It's County Commish vs. County Commish in a battle of words in Montgomery County, Pa.
Now the current District Attorney is being asked to investigate her former boss.
This is how the whole thing went down.
Former Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce Castor returned to criminal court Monday but not as a prosecutor. Instead Castor was a witness for the defense in the federal corruption trial of former Pa. State Senator Vince Fumo.
Castor, currently a Montgomery County Commissioner, told the court that he had employed Fumo's son-in-law Christian Marrone in early 2000 as an assistant district attorney.
Marrone expressed interest to work for the former DA and the two talked politics from time to time, said Castor.
Emails sent on the Montgomery County system between Marrone and Castor in which the two discussed campaigning and fundraising in 2003 and 2004 were read in court.
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Now fellow Montgomery County Commissioner Joe Hoeffel is letting his voice be heard on Castor's actions.
Hoeffel called a news conference Tuesday to urge current Montco DA Risa Vetri Ferman to investigate her former boss because Hoeffel thinks Castor broke the law.
At the news conference Ferman told reporters that she didn't really know much about Hoeffel's demands because information had yet to given to the District Attorney's office.
Hoeffel called a news conference to demand the investigation but had not called the DA, according to Ferman. She added that Hoeffel was "grand standing."
Hoeffel denied that he was making the request for political gain but told reporters that he didn't want this whole thing "swept under the rug."
The issue at hand is that employees are prohibited from using addresses and letterhead for political gain, according to Montgomery County policy.
Castor had already responded to the allegations on Monday.
"I’m sure I didn’t do anything illegal. I probably shouldn’t have used the county e-mail and you know it’s a measure of the fact that I trusted my assistants so much that I would not think that any of them would turn on me, said Castor.
In all my years at the DA’s office only one ever did -- this one," Castor continued.
After learning of Hoeffel's news conference on Tuesday Castor sent this written statement to NBC Philadelphia:
"As I said yesterday, I should not have communicated about personal matters using the county's email system.
The ADA in question approached me and insisted that he wanted to help me in my campaign for reelection in 2003 and my campaign for Pennsylvania Attorney General in the spring of 2004. I allowed him to do that and some of our brief communications occurred in the office when we would see each other. It was incidental, not planned but that doesn't excuse it.
I never held any official campaign meetings in my county office.
My campaigns in 2003 and 2004 were run out of Montgomery County Republican Committee headquarters on Germantown Pike and meetings pertaining to the campaign were held at that location."
DA Ferman said she can't say if an investigation will occur or not because no formal request has been made to her office.
