| The Vince Fumo trial continues to be very interesting. The defense began yesterday and called their first witness: Bruce Castor. He is the former Montgomery County District Attorney and now Commissioner. I had an eye opening email exchange with Castor when he was running for County Commissioner. All of his emails to me, political in nature, originated from his County email address and server. They were written and sent on County time.
The prosecution established that Castor used his office for political work including emails:
Pease introduced e-mails, apparently kept and provided by Marrone, showing Castor campaigning on state time and using his county office for campaign meetings and governmental e-mail account for political communications.
Castor acknowledged telling federal investigators in a pretrial interview that he regretted using the county e-mail system for politics. "I probably shouldn't have done that," he told the investigators.
Castor testified yesterday that he did the same things Fumo did, some of the same things Vince Fumo is on trial for in federal court. It seems that Christian Marrone who was an important prosecution witness once for Castor in the DA's office doing the same illegal activities he performed for Fumo. Castor and Marrone had a falling out when Castor ran for state Attorney General and Marrone supported his primary opponent Tom Corbett. Marrone got fired for supporting Castor's opponent, something to be expected. The fact Castor hired Marrone to do similar political work on taxpayer time that he did for Fumo shows if one is a crook both are crooks.
If Vince Fumo is on trial for this we should expect to see Bruce Castor in the docket next. Foolish move Bruce but it isn't your first. One would think a District Attorney would know better than to do political work on County time. Unfortunately this is all too common in Pennsylvania. So common that Vince Fumo's defense is essentially that "everyone does it." That doesn't make it legal. |
