An FBI agent has said an informant in a Pennsylvania statehouse sting told him he was discouraged from targeting Republicans in a case that brought down five Democrats.
The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday that FBI Special Agent Richard Haag's comments come in a defense filing for Democratic state Rep. Vanessa Lowery Brown. She is the only defendant in the case still in office.
Former state prosecutor Frank Fina and Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, a Democrat, denied they had any partisan motive when they took over the case from the Attorney General's Office.
"Never, ever was he told to steer towards one party or another," Fina told the newspaper, speaking of informant Tyron Ali.
Ali began cooperating with Fina in 2010 to win leniency in a state fraud case. Haag wrote in a 2013 email that Ali said he had been "reprimanded" for approaching Republicans during the sting investigation and told "not to take any initiative in contacting Republicans in the future."
The email appears to contradict Ali's testimony during a March pretrial hearing in Brown's case, when he said he was never told to spare Republicans. Brown's defense lawyers acquired Haag's email, and a sworn affidavit, as they try to have the case thrown out. Brown was recorded taking $4,000 in cash from Ali in 2011.
Fina started the probe under then-Republican Attorney General Tom Corbett. Democrat Kathleen Kane succeeded him in office and shut it down, saying the probe could appear racially motivated. All five officials convicted to date are black Democrats from Philadelphia.
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"The FBI file speaks for itself and confirms what I have always said: that this investigation was fatally flawed from the beginning," Kane told the Inquirer for Sunday's story. However, Haag, the FBI agent, wrote in the email that "Ali said he had never been instructed to target individuals based on their race or ethnicity."
Kane left office this year after her conviction on perjury and obstruction charges in a case that centered on her feud with Fina. She remains free on bail while appealing her conviction and 10- to 23-month sentence.
Former state Reps. Michelle Brownlee, Harold James and Ronald Waters, as well as former traffic judge Thomasine Tynes, who took a $2,000 bracelet, were convicted in the statehouse sting, while former state Rep. Louise Williams Bishop pleaded no contest to failing to report the $1,500 she took.
