A dispute over emails is the latest sign of tension between Johnny Doc and Local 98 ahead of his next trial

Tension is growing between former labor leader John Dougherty and the current leadership of the union he led for nearly 30 years — and it’s spilling into public view in the run-up to his next federal trial.

Lawyers for the union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, recently asked the judge overseeing the case to block a subpoena from Dougherty’s defense team seeking access to the union chief’s emails between 2010 and late last year.

Dougherty’s lawyers say those communications — including discussions with attorneys and accountants who had previously represented him and the union — are crucial to preparing his defense.

But Local 98, which cut off Dougherty’s access to its servers earlier this year, calls the request a costly “fishing expedition” and has expressed doubts over his motivations for making it.

» READ MORE: Local 98 leader spurns ‘Johnny Doc’ as union election approaches and legal tussle brews

“Since his resignation as business manager of Local 98, Mr. Dougherty has not hesitated to enmesh himself in the affairs of [the union],” Local 98 attorney William T. Josem wrote in a recent court filing. “It would be oppressive to permit [him] to mine e-mails that have no relevance to this criminal proceeding so as to advance whatever internal union political aims he might have.”

The dispute is the latest sign of the fraying relationship between the 5,000-member electricians’ union and the man who — until his 2021 bribery conviction and resignation — served as the face of the organization, which he transformed from a relatively sleepy local into the most politically potent union in the city and the state’s largest source of independent campaign cash.

The discord is likely to become even more pronounced as Dougherty’s second federal trial gets underway next month.

“There’s become kind of a hostile relationship between Mr. Dougherty and the union, for lack of a better term,” said Dougherty lawyer Caroline A. Cinquanto at a court hearing Tuesday.

Unlike his first trial, which involved allegations he bribed former Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon with a union salary and other perks, the government’s case in the coming proceeding will explicitly paint Local 98 and its members as Dougherty’s victims.

» READ MORE: Ex-Philly Councilmember Bobby Henon sentenced to 3½ years in union bribery case

Prosecutors allege that he and six other union leaders and allies embezzled more than $600,000 from union coffers between 2010 and 2016 and spent it on personal shopping sprees, pricey restaurant dinners, lavish trips, and home repairs.

“John Dougherty is not pro-union, and does not honestly represent the interests of all of 98′s membership,” said Michael T. Harpster, then-head of the FBI’s Philadelphia office, in announcing the indictment in 2019.

» READ MORE: For leader John Dougherty, union-paid generosity began at home

But despite those efforts four years ago to underline the harm prosecutors say Dougherty caused members of his union, the labor leader insisted at the time that Local 98′s rank-and-file still supported him and vowed to pursue a lockstep trial strategy with his codefendants. Attorneys for the respective defendants routinely met with each other and union lawyers to plan a joint defense.

Recent events have strained that solidarity.

Over the past months, all the other indicted union officials — except union president Brian Burrows — have pleaded guilty, though none of the deals they struck with prosecutors require them to cooperate or testify at the coming trial, their lawyers said.

» READ MORE: The guilty pleas keep coming in Johnny Doc’s embezzlement case as two more Local 98 members cut deals

Meanwhile, Dougherty has been embroiled in a side battle in Common Pleas Court over how much of his legal expenses Local 98′s insurance policies should cover.

Union lawyers — at the direction of Dougherty’s replacement as Local 98 business manager in November 2021, Mark Lynch — have pushed back, calling spending money to defend the man accused of stealing from the organization a further misuse of union funds.

Dougherty has also said the union cut off his cell phone access, interfering with his ability to view important records and documents associated with his wife’s medical care.

Recently, Lynch has called on Burrows, a Dougherty loyalist, to step down from his longtime position as union president, saying he signed off on providing union health benefits to people who did not qualify under union bylaws — such as Henon and State Rep. Ed Neilson, both former Local 98 political directors.

Union leadership elections scheduled for June are shaping up to be a bitter contest between Lynch and his allies vs. Dougherty loyalists.

» READ MORE: Local 98, on the sidelines in Philly’s race for mayor, is more focused on its own union election

Lynch, who has plastered the streets around Local 98′s Spring Garden headquarters in recent weeks with campaign signs akin to those used in races for public office, says he’s simply working to “restore the [Local 98′s] good name” and working to “put an end to the toxicity that has poisoned [the] union for far too long.”

Against that backdrop, the dispute over Dougherty’s access to his old Local 98 email account was the focus of a hearing in federal court Tuesday.

“What some may call a fishing expedition, we’re calling due diligence,” Cinquanto said.

The correspondence is crucial, she added, to a defense that she is considering deploying at the trial: that if Dougherty broke any laws it was only because he was following bad advice from the lawyers advising him at the time.

» READ MORE: Johnny Doc is struggling to find — and pay for — new lawyers as his embezzlement trial looms

She suggested that she and cocounsel Alan J. Tauber wouldn’t grant Dougherty unfettered access to the emails and would only share relevant messages if that would help alleviate the union’s concerns.

Josem, the Local 98 lawyer, remained wary. Sensitive information, he said, has a way of “seep[ing] to Mr. Dougherty and seeps to the street.”

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl encouraged both sides to reach a compromise Tuesday and is expected to rule on whether to release the emails to Dougherty’s defense next week.