HARRISBURG - "Yes," Rep. Bill DeWeese told a grand jury last December, he knew that one of his top government aides was doing political fund-raising work at his desk during work hours.
Yes, DeWeese told grand jurors, he was aware that some staffers in his district office in Greene County were being "recruited, directed and cajoled" to do campaign work.
And yes, the onetime top House Democrat acknowledged, it was not unusual for staffers to do campaign work on state time.
"Looking back, it was wrong," DeWeese testified before the grand jury that winter day. "We shouldn't have done it. But it was part of the political culture on Capitol Hill."
Prosecutors used those words during a preliminary hearing Monday to show that DeWeese, facing Bonusgate-related charges of using legislative staff as his taxpayer-funded campaign team, knew his employees were doing political work on state time.
"This speaks to a hubris," argued Senior Deputy Attorney General Ken Brown, "that this defendant thought he was above the law, that it was OK to take taxpayer money and put it in his own pocket."
After the hearing, DeWeese, 60, the onetime top House Democrat, stood before reporters and said prosecutors had left out a critical part of his testimony.
He said he repeatedly told the Attorney General's office that he always directed his staff to use personal, vacation or comp time when doing political work to ensure that politics and government were kept separate.
"I tried to tell people to be appropriate in their behavior," DeWeese said he told prosecutors. "That is why I feel solid in my circumstances . . . I am so confident that we will have witness after witness after witness who heard me say, again and again and again, 'please make sure you're on comp time, make sure you're on a vacation day.' "
"I am innocent," he said.
It was a dramatic end to an otherwise routine preliminary hearing, during which Harrisburg Magisterial District Judge William Wenner determined that the Attorney General's Office had presented enough evidence to proceed to trial.
Presenting portions of DeWeese's grand jury testimony was a surprise midday move by prosecutors. Even DeWeese's attorney, Bill Costopoulos, said he was blindsided.
Costopoulos argued that the Attorney General's office was selectively citing portions of DeWeese's testimony, and demanded that the case be dismissed.
He later told reporters that Attorney General Tom Corbett's case against DeWeese, "isn't Bonusgate . . . it's Petty-gate."
