Posted on 12/23/2009 9:32:53 PM PST by Born Conservative
An Allegheny County grand jury has opened a criminal investigation into State Sen. Jane Clare Orie, R-McCandless, the state senate's third-ranking Republican, and detectives last week seized computers from her district office.
The investigation, confirmed tonight by Jerry McDevitt, who is representing Ms. Orie, apparently began a day before the November election when an intern at the senator's district office in the North Hills complained to the district attorney's office that political calls were being made there on behalf of state Supreme Court nominee Joan Orie Melvin, the senator's sister.
On Friday, detectives executed a search warrant at Ms. Orie's district office at the La Casa Blanca Building on McKnight Road. Earlier in the month, detectives had placed Ms. Orie's office under surveillance, Mr. McDevitt said.
He also complained that, at one juncture, investigators had followed his client to church.
"It was pretty much a computer raid," Mr. McDevitt said. He said detectives seized computers assigned to office staff, several laptops and the office computer server, leaving Ms. Orie's own computer in place.
Sources with first-hand knowledge of the inquiry said the office has received complaints of fundraising and other political calls from the senator's district office. Additionally, a college intern brought complaints of improper political activity.
Last night, Mr. McDevitt, a high-profile criminal defense attorney who successfully fought back a massive indictment against former Coroner Cyril H. Wecht, said the investigation into Ms. Orie is itself a political act.
(Excerpt) Read more at post-gazette.com ...
Finally. A crooked politician the state-run media can get curious about.
Oh my, a politician fundraising from her office...I’m completely shocked, meanwhile, politicians in Washington are completely trashing the Constitution and nary a yawn from the media.
Political calls from a State Senator in her own office. That is supposed to be a crime? What the do they think a politician does in a politician's office? And since when is making a phone call a crime? How shamelessly ridiculous!
After reading the article further it became clear why this is happening to her --- a Republican prosecutor has got the goods on two Democrat Party crooks in the State legislature and the RATS want to distract the public's attention with this phony nonsense. Incredible.
Odd how they can jump right in their when they are Republicans; but sweep under the rug when it’s a democrat.
No more free rides.
Yep, this is Pittsburgh politics at its finest. We have a one party system here and they are out for revenge after bonusgate
and other crooked machinations by mostly demo-rat legislators.
They attacked Santorum for using a home in Penn Hills (that he owned) to get specialized schooling for his daughters, which was a common and perfectly accepted practice. The Bolshevik fish wrap Post Gazette is the party organ here for the peoples party.
Bet the dems were getting bored waiting and waiting for some serious issue to arise to make them look squeaky clean.
If I remember correctly, the home was owned by his in laws and he actually lived in Virginia. He wanted the district to pay for the cyber school education of his kids, the cost of which amounted to over $100,000.
If he had done this in a wealthy Republican district, he may have not had a problem but this was in a predominant democrat area of middle to lower middle class taxpayers.
Yes, it is a crime to use a tax payer funded office to do campaign work.
I supported Jane for a long time. That ended last year when she co-sponsored a resolution to praise Dem Senator Vince Fumo for his years of service to the Commonwealth and his constituents. That was just months before his indictment on 137 charges of political corruption including using his tax payer funded office for political work. He was convicted and is now serving a term in federal prison.
I don’t know that Orie did anything wrong. It may be just another political attack on the GOP, but Orie loves the nanny state. She’s been good on RKBA and life, but otherwise seems to believe that government is the solution.
Melvin's margin over Democrat Jack Panella in Tuesday's general election was slim -- 53 percent to 47 percent, with 99 percent of the state's precincts counted.
Huh... The numbers look exactly the same as Ubama's "slim" election.
I’m still waiting to find out what happened to these computers:
http://wbztv.com/local/acorn.office.break.2.842704.html
The sentence was a slap on the wrist, compared to what he SHOULD have gotten.
I agree. He should have to spend the rest of his life in prison and lose his pension, his homes, and his other assets, but that wasn’t my point.
My point was that Jane — a former prosecutor — thought that Fumo deserved praise for his service instead of a prison sentence.
I understood your point. I was just commenting on Fumo getting off lightly.
Sorry Badray, but I doubt that you have a faulty memory since you've been trashing Santorum with lies since long before the election of 2006. There was NEVER any question that Santorum owned the house in Penn Hills as well as the house in VA where he and his family resided. You're the only person I've ever seen accuse him of not owning property in PA, but then you're the only person I ever saw accuse him of being anti-gun.
The property was owned by his in laws. At some point, there may have been a transfer — real or for convenience and cover — but the family lived in Va, not Pa. He used that address a a way to run from that district. It was too small to accommodate his many children.
In addition, his hypocrisy over it is simply stunning. He won office by pointing out that the incumbent didn’t live in the district, but in Va (or somewhere closer to DC).
Voting against gun owners one out of every three votes — as rated by FOAC and GOA — gives him about 64% pro gun. That is a failing grade in most anyones book, not just mine.
I know that you will never change your mind because tou want to ignore the reality and the consequences of his votes, but he is not the man that either the dems or his own PR machine made him out to be. His duplicity was such that conservatives tired of him and removed him from office. He’s gone and I doubt that he’ll be back in elected office ever again.
If you have proof of any ‘lies’, please post them. I may be mistaken about the deed for the property, but I am not wrong on the intent to deceive the public about his purpose.
Happy with Senator-for-Life Casey? I’m sure in your mind that he’s ideal as you worked so hard to convince FReepers to elect him over Santorum. Does he pay you or are you just a volunteer?
Thanks for bringing that up.
No I don’t work or volunteer for Casey and I am not happy with him at all. In fact, I warned that if Casey was elected on the basis of being pro life or pro gun, he’d disappoint us but that would end up making him a one termer.
I wrote in the name of a man who I believed would be an honest conservative but obviously, he lost. I still believe that it was time for Santorum to go because he was not responsive to conservatives. When we tried to hold his feet to the proverbial fire, he fought back saying that we were wrong. He didn’t even want to hear criticism, let alone be open to our suggestions. He was focused on his rise to power and did whatever he could towards that goal. BTW, the longer he was in office the worse he got and the more times he would be reelected the harder it would be to remove him.
What I tried to do was show Santorum’s record. No one ever refuted my posts, they only attacked me for revealing it. Why didn’t people (including you?) want his record known?
Do you really believe that I had the ability to influence 750,000 voters to not vote for him? That’s how many fewer votes he got than in 2000. Apparently I was not the only one who got tired of his duplicity.
May I assume that I adequately answered the charges in your initial post since you no longer want to discuss them?
Attacks on me do not change Ricky’s record. He was a fraud seeking power and he used conservatives and their issues to get there. Unlike what he said about Specter (another bit of treachery) Santorum was not there when we needed him. He was good in the beginning but in light of his later record the question is whether he was faking it then or if he got so driven with ambition that he sold us out to achieve it.
I am amazed at how Free Republic has grown, since all I said was that you spent a lot of time prior to the '06 election trashing Santorum and trying to influence FReepers to vote for Casey. And here you are back again 3 yrs. later still trashing him. Surely, you Log Cabin Republicans are not expecting him to run again.
What I tried to do was show Santorum’s record. No one ever refuted my posts, they only attacked me for revealing it.
No, you LIED about Santorum's record and still are. Suppose you show me something that says Santorum did NOT own the Penn Hills house in '06 which is what you claim to recall. What he was accused of by the Penn Hills Democrats was not living in the house he OWNED there. As for refuting your posts, you and I tangled back in '06 because you insisted that Santorum who had an A+ from the NRA and received their endorsement was anti-gun although you were unable to provide a single anti-gun vote he had cast.
Still waiting for your proof of the LIES you have posted.
Excuse me for not being clear enough for you to understand.
In 2006, I was accused here of causing his defeat. That would be pretty impressive if I had the ability to influence that many voters across the state. Back in 2006, much of FR was in full denial of Santorum’s bad votes. Apparently some still are but I am seeing more and more conservatives who realize that he was not who he pretended to be.
I take the NRA endorsement with a grain of salt. If you recall, they also endorsed Specter even though he vote for the assault weapons ban and said that he would vote to ban them again. I don’t rely on the NRA, I rely on GOA and FOAC and I posted links to both of those sites. If you chose not to go there, that is willful blindness, not some failure on my part to personally take you there and make you read them.
Have the rules changes while I was away? Are personal attacks and spurious accusations now permitted?
Regardless of whether Santorum actually owned the property, was it a sham to provide political cover? I believe that it was. The house was too small for his family and they were only there on breaks. They lived in Virginia. If I was in error, that’s all it was, an error. I never deliberately post anything that I do not know or believe to be true. You may not like it, but I try to deal only in facts.
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