The credibility of Tom Corbett's pathetic excuse for waiting 18 months to begin a serious investigation of accused child rapist Jerry Sandusky suffered another blow today.The sports journalism website Deadspin reports that prosecutors are standing by with the complaints of additional victims, ready to file charges in case Sandusky is acquitted.
But Corbett, who was Attorney General when the first complaint about Sandusky surfaced, claimed the investigation took so everlastingly long precisely because he wanted to avoid filing additional charges after an acquittal.
“[If] you were to lose that one case, it would be much more difficult to bring charges in other cases because it would be seen by you, by the public, as vindictive,” Corbett told the Pennsylvania Press Club in November.
Corbett claimed "the one thing you do not want to do as a prosecutor" is make an arrest on a single complaint (even though prosecutors, including Corbett himself, do it all the time). But Corbett made almost no effort to identify any other victims until 18 months later, when investigators from the Office of Attorney General finally were assigned to the case
Does Corbett think the prosecutors are making a huge, vindictive mistake? Do the prosecutors think the former Attorney General's legal strategy is full of hooey?
Or was Corbett just talking out of his ass, as usual, when he scrambled to make excuses for why he allowed an accused serial child rapist to remain free for nearly three years after receiving the complaint?
After all, could Corbett admit that he gave the Sandusky investigation short shrift because his investigators and his attention were tied up fixing his botched investigation of the legislature in time for the gubernatorial election?
We're not surprised that Corbett lied. We will be surprised if he gets away with it.
16 comments:
Listening to Linda Kelly's speech after the Sandusky verdict is making me sick. Hopefully people will now turn their attention to how the investigation was conducted. Tom Corbett's inaction was criminal and unconscionable.
I was so surprised to learn Corbett is a typical GOP pay-to-player. In it solely for self-gain. He is a disgrace to the legal profession and to the office of governor. His day is coming.
PLEASE someone (preferably our CURRENT AG of PA!!!) Investigate TOm Corbett @ WHY he only put ONE investigator on the Sandusky allegations when they were brought to HIS offfice as PA-AG numerous times....HE was part of the 'cover up'!!! He himself has many skeletons in his closet.
YES he was/is part of the cover up! Delays were only to gain the Governorship and his most certain ties & promises to Penn State to protect their beloved football from harm, all the while knowing what was going on! ALL at PSU knew what Sandusky was doing & what it would do to the school if found out! Well time has come for payback & I hear it's a bitch!
If this investigation lasted three years then why did it take a trial to discover more victims and more possibly being charged in the cover up? People sure need to wake up. This is not the first time Corbett had to explain his inactions.
http://www.fox43.com/news/dauphin/wpmt-corbett-defends-length-of-sandusky-investigation-20120625,0,467687.story
The real crime was that corbett and Republican Judges made sure the Sandusky Defense was not able to be given a continuence so this trial would not go into 2014 when Corbett is up for Re-Election.
It my sound odd, but the ebst laid plans often go haywired with unexpected sources decide to reveal how the Republicans were part of this Sandusky Second Mile Scandal, and certain someone is having a guilty moment with his creator and is preparing to spill the beans.
This bigger than anyone imagined!
NYT article hot-linked to this post (article was written within days of SWIGJ release and indictments and is sourced to the AG's Office):
"Investigators with the Pennsylvania attorney general's office had by 2010 already come to the conclusion that Sandusky, the longtime defensive coordinator for Joe Paterno's Nittany Lions, was a serial molester, according to two people with knowledge of the case. But what had started with a complaint of sexual assault from a high school freshman had grown to include another matter altogether: whether Penn State had acted to cover up Sandusky's behavior, even crimes." NYT
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/17/sports/ncaafootball/internet-posting-helped-sandusky-investigators.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all
But of course if you need several cases it would make sense to have more than one investigator assigned to the investigation, right?
The increased manpower didn't happen until after the election when there was an interim AG. Corbett had nothing to do with increasing the manpower. I don't know if Linda Kelly gets any credit or whether the interim gets all the credit.
Corbett's focus was solely on his opponents like DeWeese. Corbett should not get a free pass.
I don't care whether you are a Joe hater or apologizer; a democrat or republican; or someone who doesn't care about any of that.
Corbett chose to ignore JS in favor of more political cases, perhaps even viewing JS as a loser case for himself politically.
The investigation didn't really start until he left the AG office and then he used it to his advantage against Spanier.
Corbett is a bad dude.
So I wonder how many kids were molested as Corbett waited until whatever the magic # was that he felt he needed in order to press charges?
Corbett,in hindsight, wishes he had done more but didn't?
If Sandusky was a murderer, would Corby have allowed him to roam free just to find out if he was a "serial killer"?
The guy molested the Central Mountain kid, over 40 accusations of sodomy on this 1 boy alone, and the PA AG decides to wait to arrest him?
Why?
Just arrest him up front for the first crime and if after you do so the resulting publicity leads to more victims coming forward,
GREAT!
What ended up happening was an investigation that didn't go very quickly, caught a break with the anonymous email about McQueary knowing something and then hit the jackpot after the AG's office leaked the GJ investigation to Ganim and she wrote her article in the Patriot.
The publicity that would have come from Jerry's arrest in the fall of 2008 didn't occur until the spring of '11.
However, as a point of fact I can assure you thatthe State being able to investigate any State-Licensed Charities records without notice is correct.
In addition, several state agencies can review the SM due to their designation as a Foster Care and Adoption agency also.
Just a point of fact and do not forget Second Mile contributors were giving money to tom corbett to become Governor!
Really? So in your book, it is SOP for Prosecutors (let alone an AG - the State's highest ranking prosecutor) to be quite sure they have pedophile on their hands, possess probable cause, but decide to use Centre County and Clinton County kids as "bait" essentially in an effort to improve their case???
BTW, since you know so much, how does this explain the AG not immediately investigating The Second Mile's files and records; something that they would not end up doing until late 2011!?!?
And don't tell me they don't have "legal authority" because the AG's Office monitors charity's for the State in regards to FINANCIAL AND SOCIAL MISSION FRAUD and the AG is permitted to review any State-Licensed and Registered Charity's records without notice!!!
The Second Mile's records had all the information regarding the 1998 and 2001 incidents that PAG Drug Agent Anthony Sassano "stumbled into" in late 2010!!!
Please do explain that LAPSE in investigation given, AGAIN, that a Pennsylvania CHILD WELFARE AGENCY INITIATED THE INVESTIGATION AND IMPLICATED BOTH SANDUSKY AND HIS CHARITY, THE SECOND MILE where Sandusky was the most POWERFUL "CONTROL PERSON" VIA CHARITY BY-LAWS!!! (i.e., leaving the records untouched left them open to tampering directly by Jerry Sandusky himself given that he was the FOUNDER and MOST POWERFUL PERSON AT THE CHARITY VIA ITS BY-LAWS!!).
Yea, that makes a ton of sense pal and just the way most prosecutors would have handled the situation?!?!
LMFAO, especially your claim that you have no agenda here!
Absolutely.
The fact that the media and other blowhards make this all about Penn State is disgraceful.
Penn State played a role in this for sure, but we will not know exactly what role until the Curley and Schultz trials (and Spanier if he's charged).
Meanwhile, what about Second Mile, CYS, and the Attorney General's office?
I'd love to see a real bulldog of a reporter, if such a person exists anymore, go after all people and entities and tie this all together.
How about the CYS Office's State Administrator and the licensor for Sandusky's Charity, Group Homes, adoptions...etc.,
The Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare.
The PA Dept of Public Welfare had a FOUR DECADE FORMAL RELATIONSHIP with Sandusky whereby he adopted 6 children, ran numerous Group Homes and founded one of the State's largest Children's dedicated charity - yet Sandusky operated right under their noses generating multiple complaints from children and their natural parents, but the regulatory agency never suspected a thing despite conducting an extensive investigation in 1998 and annual audits of the charity, reviews of the adoptive relationships, etc., etc., etc....???
Hard to believe if true and if true, should they have done more and the only reason they did not find out sooner was negligent audits, investigations, etc....
Unfortunately, the "bulldog of a reporter" -- Pulitzer Prize winner -- has been fed much of her information from parties who had direct involvement or oversight of the government agencies that were supposed to be watching the Second Mile.
Here's the thing nobody is looking at and why the PAOAG put Sandusky on trial so fast.
Sandusky had a four decade relationship with the Pennsylvania Department of Public Welfare including it's County network of CYS Offices --
It makes you wonder if Sandusky didn't apply the same techniques to the State regulators that he applied to the kids.
In other words, lavish them with gifts especially football tickets and unique access to PSU Football and Football Saturdays such as Second Mile tailgate, etc.. (there are few things more sought after in Centre County).
In this way, Sandusky would have them in his pocket and be operating from the "inside" -- it is very much the approach that Bernie Madoff took (Madoff went undetected for so long because he had a very tight relationship with the SEC including being on the SEC Advisory Committee via the clearing firm he owned.
His niece married an SEC Lawyer that she met while working for Uncle Bernie...etc...).
Sandusky clearly had his subterfuge well-planned including a strategy for dealing with the DPW/CYS when complaints did arise (i.e., he made them his friend probably via largess which always gave them a bias towards Sandusky) -- it wasn't that complaints and issues never came up, it's that they were always viewed with a credibility bias towards Sandusky.
That doesn't happen by accident IMHO.
No different then the best "master criminals" - they almost always have contacts in the police dept. (a la the movie The Gauntlet).
Specifically, all these other agencies that failed to do anything when they had questionable info or complaints about JS.
I think it is worthwhile putting together to push out to the media to look into Corbett's motives and intent to delay the investigation.
It is my understanding is that Matt Sandusky's natural mother complained repeatedly (I assume in court and to the Dept of Public Welfare / CYS); the 1998 Mother and Victim's Family Therapist registered complaints with University Police and PA DPW Statewide Child Abuse Hotline respectively.
A complaint was registered with The Second Mile by PSU in 2001 -
I would assume that would have had to have been picked up in the annual audit by DPW (Second Mile licenses required annual audits - would assume that would have been picked up as Sandusky is listed in charity By-Laws as the most powerful "control person" at the charity).
But Corbett ignored all this from my understanding due to one state tropper doing nothing.
I mean, wasn't there also a break with a state DEA agent investigating V1 and stumbling into Sandusky's phone number in his cell phone logs?
This agent was independent of the complaint about JS and on purpose was delaying the case investigation until after the election.
We need to know his name?
There was - Sassano is an agent with the PAG's Drug Task Force (not the "DEA"), but that still does not explain why AG Corbett did not refer the case to the AG's "Child Predator Unit" when it was referred to him in March 2009?
Assigning it to an agent from the AG's Child Predator Unit would have been the obvious move since the investigation was INITIATED by a State Child Welfare Agency and this agency implicated Sandusky as a potential Child Predator and his charity, The Second Mile, where he was the most powerful "control person" via charity by-laws as the means by which he was accessing and grooming his targets!
Yes, it could, which will bear out Crowbait's slowwalk strategy at least to the standpoint of not having it actually have ENABLED further abuse.
But he will still have to explain how the taxpayers benefitted from the delay.
We KNOW how Crowbait benefitted--he did not have to run for Gov. 1) without 2d Mile $$; and 2) as the enemy of all Penn Staters.
Precisely... and the number of cronies (BOT and Second Mile BOD) Corbett protected until they coughed up campaign contributions.
That's great but he doesn't explain why only one cop assigned to it and why he didn't assign it to the Child Predator Unit (that he previously boasted about).
Corbett assign like 12 investigators to investigate 1 democrat opponent at the same time?
No Media to date with more familiar with this can probably remember the history, but so far silence.
Yes, but that still would not explain why the case was not assigned to the Child Predator Unit.
The AG was structure into separate task forces such as drugs, child welfare, etc... specifically to prevent these assets from being assigned outside their purview.
A political fraud investigation would not explain why the case was not assigned to the Child Predator Unit, especially when the top Child Welfare Agency in the State INITIATED the investigation and implicated Sandusky as well as the charity he founded with Sandusky as the perpetrator and the charity being the vehicle and grooming grounds (all predators have a means by which they access kids - most use the internet.
Sandusky used a charity as cover, but it should have been obvious to any AG, let alone a seasoned AG like Corbett, that this should have been assigned to the Child Predator Unit IMMEDIATELY
Yep, especially when the investigation was initiated by a State Child Welfare Agency (the Clinton County CYS Office) and it implicated Sandusky as the perpetrator and The Second Mile as the vehicle and "grooming" grounds.
How precisely does the AG not refer it to the AG's Child Predator Unit task force when the State's Child Welfare Experts report both the "predator" and his "grooming grounds"???
This is why Corbett is still dancing around the media and acting he uncover it and did his job, but if anyone with any brains ask certain questions, corbett comes up looking like a fool, not an AG and worse complicit in the COVER UP for political reasons not saving any children!
This is what the US Attorneys should be investigating on Corbett right now.
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