"I think it's kind of silly . . . [but] she's doing what she has to do," Matthews said of the person leading the investigation, Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman. Matthews said he would turn over the requested documents.
Also subpoenaed this week, the sources said, was the Norristown Times Herald. Reporter Jenny DeHuff allegedly overheard the elected officials discussing county business over breakfast on at least two occasions at an East Norriton diner.
The paper accused Matthews and Hoeffel of violating Pennsylvania's Sunshine Act at a county board meeting Dec. 1 and published a story about the breakfasts the next day.
Details of prosecutors' efforts to subpoena the paper this week could not immediately be learned. The editor was unavailable for comment late Thursday.
The allegations and resulting controversy unleashed a bevy of comments and explanations from the two commissioners last week, along with condemnation from the third man on the panel, who had not been invited to the breakfasts. By Thursday, that well of chatter had run dry.
Republican Commissioner Bruce L. Castor Jr., Montgomery County's former district attorney, initially released a colorful statement condemning the breakfast meetings as another example of how Hoeffel and Matthews have excluded him since striking a power-sharing agreement in 2008.
This week, though, he declined to comment.
The District Attorney's Office - led by Ferman, who was first assistant to Castor when he was district attorney - also said little, citing its continuing probe.
Hoeffel and Matthews have said their weekly conversations usually consisted of nothing more than talk of sports, family, and mutual friends. They conceded, however, that they sometimes received briefings from county employees.
