Report: FBI Warrant Offers Deeper Look Into Johnny Doc Investigation
A search warrant is reportedly yielding new insight into the FBI’s investigation of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 98 and John Dougherty, the union’s business manager.
The Inquirer reports that the warrant served by the FBI on Tuesday details a search for possible extortion, embezzled union funds and whether or not contractors were bullied by “use of economic fear.”
The warrant was used to confiscate the computer of Joseph Ralston, an employee in the state Attorney General’s Philadelphia office, according to the Inquirer. Sources told the newspaper that the FBI was looking into interactions between Ralston and Philadelphia City Councilman Bobby Henon, who also maintains a staff position with the union —and who has remained notably silent on the investigation since the FBI raided his offices, along with several other union-related locations, on August 5th.
Two additional, unidentified properties in the city’s Pennsport section were searched yesterday as well, according to the Inquirer. The newspaper obtained a copy of a letter Dougherty sent to the IBEW Local 98’s roughly 4,700 members Friday, in which he held that the FBI investigation doesn’t rest solely on him, and that “the scope of these investigations suggest a comprehensive attack upon multiple aspects of Local 98.”
“Here’s the bottom line: If these investigations were simply about me, I’D RETIRE TODAY and save our union any additional headaches, but they’re not,” Dougherty wrote in the letter, according to the Inquirer.
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