Prosecutors describe John Dougherty's nephew as a workplace menace; defense calls extortion claim ‘nonsense’

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 agre

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.

Leaving the Reading courthouse Wednesday after the first day of testimony in his extortion trial, John Dougherty had little to say about his nephew’s attendance record, but emphasized the time period — the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic — in which many of the events occurred.

“This was just a very sensitive time where most people want to work and most people weren’t making it in, people were just rushing to get home,” Dougherty told reporters. “Think about the COVID time. Everybody was scared to death, we were still eight months away from a vaccination.”

In July 2020, Fiocca’s assignment at Live! Casino changed again, as he worked side-by-side with James Gorman — the government’s next witness — installing lighting in the casino’s parking garage.

And though, from the stand, Gorman said that he made it clear that he did not want to be involved in monitoring the younger man’s whereabouts prosecutors displayed his text messages to the jury to do just that.

As the defense got its crack at Chris Hoeger, the government witness and Local 98 electrician who led a crew Greg Fiocca was assigned to during the Live! Casino construction in 2020, attorney Rocco Cipparone sought to underscore a point he’d stressed earlier during his opening statement to the jury:

The project’s managers were watching Dougherty’s nephew closely from the start.

The government’s first witness: Chris Hoeger, a longtime Local 98 electrician who supervised Greg Fiocca's crew at one point on the massive Live! Casino construction site, overseeing circuits connected to gaming machines and the kitchens.

Electricians on the casino job had a set schedule, Hoeger testified, working 6 a.m. to 2:30 p.m., with a 9 a.m. coffee break and 11:45 lunch.

There’s no getting around it, defense lawyer Rocco Cipparone said, Greg Fiocca’s tone in a recorded argument between him and his supervisor at the then-under construction Live! Casino site in South Philadelphia is “horrible.”

“Greg Fiocca is yelling. He’s shouting. He’s cursing,” the attorney told the jury during his opening statement Wednesday. But, Cipparone continued: ”He lost his cool [only] after being pushed and pushed and pushed for seven months.”

“Complete and utter nonsense.” That’s how John Dougherty lawyer Greg Pagano described the government’s theory that the ex-union chief and his nephew extorted electrical contractor Ray Palmieri amid a dispute over pay.

“The question here is did [Dougherty] threaten anyone?” the defense lawyer said in his opening statement to the jury. “And the answer is he did not.”

In their opening pitch to the jury, prosecutors painted Greg Fiocca as a workplace menace who threatened and violently assaulted his supervisor in an argument over pay during amid construction of the Live! Casino in South Philadelphia in 2020.

John Dougherty was the man with the power to back up his nephew’s threats, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Grenell told the panel.

U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl has taken the bench and has sworn in the jury of six men and six women set to hear the case.

“You and you alone are the judges of the facts,” Schmehl told panel after they stood and raised their right hands. “It is only what you hear in this courtroom that is what is important.”

Good morning from the small federal courtroom inside a government building in downtown Reading, where we’re expecting lawyers to deliver opening statements in the case any minute now.

At the moment, the attorneys are huddled in chambers with U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl. John Dougherty, meanwhile, is silently sorting through a box of court papers he brought with him to court.

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.