In closing arguments, prosecutors depict John Dougherty’s nephew as a menace, while defense contends extortion case is built on ‘passion and assumptions’

With their final pitches to jurors Wednesday, attorneys in John Dougherty’s federal extortion trial sought to cement two vastly different portraits of the former labor leader with the panel charged with rendering a verdict in the case.

As Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Costello told it, Dougherty was an enabler, willing to overlook his nephew’s 2020 assault on a supervisor and use every tool at his disposal — including threats of economic harm — to keep him employed.

Court has recessed for the day, and after six days of testimony, two dozen witnesses, countless text message transcripts, and one key secret recording, the extortion case against John Dougherty and his nephew is set to go to the jury Thursday.

Before letting jurors go for the night, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl explained that will instruct the panel of six men and six women on the law first thing on Thursday morning before sending them to the deliberation room in hopes of reaching a unanimous verdict.

In the government’s final bid to jurors before they receive the case against John Dougherty and his nephew Thursday morning, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Grenell asked the panel to consider a scenario.

“Do you get to assault your boss, threaten him, hit him, throw him, and expect not only to remain employed, but to keep getting paid?” he asked incredulously. “Where in the world would you watch one of your colleagues assault your boss and get to be there the next day? It’s absolutely the wildest thing.”

“I’m asking you to hesitate in making the most important decision in Greg Fiocca’s life,” attorney Rocco Cipparone implored the jury during his closing argument Wednesday afternoon, asking the panel to acquit his client on the extortion and conspiracy charges he’s facing.

Sure, the attorney said, Fiocca’s caught-on-tape behavior on Aug. 19, 2020, was bad, as he hit, spit on, and threw his supervisor to the ground.

John Dougherty’s lawyer Greg Pagano urged jurors to reject the government’s case — one built on “passion and assumptions” — and acquit the former labor leader of the extortion charges he’s facing.

Addressing the panel for the final time, the defense lawyer dismissed the government’s claims that Dougherty threatened a contractor with economic harm in an effort to keep his nephew employed, after he assaulted one of his bosses at the Live! Casino and Hotel construction project in 2020.

In their closing pitch to jurors, prosecutors described Greg Fiocca as an “enraged and entitled” entitled menace who bullied his bosses — and assaulted one of them — so they’d pay him for work he did not do.

His uncle, Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Costello said, enabled him at all costs, making threats to the detriment of other members of their union

The defense announces it has called its last witness, and U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl has told the jury he intends to plow on into closing arguments this afternoon.

First up, Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Costello will deliver the government’s closing.

Philip Schocklin, a Local 98 electrician who briefly supervised Greg Fiocca during on construction of the Live! Casino, told jurors he never had a problem with his work and never had an issues with him disappearing from work.

“He was pleasant to work with,” Shocklin said. “He was good at what he did.”

Next on the stand: Two John Dougherty defense witnesses, both of whom vouched for the labor leader’s fixation on keeping union jobs open — particularly during the uncertain early days of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020.

“Doc’s priority ever since I’ve known him is making sure his guys have work,” said David Thomas, who owns a Harrisburg-based consulting and lobbying business.

Prosecutors have rested their case.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Frank Costello told the court that the government had no more evidence to present against Dougherty and Fiocca after their last witness, certified fraud examiner Cynthia Fusco.

Defense lawyers have noted repeatedly throughout the trial that the Friday before his job-site assault on a supervisor, Greg Fiocca spent the day at the hospital with his young son who was undergoing surgery. He’d texted his boss as much to let him know why he had to miss work, the lawyers have maintained.

But a government fraud examiner testified Wednesday that bank records revealed the same day Fiocca said he had to miss work to tend to his ailing son, Dougherty’s nephew also spent more than $300 a tattoo parlor in Clementon, N.J.

Despite making a flurry of phone calls in the hours after his nephew’s Aug. 19, 2020, attack on job site supervisor, John Dougherty never called the victim of that assault, who was also a member of his union.

That fact emerged as FBI Special Agent Jessica Fear, one of the lead investigators on the case, walked jurors through a timeline she compiled of the events of that day and the various phone calls Dougherty and Greg Fiocca made to other union officials amid and around the assault.

Defense lawyers grilled one of the FBI’s lead investigators on the case, questioning various steps he didn’t take while gathering evidence against John Dougherty and Greg Fiocca.

Testifying for a second day, Special Agent Jason Blake acknowledged that he and other agents working on the investigation never conducted surveillance on Fiocca to verify whether reports they’d received from others about his frequent absences from work were true.

The jury is back in the box, the judge is on the bench, and FBI Special Agent Jason Blake – one of the lead investigator on the case – is back on the witness stand, resuming his testimony for a second day.

Today could be a big day in court as we expect the government to wrap up its presentation of evidence, and the defense to put on its witnesses.

Prosecutors — who have indicated they’re nearing the end of their case — will pick up Wednesday with FBI Special Agent Jason Blake back on the witness stand.

At the end of the day Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl explained to the jury that the case was taking slightly longer than originally budgeted, stretching a second week.

Five days after John Dougherty’s nephew assaulted a supervisor on a construction site prompting his bosses to demand he be booted from the job, the union leader was still seething about that request.

“I heard a little jabber-jaw down at the Shore this weekend,” Dougherty said during a meeting with roughly 30 business agents and other personnel of his union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, in which he expressed frustration over gossip he’d heard about the dustup.

Unlike John Dougherty’s two earlier trials — both of which played out at the federal courthouse in Center City — his third will take place in Reading, starting with opening arguments there Wednesday, once jury selection in Philadelphia is done.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl, who has presided over all of Dougherty’s recent legal matters, is normally stationed at the small federal courthouse in downtown Reading.

Greg Fiocca, 31, is John Dougherty’s nephew and a former member of Local 98 who grew up in in Pennsport in the house next door to his uncle.

But despite Fiocca’s troubled work history, including altercations with former supervisors, Dougherty appointed him in 2020 to the plum posting as Local 98′s steward on Live! Casino’s project.

John Dougherty, widely known as “Johnny Doc,” was once considered the most powerful union leader in the state, transforming Local 98 in his three decades at its helm into a powerhouse in the arenas of politics and organized labor.

Under his oversight, union money and manpower helped elect governors, members of Congress, mayors, judges, and members of City Council, and his once sleepy electrician’s union became a force capable of extracting significant labor concessions from some of the largest companies in the region.

For a third time in as many years, John Dougherty is facing a federal felony trial — this time on conspiracy and extortion charges.

The former labor leader and his nephew, Greg Fiocca, are accused of threatening a contractor and a job site manager amid a dispute over Fiocca’s poor job performance and pay. Prosecutors say that while working on construction of the Live! Casino in South Philadelphia in 2020, Fiocca assaulted his supervisor and that Dougherty later threatened the block the contractor’s ability to land future work in Philadelphia.