OUT & ABOUT: Educating Chaka Fattah’s Son

CONGRESSMAN Chaka Fattah.

Three weeks into a trial on a variety of charges including conspiracy to money laundering, the 11-term Congressman is still coming into the James A. Byrne Federal Courthouse on Market Street confident not only in his innocence, but also in his ability to prevail.

Fattah and four co-defendants – Karen Nicholas, former CEO of the Education Advancement Alliance, former Fattah aide Bonnie Bowser, hERBERT Vederman, and former Solutions for Progress CEO Robert Brand – have sat at an L-shaped defense table as a battery of United States attorneys continue to question co-workers, friends and acquaintances about a $1 million loan connected to the Congressman’s 2007 mayoral campaign.

It’s alleged the loan was paid back with educational grants from NASA and the Dept. of Justice.

But while political consultants Gregory Naylor and Thomas Lingenfeld, the two men who secured the illegal loan, have testified against Fattah and company about the loan they got from former Sallie Mae CEO Al Lord and how it was paid off, most of weeks two and three of what’s expected to be an eight-week trial has focused on who didn’t get paid for their work on Fattah’s bid for Mayor … and where the money that should have gone to them went instead.

For example, it’s alleged that some of the money that Fattah raised for his campaign wound up somewhere it shouldn’t have: the bursar’s office at Drexel University.

Brian Thomas Keach, director of governmental and community relations for Drexel University, testified that Chip, Fattah’s son, had a hold on his account at the school because he was close to $30,000 in arrears. Having a hold placed on your account at a university prohibits you from registering for classes or even getting copies of your transcripts.

After making a payment arrangement with Chip to try and settle the account, Keach reached out to the Congressman. Another payment arrangement was made and Drexel got some money in the form of checks from Sydney Lei & Associates.

The government says that money came from the Fattah for Mayor campaign, which left some of the campaign’s creditors high and dry.

Those creditors ranged from Gregory Harvey, one of the nation’s premiere election lawyers, who was owed $84,000 by the Fattah campaign for work he had done in connection with a lawsuit filed regarding campaign-finance limits. He got $40,000 of what he was owed, but had he known that the campaign was misusing funds, he wouldn’t have listened to Vederman when he convinced him to forgive some of the debt, Harvey said.

Robert Dililla, CEO of the advertising and public-relations firm Strategic Message Design Group, also testified about his payment issues with the Fattah for Mayor Campaign. SMDG prepared and printed the campaign’s palm cards and other materials.

With printers, designers and other freelancers demanding payment, Dililla eventually told Fattah for Mayor officials that if he got sued, he’d sue them for non-payment in return.

That led to a phone call from political powerbroker George Burrell. When Burrell asked him if he really wanted to take on a sitting Congressman, Dililla’s answer was, well, colorful.

“I told him that he if wanted this to go away, pay the f – ing bill!” he said.

Later in the week, US Sen. Bob Casey took the stand and testified Fattah had asked him for help in getting an ambassadorship for Vederman. Casey said he wasn’t inclined to help.

The government also alleged Vederman, as a help to Fattah, also paid the Philadelphia University tuition of the Congressman’s South African au pair, Simone Mueller.

We’ve got another six weeks of this stuff, so hold on tight.

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