The FBI informant in John Dougherty’s inner circle recorded more than 30 conversations with him

The FBI’s confidential informant in John Dougherty’s inner circle recorded more than 30 conversations with the labor leader in 2020 and met with him in person at least twice that year, federal authorities said Wednesday.

Now, the judge overseeing Dougherty’s federal trials wants to review transcripts of those discussions to ensure prosecutors handed over all material from those interactions that could be relevant to his defense.

In a court hearing Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl expressed concern that the government had waited until earlier this year — four months after Dougherty was convicted on federal bribery charges in his first trial — to disclose that they had a mole working from within Dougherty’s union, the politically powerful Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

“I want all of these statements,” he said. “We’re talking about something that could affect [Dougherty’s second] trial” on extortion charges, set to begin next week.

The judge’s ruling comes a day after The Inquirer reported, citing court filings, that for at least three months in 2020 the government had succeeded in turning a member of Dougherty’s notoriously tight-knit inner circle into a cooperator.

» READ MORE: The FBI has an informant in John Dougherty’s inner circle. The ex-union chief wants to know who it is.

Prosecutors have refused to share the informant’s identity with the defense and have handed over only one recording he made — a tape of an Aug. 24, 2020, meeting of Dougherty and business agents at his union — that they hope to use as evidence in his trial.

Meanwhile, Dougherty, his lawyers, and members of his union say they have no idea who the cooperator might be.

But details revealed in court Wednesday about the extent of the informant’s work with the FBI suggest that he was present for dozens of conversations with the former union chief between July and August 2020 — a period in which the labor leader was preparing his defense for his first trial on bribery charges with former City Councilmember Bobby Henon.

At the time, Dougherty was openly discussing his courtroom strategy with top-level members of his union, many of whom face charges alongside him in an embezzlement case slated for trial this fall.

Defense lawyer Henry E. Hockeimer Jr. has contended that Dougherty’s rights may have been violated if any of that talk of trial strategy made its way back to the feds.

“Mr. Dougherty, as your honor knows, likes to talk,” Hockeimer said in court Wednesday. “I don’t know what he said on those tapes. To ensure a fair trial for Mr. Dougherty, he absolutely has a constitutional right to see these statements. Somebody has to see this stuff.”

Schmehl agreed — but not exactly for the reasons Hockeimer outlined in court.

In ordering prosecutors to let him review the recordings, the judge appeared more concerned about the fact that the government had shared only one of the roughly 30 conversations with the defense and wondered why more hadn’t been handed over before Dougherty’s first trial.

Assistant U.S Attorney Frank Costello maintained the government had fully complied with its obligations to share any potentially exculpatory evidence and said prosecutors hadn’t handed over more of the informant’s work because it ended up having little relevance to any of the crimes with which the labor leader was charged.

FBI agents developed the source, Costello said, as part of a separate investigation launched in February 2020 — more than a year after Dougherty, Henon, and the other union leaders were indicted on the bribery and embezzlement charges.

At the time, agents were looking into allegations of what Costello described Wednesday as “intimidation.” That probe resulted in a second indictment, unsealed last year, and the extortion charges on which Dougherty and his nephew, Gregory Fiocca, are set to stand trial next week.

» READ MORE: Philly labor leader Johnny Doc was indicted again, this time for threatening a contractor

In the end, the prosecutor noted, only one of the informant’s recordings ended up proving useful to their case — the Aug. 24, 2020, conference call with roughly 30 Local 98 business agents and support staff.

In it, Dougherty acknowledged an Aug. 19 incident in which Fiocca allegedly assaulted a project manager at a job site in South Philadelphia during a dispute over pay.

That manager — Rich Gibson, a fellow Local 98 member — docked Fiocca’s paycheck after he repeatedly failed to show up for work. When Fiocca found out, he allegedly grew enraged, grabbed Gibson by the throat, threw him across a desk, and threatened to “break his [expletive] face” if he did not pay him in full.

Prosecutors say Dougherty later vowed to prevent the job’s contractor — Raymond Palmieri, of South Jersey-based Palmieri Electrical Contractors — from getting future electrical work in the city if Fiocca’s earnings were withheld.

On the call recorded by the informant, Dougherty told his business agents Fiocca was not to blame for the dispute and said it was an attempt by Gibson and Palmieri to cheat his nephew out of pay.

Prosecutors say Dougherty’s statements were part of a pattern in which the ex-union chief covered for Fiocca despite a long track record of poor job attendance and violent incidents in which he cursed at, threatened with violence, and even spit on supervisors dating back to 2013.

They have charged both men with conspiring to extort Gibson and Palmieri out of money Fiocca was not owed.

Dougherty denies the allegation, and Hockeimer has accused the government of turning “a garden-variety pay dispute” into a federal crime.

“If Greg Fiocca wasn’t Mr. Dougherty’s nephew this wouldn’t have been charged,” he said. “But Mr. Dougherty is Mr. Dougherty.”

At times during Wednesday’s hearing, Schmehl, the judge, appeared skeptical, too.

He described the government’s use of a conspiracy charge in the case as unusual and, at one point, questioned why it had become a federal case in 2021, when the Philadelphia police — who were called to the scene in 2020 — had decided not to pursue assault charges.

Prosecutors assured the judge that once given the chance to present their case to the jury they would be able to prove that Dougherty had been covering for Fiocca for years — a pattern of enablement that culminated in the assault on Gibson and threats to Palmieri.

“This is not legitimate union action,” Assistant U.S Attorney Jason Grenell said. “This is John Dougherty looking out for his nephew.”