Pa. treasurer case took on wide scope
HARRISBURG — Fresh revelations show how federal authorities tried to use disgraced former state Treasurer Rob McCord to implicate others in a broad pay-to-play investigation of Pennsylvania government, but it leaves the question of whether the FBI probe is effectively finished.
The investigation dates to 2009, when the FBI set up a fake company with phony executives who began hiring lobbyists in Harrisburg and making campaign contributions. It has thus far produced charges against four people, including McCord and John Estey, a onetime chief of staff to former Gov. Ed Rendell.
Ripples of fear washed through Pennsylvania’s political circles two years ago when federal authorities began to notify people that they had been recorded or targeted. But the investigation may be at an end.
“If I were a betting man, I would bet there’s nothing else, because (otherwise) you would see it,” said Jeffrey Lindy, a Philadelphia-based defense attorney and a former federal prosecutor.
Testimony in the just-ended bribery trial of a wealthy suburban Philadelphia investment adviser, Richard Ireland, answered some questions about the federal investigation. The trial testimony also suggested the FBI had other people in its sights.
The trial hinged on four days of testimony and hours of recordings by McCord, who recorded conversations for the FBI as Pennsylvania’s sitting treasurer before resigning and pleading guilty to two extortion counts in early 2015.
With McCord on the stand, Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Consiglio brought up McCord’s Nov. 20, 2014, interview with the FBI. In it, McCord and agents reviewed what he knew about a half-dozen to a dozen people “on a whole array of topics,” Consiglio said.
McCord’s testimony also revealed that he had made what he acknowledged were illegal promises — using Estey as a middleman — in exchange for contributions to his failed campaign for governor in the 2014 primary.
McCord acknowledged that that included promises to help a campaign donor’s son land a government investment contract and offering to slow down a state payment to the competitor of a donor. He also revealed he had accepted pass-through campaign contributions from a contact in Scranton.
Those donors have not been identified by authorities. It remains unclear whether the federal government will charge any of them, or whether any of them became FBI cooperators in exchange for leniency.
