KEISLING: The moral and ethical decline of the Philadelphia Inquirer, Part 3

Part 3: Frank Fina changes the conversation

by Bill Keisling

This is Part 3 in our series: The moral and ethical decline of the Philadelphia Inquirer. Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here.

This February the Pennsylvania Supreme Court released a sheaf of documents that shed at least a little light on the secretive political fight in the courts now raging against Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane.

Most of those documents contain legal mumbo jumbo as to why AG Kane should be subjected to the Pennsylvania equivalent of stoning in the public square.

Buried deep in the back of this 137-page sheaf of documents, called simply “Respondent’s Brief” by the court, is a two-page letter, called appropriately enough, in the parlance of lawyers, Exhibit F.

I say the document was appropriately enough labeled Exhibit F, because it was by coincidence co-written and signed by a fellow with two F’s in his name: Frank Fina.

For those who do not know, Fina was the lead prosecutor in the long, drawn-out and badly mismanaged case against Penn State coach Jerry Sandusky.

Exactly why Fina and his political patron, then-state Attorney General Tom Corbett, took two years to prosecute Sandusky, while leaks galore (including grand jury information) were fed to the press and Corbett ran for governor, became the subject of an investigation by AG Kane.

Exhibit F, the letter co-signed by Fina, was dated May 8, 2014, and was written on the official letterhead of Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams.

Fina’s letter is addressed to William Carpenter, the supervising judge of a grand jury, and reads as follows:

“RE: Grand Jury Information
“Dear Judge Carpenter:

“We are providing this correspondence to report the release of Grand Jury information. Yesterday, the undersigned were separately contacted by an individual who represented himself as Chris Brennan, ‘a reporter with the Philadelphia Daily News.’ He stated that he was in possession of a 2009 email between Frank Fina, Marc Costanzo and William Davis. At the time, Frank Fina was Chief Deputy Attorney General for the Criminal Prosecutions section of the Attorney General’s Office and Marc Costanzo and William Davis were prosecutors in that section. The email contained a lengthy review of the evidence and testimony from a Statewide Grand Jury investigation being conducted at the time. As part of that investigation, information derived from the Grand Jury – about a certain prominent individual who was never charged – was detailed in this internal email. We are hesitant to detail this information in a correspondence but will gladly do so in person. We can represent to the Court that the email contained extensive evidence and information that clearly fall within the ambit of Grand Jury secrecy. The reporter stated that he had a copy of the email and he even recited from it when questioned about the contents. The reporter also stated that the email was only between Fina, Davis and Costanzo. We can assure the Court that none of us disclosed this email.

“We were subsequently called by William Davis, now in private practice in Delaware County, who relayed that he too had been called by Brennan about this email. All three of us, separately, informed Brennan that he possessed secret Grand Jury information and that whoever gave it to him had likely committed a serious crime. We are also certain that, as individuals who continue to be sworn to secrecy before the Grand Jury in question, we have an obligation to disclose this apparent breach of secrecy to the current Supervising Judge.

“We are available, at the Court’s discretion, to provide further details and answer any questions regarding this matter. We would prefer to do so on the record in camera, but obviously defer to the Court in this regard.”

Costanzo and Fina, who both now work for DA Seth Williams, signed the letter and cc’d it to DA Williams’ First Assistant District Attorney, Edward McCann.

So, this certainly wasn’t a case of disinterested officers of the court reporting a supposed leak.

It’s instead a case of patronage chums of cashiered Gov. Tom Corbett diverting attention from their own problems.

Those problems include the nettlesome and pertinent question of whether the Sandusky prosecutors were sharing pornographic emails with a state Supreme Court justice and others when they should have been going after Jerry Sandusky.

Unholy intersection of politics, courts, and Philadelphia newspapers

Fina’s letter to the judge speaks volumes to illustrate the unholy intersection in Pennsylvania between politics, the courts, and the Philadelphia newspapers.

The Inquirer and the Daily News did little to expose wrongs in the Sandusky case or, for that matter, much of anything to expose the culture of corruption in Harrisburg and State College.

Interstate General Media, owner of the Inquirer, Daily News and philly.com, in fact, controversially gave sitting Gov. Corbett his own newspaper column in 2013.

“There is no political bias or intent, other than providing content that is interesting to our readers,” Interstate CEO Robert J. Hall at the time felt compelled to explain to his readers of the Republican governor’s unusual column.

Now, intentionally or not, Interstate General Media is doing its best to change the conversation from the Sandusky prosecution to the much smaller question of who may have given information to its own newspaper, the Daily News.

It’s all very odd, and smacks of political revenge on Kane.

Fina’s current boss, DA Seth Williams, as many Pennsylvanians know, is enmeshed in a political fight with AG Kane, and has himself been frequently mentioned as a future candidate for AG Kane’s job, or other offices. (Just last month the Inquirer published a fawning article titled “Seth Williams for Senate.”)

Here we see, not journalism, but politics-as-usual in Pennsylvania. This isn’t a court fight; it’s a political mud-slinging fest, orchestrated by a dying newspaper company.

That the state courts wandered into this political mud fight is now obvious, and regrettable.

Not so obvious are the ethical problems or outright incompetence of Interstate General Media, owners of the Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News, and its reporter, Chris Brennan.

Did the Inquirer and Daily News burn their source?

That the Daily News’ reporter would read a secret email verbatim to Kane’s political enemies, as Fina describes in his letter to the judge, and give them ammunition to go after his source, is an amateurish and careless mistake, to say the least.

But it’s worse than just casual carelessness or incompetence on the Daily News’ part.

By all accounts, including those found in a growing mound of court documents, reporter Brennan was working on an article published a month later, on June 6, 2014, titled, “State A.G. Kane probed Philly NAACP leader Mondesire’s finances 5 years ago.”

Brennan’s article begins:

“STATE ATTORNEY General Kathleen Kane is reviewing a 2009 grand-jury investigation of J. Whyatt Mondesire, former head of the NAACP in Philadelphia, and one of his employees, according to documents obtained by the Daily News.”

It appears that reporter Brennan and Interstate General Media, intentionally or not, committed a cardinal sin in journalism: what’s known in the media business as “burning a source.”

(A cardinal sin, by the way, as defined by dictionary.com, is “an unforgivable error or misjudgment: lack of impartiality is considered a cardinal sin in broadcasting circles.”)

As Brennan and the Philadelphia newspapers should know, a reporter and publisher are supposed to protect their sources, not toss them overboard, as we see here.

There is nothing illegal about burning a source. It’s simply highly unethical, and unwise.

Not only does a newspaper acting this way hurt its confidential source, it hurts itself.

No one will come to a newspaper, or a reporter, one cannot trust, particularly once it becomes known you will carelessly toss a source to the dogs, or the courts.

Interstate General Media, the Inquirer and the Daily News, have yet to explain after months of this three-ring circus how AG Kane was first identified as a source of this leaked email.

But the problem for Pennsylvanians runs deeper than this unsightly, sideshow flap.

What they’re trying to do, of course, is not only hurt Kathleen Kane politically, and hurt her in the courts.

They are trying to change the subject away from Fina’s mishandling of the Sandusky case.

Gag orders and double-dealing

It turns out, according to the Inquirer’s own reporting (if you can trust it), this is not the only time that Frank Fina has gone running to the same grand jury Judge Carpenter with suspicious requests which serve to help Fina out of a serious problem.

We should note that Carpenter, and the special prosecutor Carpenter would come to appoint to go after Democrat Kane, are both Republican, like Corbett and his crew.

In an article dated October 14, 2015, Inquirer reporters Craig McCoy and Angela Couloumbis write, in an article headlined “Sources: Porn scandal misses Kane’s main target”:

“So far, Kane has not landed a major blow on the man who sources say has long been her main target: former state prosecutor Frank Fina.

“In fact, she’s been muzzled from doing so.

“The story behind the (pornographic) e-mails is far more tangled than what has become public: that eight men, all with ties to Fina, have been named by Kane as sending or receiving X-rated e-mails in a widening scandal that has also touched a state Supreme Court justice….

“Numerous people with knowledge of their quarrel – including sources close to both – have said Fina participated in the exchange of X-rated e-mails.

“According to the same sources, Kane was intent on making that fact public.

“She wanted to expose what she believed was an entrenched misogynistic culture in the Attorney General’s Office when Fina was a ranking prosecutor and before she took charge, people close to her say.

“But in late summer, Fina obtained a ruling from a Montgomery County judge barring Kane from citing his name publicly in almost any fashion, according to several sources familiar with the ruling.

“Judge William R. Carpenter, overseeing a grand jury in the eastern part of the state, granted the order after Fina argued to the judge that Kane’s office was using the threat of tying him to the sexually explicit e-mails to intimidate and silence him and others, the sources said.”

Here we’re dealing with, we’re told by the Inquirer, secret grand jury matters, anonymous sources, and sealed gag orders. So who knows?

But gag order or no, the questions, legal and journalistic, keep coming.

With Fina, says the Inky, we have a guy who complains to a judge he’s being silenced, and so he seeks a gag order.

That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, does it?

There’s more in the Inky’s coverage that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

The Inquirer and the Daily News, and their reporters, I’d point out, are playing both sides of the street, in untrustworthy fashion: they themselves are openly dealing in secret grand jury material, and writing quite openly about it while flaunting protection of the state shield law, while, at the same time, they are accusing Kane of doing the same — leaking grand jury material, apparently to them, no less — and demanding she resign.

That’s called hypocrisy, and double-dealing.

By way of confirmation, Kane and her spokesperson, Lanny Davis, both have publicly and repeatedly complained they are prevented from defending themselves, and from talking about the porno emails circulating in the AG’s office and the state’s highest court, by a court gag order, issued by God knows who, involving God knows what.

The important question is not, as the Inquirer states, whether there’s “an entrenched misogynistic culture,” in the AG’s office. (There is, as there is misogyny in this case, and in just about every office – public, private and religious – where old boys hold sway, and a scotch on the rocks and a cigar in hand, in the United States.)

Team Corbett’s modus operandi:
Change the conversation and demand a resignation

The important questions before the public are twofold, and shed light on the current sideshow:

Were prosecutors in Corbett and Fina’s office entertaining themselves with hundreds of porno emails, for years, when they should have been going after Jerry Sandusky?

Did Corbett and his political appointees attempt to change the conversation from their own years of misdeeds and inaction by complaining that coach Joe Paterno waited two days to notify his higher-ups at Penn State of a complaint against Sandusky? Did they then unfairly demand Paterno’s resignation as a smokescreen?

This then appears to be Team Corbett’s political modus operandi: Change the conversation, and seek a high-profile resignation.

That’s certainly what Fina & Co. appear now to be doing with newcomer AG Kathleen Kane, with help of the Inquirer and Daily News, and the courts.

Pennsylvanians should ask themselves other questions.

Are state courts unlawfully protecting an officer of the court who dealt in pornography, while at the same time unconstitutionally preventing the state’s attorney general from talking about it, preventing her from fairly defending herself?

All that certainly violates judicial canon, requiring judges and court officers to uphold letter and spirit of the law.

Curiously left unmentioned by the Inquirer, among other things, is that this isn’t Frank Fina’s first brush with controversy.

In his book, Silent No More, written with Sandusky victim Aaron Fisher, psychologist Mike Gillum writes of pleading with Fina in August 2011 to prosecute Sandusky after years of mysterious foot dragging.

Going in to meet Fina in the AG’s office at Strawberry Square, in Harrisburg, Gillum writes, “This time the media presence outside was obvious. So much for secrets. Reporters were hanging around ready to pounce.”

As for the meeting with Fina, Gillum writes, “It was the same old song and dance. …I demanded an arrest date. Fina was getting steamed, too.”

Only after Aaron Fisher said he was ready to quit, and Fisher’s mom threatened to go to the FBI, Gillum writes, did a “pissed off” Fina promise to arrest Sandusky by “the end of the year.”

By all accounts there was a lot of standing around in Fina’s office, and the holding of carrots, and sticks, and dicks.

By that time, Fina’s old boss, Tom Corbett, was governor.

When Sandusky was finally arrested, three months later, in November 2011, Corbett would pressure Penn State to fire Joe Paterno.

Months later, at Sandusky’s trial, inexperienced Patriot-News reporter Sara Ganim was made to stipulate that she sent email(s) containing contact information of Sandusky investigators to those victims she was seeking to interview for her news stories.

Whose names were handed out by a complicate, inexperienced, and ethically challenged news reporter?

Who was leaking grand jury and prosecutorial material in the Sandusky case?

Frank Fina and Tom Corbett should be made to answer those questions.