The lone cooperator | Inside Johnny Doc’s Trial

Welcome back, court watchers, to another edition of the Inside Johnny Doc’s Trial newsletter.

Last time you heard from us, prosecutors were focused on receipts, receipts, receipts — the records of thousands of dollars of personal purchases they said ex-labor leader John Dougherty rang up on his union-issued credit cards.

Now, they’ve shifted their attention to bills, bills, bills — specifically those sent to Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers by a contractor whose testimony is a central plank in the government’s case against Dougherty and his codefendant, former union president Brian Burrows.

Anthony Massa, a key witness in the government’s case, is the only person charged alongside Dougherty, Burrows and four other union officials and allies in 2019 who pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against the others.

And over three days on the witness stand last week, boy, did he.

He told jurors that Burrows had repeatedly instructed him to pad the bills he sent to the union for work he’d done on Local 98-owned buildings with the cost of side jobs he was simultaneously overseeing at the homes of Burrows, Dougherty and several of Dougherty’s relatives.

Massa said he charged Local 98 hundreds of thousands for the jobs at their personal residences between 2010 and 2016. But the defense pushed back hard, painting the contractor as “a liar and a fraudster” who’d say anything to escape a lengthy prison term.

Let’s get to it.

— Jeremy Roebuck and Oona Goodin-Smith (@jeremyrroebuck, @oonagoodinsmith, insidejohnnydoc@inquirer.com)

If someone forwarded you this email, sign up for free here.

📮Do you have a question about the trial? Email us back and we might answer it in our newsletter.

🚿 Who paid Massa for the work he did on a $30,000 remodel to the bathroom in Burrows’ South Jersey home or the thousands in repairs and renovations he oversaw at a Pennsport bar in which Burrows and Dougherty had a financial interest? Again and again, Massa had one answer: “Local 98.”

🏠 Massa said he also charged the union for repairs he carried out at Dougherty’s home and those of several of his family members — including the ex-union chief’s brother, Pennsylvania Supreme Court Justice Kevin Dougherty. A lawyer for the justice insists that’s not true.

🔏 Prosecutors, meanwhile, sought to prove that financial safeguards at Local 98 that might have caught that overbilling in fact offered minimal scrutiny.

🧾 But Dougherty maintains he had no idea where Massa was sending his bills, and says he thought the contractor was performing the renovations at his home for free as a token of gratitude for the $1.8 million in work Local 98 steered his way.

Massa’s credibility as a witness is crucial to the government’s case. The home repairs prosecutors say he provided on Local 98′s dime make up at least 20% of the $600,000 they say Dougherty and Burrows embezzled from Local 98.

So how did he do on the stand?

Lawyers for Dougherty and Burrows did everything they could to tarnish his credibility, pointing out instances where he’d overbilled the union a couple of hundred dollars on certain jobs, and suggesting he hid personal purchases of his own in what he was charging Dougherty, Burrows and others for the work he did on their homes. They challenged Massa on what he told the FBI when agents first confronted him in 2016, noting he’d at first said he did that work for free and was later charged for lying to the government.

But, by and large, Massa — a mild-mannered, 69-year-old who was escorted into court each day in a wheelchair pushed by an FBI agent — remained consistent in his story. He backed up his account with copious records he’d kept of each job — both for the union and at the homes of the union leaders and those close to them — accounting for the labor and materials required.

And again and again, when asked who told him to charge Local 98 for those home renovation projects, Massa’s answer was the same: “Brian Burrows.”

The contractor testified that while Dougherty and his family benefited from those home repairs, it was always Burrows who instructed him on where to send the bills. Never once, Massa said, did he discuss payment for the renovations with Dougherty.

We’ll be watching to see what exactly jurors make of that distinction when it comes time for them to weigh the ex-union chief’s culpability.

“You are still a liar, are you not?” — Thomas A. Bergstrom, lawyer for Burrows, during a heated moment in his cross-examination of Massa.

As we mentioned earlier, Massa is the only member of Dougherty’s inner circle to agree to testify against him — but that’s not due to lack of trying on the part of the FBI.

For the better part of two decades, agents have investigated the former labor leader in a number of probes — each time looking for people on the inside whom they might flip. Until Massa, they’d repeatedly failed.

None of the four other union officials and allies charged in the current case who pleaded guilty last year — including Local 98′s former political director Marita Crawford and Michael Neill, head of its apprentice training program — agreed to cooperate.

In 2007, when a federal grand jury indicted Donald “Gus” Dougherty — a close personal friend of the ex-union chief and owner of one of the largest union electrical contracting firms in the city — in a tax and benefits fraud case, authorities quickly found out there was no separating them, either.

Prosecutors accused Gus Dougherty, who is not related to John Dougherty, of giving him more than $115,000 in free home renovations — which they described as a gift meant to illegally influence his decisions as the head of his union.

Investigators had hoped to persuade Gus Dougherty to testify against his friend. But he refused and, ultimately, John Dougherty never faced charges. (The ex-Local 98 business manager has consistently said he did not know Gus Dougherty intended to do the work on his home for free.)

Meanwhile, former Philadelphia Traffic Court Judge Robert Mulgrew — who was a Local 98 electrician before winning his seat on the bench — has said he, too, resisted pressure from prosecutors to give incriminating testimony against John Dougherty before he was convicted on charges of conspiracy, perjury and fraud, and was sentenced to 2 ½ years in prison in 2014.

Two other allies — chiropractor James Moylan and electrical contractor George Peltz — also refused to testify against the union chief after pleading guilty in 2019 to charges of giving improper gifts to a union official and fraud, respectively.

So how exactly has John Dougherty maintained such loyalty among his friends over the years? Federal authorities credit a carrot-and-stick technique.

After Gus Dougherty was released from his two-year prison sentence, prosecutors alleged John Dougherty rewarded him for keeping his mouth shut by steering hundreds of thousands of dollars his way from funds meant to help union contractors offset the higher cost of employing union labor.

The union chief had a different approach, they said, for those who might consider breaking his trust. After his 2019 indictment, an informant within the union recorded John Dougherty giving a warning to Local 98 members who might consider a flip.

“You going to f— around with that mouth,” he threatened on the tapes, since quoted in court filings, “I’m coming after everything you have and everything you f— own.”

But despite Massa’s status as only man to flip on Dougherty, the contractor didn’t have a bad word to say about the guy last week as he sat across from him in court.

In fact, in a recording of Massa’s first interview with FBI agents played for jurors, the contractor insisted: “He does more for people that anybody even knows. I just admire the man — his foresight. He’s just a tremendous person.”

We’re back in court this morning with a Local 98 business agent and executive board member on the witness stand.

🦃 This week will be a short one in court due to the Thanksgiving holiday. Jurors are only sitting Monday and Tuesday, then picking back up next week. In the meantime, we’re thankful for you, our readers.

👋 We’ll see you here next Monday. Until then, you can follow along with our live updates and daily coverage.

By submitting your written, visual, and/or audio contributions, you agree to The Inquirer’s Terms of Use, including the grant of rights in Section 10.