Pennsylvania's attorney general names an aide to review the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse case

HARRISBURG - Three weeks after being sworn in, state Attorney General Kathleen Kane has delivered on a promise to name a top aide to review the handling of the Jerry Sandusky child sex-abuse case.

Kane on Monday appointed H. Geoffrey Moulton Jr., a former Philadelphia federal prosecutor who led the inquiry into the botched 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Texas, as her special deputy to head the review.

"Mr. Moulton is a highly respected former federal prosecutor who will assist us in providing a comprehensive and independent examination of the facts surrounding the handling of the Sandusky investigation," Kane said in a statement.

She said there was no timetable. "Once the facts have been uncovered, my office will make these findings available to the public," Kane said. Moulton will be paid $72 an hour, her office said.

Kane, who won the Nov. 6 election over Republican David Freed in a landslide, ran on a pledge to look into why the Attorney General's Office took nearly three years to criminally charge Sandusky, a former assistant Pennsylvania State University football coach.

Gov. Corbett, who as attorney general oversaw the Sandusky probe in 2009 and 2010, has promised to cooperate with the review but has defended his handling of the Sandusky investigation. He has said that politics played no role in its duration and that his office needed time to build the case that led to Sandusky's conviction for assaulting eight boys. Sandusky is serving a prison term of 30 to 60 years.

Kane's spokeswoman, Ellen Mellody, said the review Moulton would lead is meant to ensure that "best practices" were used during the investigation.

Mellody said Moulton would have access to the office's special agents and other staff "as needed" for his review.

Now an associate law professor at Widener University, Moulton, 54, served for eight years as first assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Praise for his appointment came from his former boss in that job, U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan (R., Pa.), who was U.S. attorney before he won a seat in Congress.

"Geoff Moulton is the consummate professional," Meehan said Monday night in an e-mailed statement. "He is a skilled attorney and his judgment and integrity are top-rate. I hold him in the highest regard."

From 2009 to 2011, Moulton served as chief counsel to then-U.S. Sen. Ted Kaufman (D. Del.) and as a deputy to the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. In that role he supervised investigations into fraud and other criminal activity related to the federal bailout program.

In 1993, as a project director for the Treasury Department, Moulton wrote a widely praised report on the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco that left 75 people, including 25 children, dead.

Moulton earned his law degree from Columbia University and clerked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice William H. Rehnquist.