Extortion or ‘complete and utter nonsense?’ Lawyers offer conflicting accounts as John Dougherty’s latest federal trial begins.

READING — There are few things about the 2020 job site skirmish that has landed former labor leader John Dougherty back in court on which prosecutors and defense attorneys can agree.

On Aug. 19 of that year, Greg Fiocca — Dougherty’s nephew and a union electrician working on the then-under-construction Live! Casino in South Philadelphia — confronted his supervisor in a dispute over pay. Dougherty took his nephew’s side.

But as the two men’s trial on extortion charges tied to that incident opened Wednesday in federal court, it quickly became clear that it’s the differences in how both sides view what occurred during that altercation that will ultimately swing the case.

Fiocca and Dougherty, the then-head of Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, stand accused of threatening the contractor overseeing the casino’s electrical work after Fiocca’s wages were docked for poor job performance.

In prosecutors’ telling, Fiocca flew into a rage and vented his ire on his boss.

“He starts choking him. He slaps him,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Grenell in his opening statement to the jury of six men and six women responsible for rendering a verdict in the case. “He throws him over the table as he’s screaming at him.”

When the casino’s contractor tried to fire Fiocca afterward, Grenell said, Dougherty threatened to shut down work on the project and make sure the contractor never landed a job in the city again unless he kept Fiocca on the payroll.

Defense lawyers, in their own opening salvo, dismissed that account and the idea that it amounted to extortion as “complete and utter nonsense.”

Fiocca’s behavior, while perhaps intemperate, followed months of harassment from his bosses, they said. And the pressure Dougherty exerted on them wasn’t criminal, they maintained, but rather a legitimate effort to support a union member involved in a pay dispute.

“The question here is, ‘Did [Dougherty] threaten anyone?’” Greg Pagano, attorney for the ex-union chief, told jurors. “And the answer is he did not.”

Those conflicting portrayals set the contours of the trial set to play out at the federal courthouse in Reading over the next several days. Should the jury find Dougherty guilty, it could mean even more prison time for the former labor leader who is already facing sentencing on bribery and embezzlement charges next month.

But unlike Dougherty’s earlier trials — which played out over months, featured testimony from dozens of witnesses, and involved multiple alleged schemes of corruption and theft of union funds — the proceedings that began Wednesday should play out at a faster clip.

Prosecutors have indicated they could wrap up the case by the end of the week. And they quickly cut to the heart of the matter as they called their first witnesses to the stand.

Chris Hoeger and James Gorman, longtime Local 98 electricians who worked alongside Fiocca on the Live! Casino construction, detailed Fiocca’s troubled history at the job site in the months leading up to the attack.

» READ MORE: As it happened: Prosecutors describe John Dougherty's nephew as a workplace menace; defense calls extortion claim ‘nonsense’

Fiocca, whom Dougherty had appointed Local 98′s union steward for the casino project, would often disappear for hours during the workday — or not show up at all.

By February 2020, Hoeger testified, he’d had enough. “Him not being in the right spot, him not showing up, him not working,” Hoeger said. Fiocca was moved to another crew.

But a change in assignment did little to improve Fiocca’s attendance, said Gorman, who worked alongside him later that year wiring security cameras and lighting in the casino’s parking garage.

“He’s kind of frustrating, to be honest,” Gorman texted his boss, after finding himself working alone several times because Fiocca was nowhere to be found.

Fiocca’s attorney, Rocco Cipparone Jr., maintained his client wasn’t skirting work, and that the absences noted by his coworkers were prompted by union business calling him away in his role as the construction site’s steward.

And both Hoeger and Gorman acknowledged Wednesday that the bosses at the casino site — including the site’s primary electrical contractor Ray Palmieri and supervisor Rich Gibson — seemed to take a special interest in checking up on Fiocca’s whereabouts at all times.

Cipparone contended that constant scrutiny, on top of pressure Fiocca was facing as his union’s primary representative at a major construction project at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, were what prompted him to snap during the eventual confrontation with Gibson.

But even before that, Gorman testified, he could tell trouble was brewing as Fiocca’s bosses began docking his pay over his repeated absences.

“Greg would see it and he would get mad,” Gorman said. “This whole time … it’s starting to boil up. You [could] see the pressure just building in the whole situation.”

On Aug. 19, it reached a fever pitch. Fiocca picked up his paycheck, saw it was short, and set off to confront Gibson.

Gibson, a Local 98 member himself, secretly taped what happened next — a recording prosecutors said they’ll play for jurors later in the trial. (The defense maintains Gibson’s taping of Fiocca was illegal under state laws requiring consent from all parties before a conversation can be recorded.)

Though neither Gorman nor Hoeger witnessed the altercation inside a trailer on the construction site firsthand, Hoeger said he spoke to Gibson shortly after, entering the trailer in the moments after Fiocca left.

“He looked flustered. The collar of his shirt was pulled noticeably. And he was upset,” Hoeger said. “He told me … Greg attacked him.”

Police were called but opted not to make any arrests. Later that day, several Local 98 business agents showed up at the job site while Gibson insisted Fiocca should be fired as the union’s steward on the casino.

Hoeger recalled watching the union agents quietly conferring, and, after making several phone calls out of earshot, announcing that Fiocca would remain on the job.

“I kind of threw my hands up,” he said. “I think we were all frustrated.”

Prosecutors say the man on the other end of those phone calls was Dougherty, conveying the threats that now form the backbone of their case.

But as testimony is expected to resume Thursday, defense lawyers are likely to focus on what exactly the ex-union chief said.

They maintain that Dougherty and Palmieri, the casino’s main electrical contractor, had known each other for years and considered each other friends. And no matter what Dougherty may have threatened in the heat of that moment, the contractor never suffered any ill effects.

In fact, Pagano told jurors during his opening statement earlier in the day, Palmieri went on to land contracts in Philadelphia worth $40 million over the next several years.

“It’s not a crime to help your nephew,” the defense lawyer said. “It’s not extortion to help your nephew. And it’s not extortion to keep your nephew in his job.”