ALLENTOWN, Pa. — The U.S. Supreme Court last week limited the reach of an anti-corruption law that prosecutors used to send former Mayor Ed Pawlowski to federal prison in 2018.
But the former FBI agent who brought Pawlowski to justice said the decision is unlikely to lead a judge to overturn the 59-year-old’s former mayor's conviction.
"I don't think there's any direct correlation between this ruling and the Pawlowski prosecution at all," said Scott Curtis, who now runs his own private legal practice.
Before Curtis led an FBI raid on City Hall in 2015, Pawlowski was a rising star in Pennsylvania politics. He already had dominated city politics, winning a third term and drawing praise for the redevelopment of City Center during his administration.
He campaigned unsuccessfully for governor in 2014 but was eying a run for U.S. Senate in 2016.
Today, Pawlowski has served nearly six years of his 15-year sentence in a Maryland federal prison after a jury found he engaged in pay-to-play politics.
He currently is representing himself as he tries to overturn his conviction on appeal, arguing that the federal government failed to turn over all relevant documents during his trial's discovery period, court records show.
Prosecutors said he used his authority to demand perks from potential contractors — such as free meals, tickets to a Philadelphia Eagles game and donations to his campaigns for higher office.
Developers and contractors testified that they felt they had no choice but to grease Pawlowski's palms if they hoped to cut through the city's red tape.
"It's going to require the FBI and other investigators and prosecutors to re-evaluate how they're going about investigating and prosecuting these types of scenarios."Scott Curtis, a former FBI agent, on how a recent Supreme Court ruling will affect corruption investigations.
Those actions led federal prosecutors to charge Pawlowski with theft or bribery involving federal funds, also known as program fraud, among other crimes.
Under the program fraud law, officials with organizations that accept more than $10,000 of federal funding are prohibited from engaging in theft, embezzlement, bribery and other related crimes.
But in a ruling Wednesday, the high court applied new limitations to that law.
In the case, James Snyder, the former mayor of Portage, Indiana, said prosecutors overstepped their bounds by charging him with accepting $13,000 from a business after the city awarded it a $1.1 million contract.
While prosecutors argued the money was payment for steering the work its way, Snyder maintained the money was for consulting work he performed for the business.
In a 6-3 decision split along ideological lines, Justice Brett Kavanaugh ruled in Snyder’s favor. The program fraud law, he said, doesn’t apply to gratuities — gifts made after the fact when no quid quo pro is established beforehand.
“Although a gratuity offered and accepted after the official act may be unethical or illegal under other federal, state, or local laws, the gratuity does not violate” this law, Kavanaugh wrote.
Comes down to intent
Court records show Pawlowski has repeatedly appealed his conviction since arriving behind bars. But Curtis said it’s unlikely Pawlowski would find much luck if he tried to apply Wednesday’s ruling to his case.
Curtis, who followed the case but said he isn’t intimately familiar with its details, said the Snyder conviction relied on evidence that provided snapshots of the contract process in Portage.
Prosecutors were not able to establish that the company agreed to make the payment before the contract was awarded or that other wrongdoing occurred.
“The huge difference between this case that I see and Pawlowski is there are so many recordings in the Pawlowski case showing the intent."Former FBI agent Scott Curtis
Graft trials ultimately come down to intent, Curtis said. For the best outcomes, law enforcement officers need to develop sources and informants who can provide a behind-the-scenes look at what’s happening, ideally as it’s happening.
The most rock-solid cases involve phone taps or informants wearing wires so juries can hear exactly how bribes or gifts wind up in an official's pocket.
Unlike the Snyder case, recordings like that were a prominent feature of Pawlowski’s six-week trial.
Mike Fleck, Pawlowski’s best friend and campaign manager, and political consultant Sam Ruchlewicz agreed to wear wires, letting investigators draw a direct line between the payments and gifts to Pawlowski's actions.
The recordings were played in court, letting the jury hear Pawlowski curse and gripe about city vendors who weren’t donating to his campaigns.
“The huge difference between this case that I see and Pawlowski is there are so many recordings in the Pawlowski case showing the intent," Curtis said.
"Showing the intent of why people made the bribe payments to him, showing the intent of why he was going after them for additional campaign contributions even after contracts were awarded.”
'You know you have a problem'
Making those connections and developing those informants can take months or years of work, he said. But given the high standards needed to prove government corruption, it's the best way to ensure that public servants don't enrich themselves at the expense of their constituents.
Curtis said that Wednesday's ruling will require investigators to thoroughly prepare their cases to guard against public corruption, but said it's unlikely to result in many appeals, Curtis said.
He likened it to the 2016 case McDonnell v. United States, in which the Supreme Court determined that for bribery to occur, an elected official must perform an official act.
While it redefined how graft cases are prosecuted, it only applied to a handful of fringe cases, Curtis said.
"It's going to require the FBI and other investigators and prosecutors to re-evaluate how they're going about investigating and prosecuting these types of scenarios."Former FBI agent Scott Curtis
"It's going to require the FBI and other investigators and prosecutors to re-evaluate how they're going about investigating and prosecuting these types of scenarios," Curtis said.
Curtis said he disagreed with the Snyder ruling. He said it sends a poor message that public officials can accept gifts from the businesses they interact with on behalf of the public.
States and local municipalities may want to consider beefing up their laws on accepting gifts in order to promote good government, he said.
Pennsylvania has almost no restrictions on what state lawmakers may accept.
If there's a silver lining in the ruling, it's that corrupt officials tend to give law enforcement multiple chances to catch them, Curtis said. He said that was the case for Pawlowski.
FBI agents uncovered a host of his misdeeds, he said, including rigging the city's delinquent tax collection contract and accepting bribes to have city inspectors get to a donor's properties faster.
Investigators were able to collect evidence about ongoing crimes and prompt their informants to engage in conversations about past wrongdoings while wearing wires.
"If there is systemic corruption going on in a municipality, there are multiple schemes going on over an extended period of time," Cutris said.
"That's when you know you have a problem."
