Note to New Era: “Tom Corbett was a blatantly political prosecutor.”

A part of a RealReporting.org/Newslanc.com series

By Bill Keisling

The Lancaster New Era on April 6, 2012, ran an editorial “Using AG’s office as stepping stone” suggesting that a sitting state attorney general should be allowed to run for higher public office — even in the midst of political prosecutions — and use the AG’s office as a “stepping stone.”

To bolster its argument, curiously, the New Era used as an example Attorney-General-cum-Governor Tom Corbett’s prosecution of the so-called “Bonusgate” political defendants. The New Era suggested that AG Corbett did “a good job” as the state’s top prosecutor in these cases involving politicians who misused the resources of their offices for political ends. To help make its point the newspaper relied on a mere body count of those prosecutions:

“The results speak for themselves: Corbett’s office charged 25 people, including a former Republican House Speaker, and secured convictions or guilty pleas from 21 of them,” the newspaper editorialized.

Their argument however involves mere appearances of Corbett doing “a good job,” and not the reality of his job performance. The New Era staff does not now, nor have they ever, really looked too deeply into the facts of the matter.

In the case of “Bonusgate,” to use the newspaper’s own example, Corbett has been widely criticized for ignoring alleged violations of the same laws by powerful members of the state Senate, whose support he needed for his run for governor.

In fact, several state senators were later prosecuted for the same offenses for which Corbett declined to prosecute. State Senator Jane Orie, a Republican, was recently convicted of using the resources of her public office for political ends. Sen. Orie was prosecuted not by Corbett, but by the Allegheny County District Attorney’s Office. Moreover, it’s a matter of public record that one of the witnesses used by the DA to convict Orie — a former intern in her office — had first contacted AG Corbett with her complaints, but was turned away.

As well, State Senator Bob Mellow of Lackawanna County was recently charged by federal prosecutors for these same offenses. The fact is, AG Corbett, who was running for governor, protected these state senators.

Corbett, in fact, in a blatant hypocrisy, used the resources of the AG’s office to fuel his own political campaign for governor — even while he prosecuted others for doing the same thing he was now doing.

The only ones who seem to think Corbett was doing a “good job” in his roll as attorney general are the ones who were looking askance while Corbett was misbehaving.

We’d make this point: Ultimately, the argument is not whether an attorney general should be elected or appointed. The argument is not even about whether a sitting AG should run for governor.

The argument is whether or not the Office of Attorney General should be run in a politically partisan, or a politically non-partisan manner.

Those of us old enough to remember Nixon, Watergate and the Saturday Night Massacre remember when the administration of justice was conducted impartially by honorable men. What has changed in the last several decades is a new idea that our justice system should be a partisan undertaking. Instead of impartial justice, we now, sadly, have a “creative destruction” system where each party takes turns going after the other. This is not an improvement .

Tom Corbett was a blatantly political prosecutor. Newspapers like the New Era turned a blind eye to Corbett’s stunning misbehavior, and continue to turn a blind eye.

The New Era editors do a disservice to themselves, and their readers, by continuing to whitewash Corbett’s dismal record.