Chadwick, once a top deputy in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, told jurors that DeWeese had hired him in the wake of the so-called Bonusgate scandal in 2007 to investigate corruption in the House Democratic caucus and craft a plan to correct it.
"Bill [DeWeese] gave me complete license to do whatever needed to be done . . . to ensure integrity," Chadwick told the jury of seven women and five men.
And that, noted Chadwick, was not the norm.
Over an hour on the stand, the prosecutor-turned-consultant gave an inside look at the hysteria that gripped the Capitol after then-state Attorney General Tom Corbett began looking into the legislature's bonus scandal in 2007.
There were reports of massive document-shredding sessions in the Capitol, as well as people deleting e-mails. "It was out of control," Chadwick testified.
He said he and his team were tasked with complying with prosecutors' subpoenas for a list of documents so extensive it required poring through hundreds of thousands of pages.
Many of those e-mails were incriminating, he said, and were immediately turned over to prosecutors. They also led to the firings of several House Democratic employees, including DeWeese's former chief of staff, Mike Manzo.
Chadwick maintained that it was Manzo, together with former State Rep. Mike Veon, a Democrat from Beaver County, who ran the day-to-day operations. Veon was convicted in the Bonusgate case and is serving prison time. Manzo - who was a star prosecution witness against DeWeese last week - has pleaded guilty and has not yet been sentenced.
"DeWeese was an outside guy - he was never there," Chadwick told the jury. "Veon, on the other hand, had an appetite and an aptitude for management."
