers to camps across the globe for more than 50
years.
Press said Williams told her he was eager to have his
daughters participate in the program because he had attended the group’s camps
as a teen growing up in West Philadelphia.
“It is really a great opportunity for students to learn
leadership skills and meet people from around the globe,” she said. “It changes
people’s lives and leaves lasting impressions.”
Photos on the Facebook page of the nonprofit’s Philadelphia chapter show
a smiling 11-year-old Hope Williams, dressed in a long green T-shirt, on the
day she set out in August 2015 for her monthlong excursion to Kanto, Japan.
The same day, a separate post featured photos of sister
Taylor bound for Galicia, on Spain’s north Atlantic coast.
Within four months of the sisters’ return, the union
again would enter Williams’ orbit.
In January 2016, tensions between Dougherty’s Local 98
and nonunion workers erupted at a South Philadelphia job site
near Third and Reed Streets. Joshua Keesee, a nonunion electrician, accused
Dougherty of pummeling him with his fists during the heated confrontation.
Dougherty vigorously disputed that account, saying that
he was not the aggressor and that Keesee had threatened his family and rushed
him first.
Keese’s lawyer, Robert Mozenter, said detectives told him
they had urged the District Attorney’s Office to arrest Dougherty and the Local
98 members with him at the time on aggravated-assault charges.
Instead, Williams referred the case to the state Attorney
General’s Office, citing his own “long-standing professional relationship with
Mr. Dougherty.” Law enforcement sources say that before doing so he demoted
Laurie Malone, a former top deputy in his office, after she also recommended
charging the union chief.
Both Malone and Mozenter appeared on the list of names in
the January search warrant the FBI served on Williams’ email accounts.
Williams has declined to discuss Malone’s job status, but
maintained that there was never any disagreement within the District Attorney’s
Office about how to handle the case and denied ever doing anything to
compromise the outcome of any investigation.
But by the time of his decision to recuse his office,
Williams would have been well aware of the FBI’s interest in his finances. The
Inquirer first reported on the investigation in August 2015 when FBI agents
subpoenaed records from his political action committee.
The brawls now have attracted attention from the federal
authorities probing Dougherty and his union.
Sources familiar with that investigation have
described an expansive inquiry into the levers
by which Local 98 exerts its power – from its prolific giving
to political candidates and the network of allies it has built across all
levels of government to allegations of work-site intimidation and misspending
of funds meant to foster union jobs.
Regardless of whether the summer sojourns of Williams’
daughters two years ago factor into the cases against their father or the union
that paid for them to go, Press, the organizer, remains dismayed that the girls
and her nonprofit have been dragged into the middle of two criminal
investigations.
Asked this week whether she was aware of the FBI’s
interest in the travel, she responded: “It’s just a shame.”
Source: Philly.com
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