>> i'm monica malpass. on "inside story," new details are emerging in the corruption trial of our embattled district attorney, seth williams. can he survive it? let's get the inside story. ♪ good morning. i'm monica malpass, and welcome to "inside story." let's meet our insiders today. and they are donna gentile o'donnell. good morning. a nonprofit executive. glad to have you. >> thanks. >> jan ting, a law professor. good morning, sir. >> morning, monica. >> glad to have you back. terry madonna, f&m college pollster. thank you for being with us, as well. and ed turzanksi, foreign policy analyst. ed, always good to see you. >> morning. >> thank you for being here. let's talk about what we have seen so far in the evidence, a brand-new trial. it could go three to four weeks, but our district attorney is charged with corruption, bribery, fraud. if he is convicted, he could face 20 years in jail. he has not resigned. he is still earning his salary and still holding the position. it's $175,000 a year, by the

way -- taxpayers' money. so, a few questions. first of all, where do you think we stand on the case? we did hear from the nursing home that alleges he didn't pay his elderly mother's bills up to $20,000-plus -- she's an 80-year-old woman who's bedridden -- and that he used that money, prosecutors will say, for his own benefit to fund a lifestyle. but now his defense attorneys allege that he didn't know the extent of the bills, and the case will roll out over the next month. where do you think we stand, terry? >> well, who knows? i mean, the bigger charge, i think, is trips and gifts. i mean, you traditionally get fined, but here's -- i'm not gonna argue he's innocent or guilty, but let me say this -- pennsylvania has among the weakest campaign finance laws, the weakest lobbying laws, and the weakest ethics laws of any state in the country. so it's not unusual to take gifts. let's say you give a campaign contribution to somebody. they could use it for almost anything. >> legally.

>> yeah, legally. the definition in the election code is "to influence an election." isn't that great? so you could buy a suit, you could, you know, buy a car. they're all shaking their heads 'cause they understand what i'm saying. >> but we are talking about cars and a roof on a house and vacations. >> yeah. now, what you have to do if you give that money -- a gift -- a lobbyist, you have to report it if it gets over 600, 650 bucks a year. but if you're a public official, you can take as many gifts as you want. >> but you also must report it, and that's where the rubber hits the road. >> it's a fascinating defense strategy that's being raised here, where the da's defense is saying -- admitting all this bad behavior. they acknowledge that it's bad behavior -- that he was taking all these gifts and not reporting them, that he was using his campaign funds for personal purposes, that he was, you know, taking the money from his own mother for his own personal purposes -- but their defense is, "but none of that is illegal."

>> yeah. >> so that's the defense. >> yeah. >> so one of the things that i found interesting about the way that the trial opened, the prosecution beginning with these allegations associated with his mother. i mean, who leaves their mother in a lurch? i think the prosecution is opening in a way to establish credibility of this person that they have charged, character issues that may have set the stage for all of these other misbehaviors. >> so tug at the heartstrings first, get the jurors on board, that's what you think their strategy is? >> i think so, and i think there's real legitimacy to that. i mean, the whole thing is just politically heartbreaking. as someone who supported seth williams in the past, i have to say the disappointments are legion. >> and do you think he should resign, ed? >> oh, he won't resign because he's got no source of income and he's... >> but he should or shouldn't? >> well, i don't know that it's my call to tell him that he should resign.

i think if it was in the law, he needs the money. and, by the way, this is something -- terry and i discussed this, and i'll give him credit because i think he came up with it and i agreed at the time. go back to bob mcdonnell, governor of virginia, who was convicted of corruption. and the conviction was overturned because, although he had taken the gifts, the prosecutor did not establish a quid pro quo. >> got it. >> meaning, "i took this and, in return, i'm going to do the following for you." i think williams is -- his attorney is on the same path, so pulling at the heartstrings may be a little bit of jury nullification in trying to get them not to look at the law. but he's trying to thread a very fine needle to say, "listen, i have some deficiencies in my character. i took money, but it's not against the law because i didn't do anything in return." >> might be unsavory, but not illegal. >> and it could be -- by the

way, they may get him on taxes. >> going after this point that they raised taking mom's money first, as the first issue -- the prosecution did -- you think it has something to do with the fact that the jury consists of 10 women and 2 men, and the alternates, the 4 alternates, are all women? so you're looking at an issue that's maybe, "hey, taking money from mom, is that okay?" >> would that be grounds for an appeal? >> what? >> if he's convicted? >> what? >> if they were catering to the jury in that way. >> well, the fact that they played that card -- >> i don't see that there's anything wrong with playing the card. >> let's hypothetically say he gets found guilty. in this state, you don't actually have -- he doesn't have to leave his job until he's sentenced. so that could be, in some cases where state lawmakers -- i've been through this before -- they're in for months before they get sentenced, collecting the 175 grand, as you pointed out. >> and you said he might get caught on tax issues because of

not declaring the gifts and that is a taxable item. >> yeah. >> okay. all right, let's move on and talk about another court matter, and that's the bill cosby mistrial. the district attorney of montgomery county says he will retry the case sometime in the next three or four months. and we're awaiting to hear when that will be dated. but 10 to 2 is what we're hearing from inside scoop on the jurors that they got down. 10 of them were going to vote guilty on two of the three counts. two would not agree to that, and hence the mistrial. now we understand that mr. cosby is going to be holding his own seminars for sex assault prevention, if you will, to educate young men how not to get in this kind of conundrum. and do you find that that's an interesting twist, that he may, in fact, be able to, you know, influence a jury pool by his attorney saying, "look, he's innocent, and here's how innocent he is because he's trying to help other young men"? >> this is completely a preposterous idea. i mean, when i read that, i literally put my hands to my head, and i was like -- it's just beyond belief. but i think there are a couple of other important things about

what you just said, monica, with respect to the jury commentary. there's now more commentary coming out that says that there was more division in the jury than just the two jurors. >> 5-7. we're hearing a lot of numbers. >> now, all of the women that have been coming to the courtroom to support andrea constand, who is the central figure, all of them are gonna be involved in civil litigation. their opportunity for justice, i think, will be served there because there's a difference between a preponderance of the evidence and a unanimous jury. i mean, i defer to our legal expert here, but i think that that will be meaningful going forward. the fact that they didn't find ms. constand credible in a variety of ways is disturbing to women who feel like if you say it happened and you can't prove it, how can you reconcile that with a system that is frequently unresponsive to the circumstances that women face with the humiliation of having

been taken advantage of? >> it's hard when it's a he said, she said and there are only two people in the room. >> yeah. there are a lot of painful issues here. but i think -- also, and jan would know this because of his life at temple, i mean, there are so many tragedies here -- shakespearean in proportion. i mean, bill cosby, who's a major figure in so many ways, that has been completely and utterly destroyed. we are now in -- >> just by the mere accusation, because he is innocent until proven guilty. still innocent. >> this is national and international news, and it's also -- so it's a blight on the city that this has happened. i mean, people understand that these things happen all over the world, but nevertheless, i would certainly prefer that we be in the news for something much more positive than this. >> and do you find that the next trial, do you presuppose, will have any other outcome? >> you know, this strikes me as a lot of emotion involved in the case, not unlike the o.j. case, in that -- very divided, kind

of unreconcilable views of what happened -- and so, you know, i don't know what's going forward. i think the prosecutor has an election commitment to press this case forward. he's not gonna back off from that as long as the taxpayers are willing to fund his efforts. >> and you brought up o.j. this is gonna have -- this is gonna be debated endlessly, aspects of it, just as we did the o.j. simpson trial. >> right. >> not going to end. >> and do you find that, perhaps, because we're hearing these bits and pieces from jurors of what was happening in that jury room for those 30-plus hours, do you predict that, next time, cosby will testify? >> i thought the decision to release the jury names was a terrible decision. terrible decision. >> but will he testify next time if he thinks that they may have convicted him the first time, now he needs to testify on his own behalf? is that better or worse for him, ed? >> that's not what he's hearing. >> donna made the point that now we're hearing more and it wasn't tended to. it was much more evenly balanced. i find it interesting --

and donna mentioned the # who had women making allegations.n making that was bill clinton. >> right. >> and the treatment was much different here. and, jan, you made the point about whether the taxpayers will allow it. this is a pretty expensive process for a small community. i go back to what donna said -- the civil cases are where cosby is going to be, i think, held to account. and i would think that a prosecutor, as much as he wants to have that conviction -- given what happened here -- the more prudent course would be to say, "he's admitted he's done terrible things. we didn't get the conviction here. the civil courts -- the civil litigation will make him pay." >> so, in the end, bruce castor may have had a point by not trying the case. all right, the pennsylvania

budget deadline is six days away. we have a $1.5 billion shortfall. republicans and democrats can't agree on how to bridge the gap, and, of course, governor wolf is skeptical of the newest republican plan. they would borrow to cover that, which is not the tendency that the state of pennsylvania likes to do -- covering to borrow everyday costs. the republicans also are proposing a few things. they don't like wolf's ideas, which were a tax on natural-gas drilling, expanding the sales tax to exempt items, and expanding gambling through other parts of the state. so where are we gonna find some agreement, terry? >> well, they're actually not that far apart in terms of the dollars. they're only about $500 million apart from what the governor originally proposed back in february to where the republicans were. the governor wanted a 1.8% increase -- that's the smallest increase i think any democrat has ever recommended in modern history. the point is that we need revenue or we have to cut services. the $1.5 billion shortfall is this year -- the shortfall. the state has a $3 billion

structural deficit. >> right. ongoing. >> ongoing. and the payments have to be made to the pension, they have to be made to medicaid, and you can go forward. and the governor still wants the severance tax -- that's the tax on the extraction of natural gas from the fracked wells. >> and closing some tax loopholes. >> and closing some tax loo-- guess what -- the republicans are saying no. it looks like you're exactly right. gaming -- if they have their way, it looks like -- if we still had telephone booths, we would have a video poker machine in every one. >> absolutely. >> you're all shaking your heads. i mean, it's incredible the expansion of gaming. and let's talk about the expansion of alcohol. if they do what some republicans want, we could end up with the lcb gone -- liquor control board gone. that whole system, the way it functions now, eliminated. and, by the way, given the rules that they now have for the budget passage and the other things they have to do, you want to make a bet on june 30?

>> well, if i could just add on. one of the things i find fascinating, there is a constitutional requirement that the budget be passed by the end of the fiscal year. >> july 1 is coming up. >> right. having said that, we have now lived through a budget cycle that went into the next calendar year. >> under rendell. >> well, and under governor wolf in that first year when, you know, there were practically fisticuffs around what are we gonna do here. and i think one of the things that's important for people to know is that the supreme court decision that came down a couple of years back in which they basically said, "administration, governor's administration, you don't get to decide who are the essential folks." so in the old days, that constitutional deadline was much more meaningful because if you hit june 30th and you didn't >> essential services get delivered. that's the big point. >> and so everyone felt the pain of the budget not passing. no one feels that pain now.

>> it's not as urgent. >> i think that's a contributing factor to this ongoing phenomena of building up deficits. >> if the legislators didn't get paid, that might make a difference in how quickly -- >> that would light a fire. >> we've all seen this movie before. and, you know, i'm not as optimistic as terry is. i think some of the problems are getting worse. i mean, people always seek out gambling revenue as a panacea. i think people are having second thoughts about that and saying, "wait a minute. maybe we don't want to go that way." you know, shutting down the liquor control board has been a proposal for a long time. huge resistance to that. that's not going away. so, again, we've seen it before, and i wouldn't be surprised if we see it again. >> stay tuned. all right, we're gonna take a break. more "inside story" coming your way right after this. >> "inside story" is presented by temple university. remarkable change isn't easy, but for those who take charge, it comes naturally. explore temple's impact. visit temple.edu/impact.

♪ >> welcome back to "inside story." pennsylvania's department of health just issued 12 permits for legally growing medical marijuana in the state. they will be good. coming up, starting in september, they'll start the registration and on until next year, when the program will be operational. many more permits, up to 25, will ultimately be issued, but this is the first group out of 450-plus. what do you think, ed, of the way that they're going about it? in fact, a company from woodbridge, new jersey, got one of them and a company from

berks county -- no philadelphia companies yet. >> [ chuckles ] >> there's just a lot of money tied up in this, and as sympathetic as i am to people who are in need of medical marijuana and the research that could go on, and i think that we have to find a way to do it right. i'm just very skeptical that we will not transition from medical to recreational. >> you're afraid that it won't be tight enough? >> i think the way they're spreading this, it's -- >> in the poll that we did in may for 6abc, 56% of pennsylvania voters now support the legalization of pot. that's the first poll that i've seen -- >> for any usage. >> recreational pot. and it is heavily driven by the people that the three of us hang around with -- the millennials, the 18- to 34-year-olds. seriously. >> and it is extraordinarily dangerous. >> and the support for that among millennials is... >> yeah. >> so your point's taken. all right, let's move on and

talk about philadelphia teachers have approved a new contract for the first time in years. the union overwhelmingly approved it -- 95%, and it does have pay retroactively. it's a $395 billion deal. that's a lot of money. where's it gonna come from? that's the real question. and a spokesman for the pennsylvania house republicans said they cannot take any philadelphia idea on this topic seriously when it doesn't appear "that we help ourselves and they negotiate a contract they admit is based on fantasy." so where's the money coming from, jan? [ laughter ] >> well, you know, it's a great contract in a lot of different ways. the teachers are gonna contribute to their own healthcare going forward, they do get some retroactive pay, but for the fact that it's largely and significantly unfunded. and so that is the big fly in the ointment here, as to how that goes forward. if they can't find the funding, there are gonna have to be layoffs going forward, and no one wants to see that, so... >> so where does that leave us in the end? >> well, a couple of things. first, notably, former chairman

of the src bill green took a step back on this, did not vote in favor of this, in part because of the funding issue -- in large part because of the funding issue. and so i think while there's been a big appetite for getting a contract -- again, the funding issues continue to play themselves out. the layoffs, if they happen, will be painful. i think maybe if we could accelerate the trend for recreational marijuana and tax it, maybe we could pay the teachers. i don't know. it's just a thought. >> there's one thing in harrisburg that there is a growing consensus about and that is the need to increase the funding for basic education. of all the hot topics in which democrats and republicans disagree on, that's not fundamentally among them. now, we'll see what they end up with, but governor wolf did ask for $100 million increase just for the schools and additional money for special education. the fact is, this budget -- given how tough it is -- is not likely, in the end, to help

philadelphia very much. >> and, terry, keep in mind, this week the state of illinois appears to be headed toward bankruptcy. they got there by passing legislation and awarding contracts that were not funded. >> $100 million will not be enough to close the gap in philadelphia. >> i agree with that. i couldn't agree more with that. >> all right, let's talk about expanded public access to be able to view footage from police dash-cam video. the pennsylvania supreme court just ruled that you do have more availability of seeing it. of course, police pushed back. they voted against it and begged that not to happen, but a 5-2 majority ruled against them. now police will have the burden to prove why it should not be released. is this a win for the public in an effort to have, you know, more transparency with police actions, or is it a loss for the ability for police to do their job the right way? >> well, taxpayers are paying for this, and so they ought to have access to these tapes that are being produced at their expense.

the court ruling on it did not actually give a broad access to the public. what is said was there's a presumption that they have access, but the police are free to raise, on a case-by-case basis, objections to why the tapes should not be released. so that seemed like, to me, a reasonable compromise. >> okay. is it a win for the public, or do you think, in the end, it hurts policing? >> well, i think jan made these awfully important points that i won't bother to repeat, but i think the one thing that is really important is that the distrust that exists in a lot of communities, maybe in some neighborhoods more so than others, between the police and the communities that they police is very, very significant and frightening. among my african-american friends, the fear is palpable. so i worry. i mean, we don't want to be a national story with a dash cam of a police officer behaving inappropriately and engaging in some terrible misconduct. on the other hand, it does -- there are very legitimate

reasons why you might want to first be able to view it. but, again, we're back to the trust issue. if the public doesn't trust their institutions, then we've got big problems. and we're seeing them across the board. >> all right, last quick word from you, ed, before we go to inside stories. >> i think jan's right. i think that you've established the right in principle, but we can use discretion. if there are instances where there's an investigation and it would be better not to disclose, then the court can step in. so i think it's a very reasonable position. >> all right, that's it for now. inside stories of the week coming your way after we take a break. stick around. ♪

>> "inside story" is presented by temple university. remarkable change isn't easy, but for those who take charge, it comes naturally. explore temple's impact.

visit temple.edu/impact. >> time for inside stories of the week, and let's start with jan. >> much discussion this week on the future of the democratic party. an important article in "the atlantic" by peter beinart called "how the democrats lost their way on immigration," documenting how the democratic party has changed its position from being defenders of workers' rights against illegal immigration to basically abandoning that issue entirely in their 2016 platform. it's been a gradual change, but it's clear that they positioned themselves in a way that cannot appeal to working americans. >> all right. donna. >> and following up on that, i'm watching a race in wisconsin -- a democrat who is in a primary and is hoping to run against paul ryan. his name is randy bryce. he is an ironworker for 20 years, he's a veteran, he's a guy who survived cancer, and he speaks from here. and that's what democrats are missing. if you're talking to the folks

and you're speaking from here, you're gonna win. anything absent that, not happening. >> ed. >> monica, tremendously important national security development. the chinese this week announced that one of their satellites was able to send through quantum entanglement -- which is a very complex process -- information to a ground station. this means that their communications are unhackable. we won the second world war because we could read the japanese and german codes. we protect ourselves by being able to read the other guys' mail. they'll be able to read us. we won't be able to read them. this is an issue that's got to be paid attention to. >> gravely concerning. all right. terry. >> there's a big story in the state capital, it's called "libre's law." libre was a dog found virtually dead in lancaster county. the dog's health was restored. his owner and others took this 4-legged dog, creature -- dogs have 4 legs -- into the state capital where they lobbied for

the most comprehensive change in animal-abuse laws. it is now -- this is serious -- it could be a felony if you do certain things involving the torture of animals. horses are involved, as well. and animal lovers have cheered endlessly about this. >> good to know. all right, and that's "inside story" for this week. thanks to our panelists for being here. thanks so much for watching. hope you have a great week ahead. we'll see you right back here next sunday morning. >> i'm alicia vitarelli, coming up on on "action news" at noon, a woman is gunned down in camden county this morning. a man's surprise attack by bullies went viral. gets a surprise, a happy one from strangers. national weather service confirms this was a twister one of two in the garden state, we'll have the exclusive

accuweather seven-day forecast and more next on "action news." ,

june 25, nydia han and gray are off, i'm alicia vitarelli, here's some of the stories we're following on "action news" this noon. it is day two for the cleanup from yesterday's fierce storms. a mechanical issue forced a