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Ex-Orie Staffer Uncomfortable After Bonusgate

PITTSBURGH,None — A former legislative staffer for Republican state Sen. Jane Orie testified she became concerned about the political campaign and fundraising work she and other staffers routinely did for Orie after seeing news accounts about the public corruption scandal known as Bonusgate.

Audrey Rasmussen testified Thursday that she raised those concerns with Orie's chief of staff, Jamie Pavlot, sometime in 2008, after Bonusgate became widely reported by the news media. Rasmussen said she felt the political fundraising and campaign work Orie's staff did for the senator and her sister, state Supreme Court Justice Joan Orie Melvin, was similar to work detailed in those stories.

More than two dozen current or former state lawmakers and aides have been charged in the scandal, in which legislative employees were secretly paid bonuses, and government resources were allegedly diverted, for campaign work.

"I realized that was a lot of the same kind of work I was doing," Rasmussen testified.

Rasmussen said that after she aired her concerns, Orie and Pavlot had political or fundraising information removed from the senator's legislative staff computers where it had been stored for years and copied it onto a portable storage device.

"I was instructed to take everything off the Senate computers and put everything on the jump drive," Rasmussen said.

Rasmussen will continue testifying Friday in the trial of Orie, 49, and another of her sisters, Janine Orie, 56. The sisters are charged with conspiring to use the Pittsburgh-area senator's staff to illegally do campaign work for Melvin's successful 2009 state Supreme Court election campaign. The senator alone is also charged with wrongly using her staff for her own political benefit since 2001 and on Melvin's unsuccessful 2003 run for the state's highest court.

Rasmussen said that while working for Orie from August 2006 until December 2009, she printed out thank-you letters and fundraising correspondence and kept databases of campaign contributors and those who were invited to attend or organize fundraisers. Most of the political work Rasmussen did or said she saw other staffers do benefited the senator, though Rasmussen said some was for Justice Melvin, who has not been charged.

Rasmussen estimated she spent 20 percent to 45 percent of her legislative work day on campaign tasks, but said that could rise to 75 percent in periods leading up to a campaign fundraiser.

Defense attorneys won't get to cross-examine Rasmussen until after her direct testimony wraps up on Friday, but they've argued the campaign work done in Orie's office was insignificant or done by staffers who voluntarily used comp time or other free time.

But Rasmussen said one of her legitimate tasks was to record comp time for Orie's staffers. Rasmussen told Allegheny County Deputy District Attorney Law Claus that she didn't recall any of Orie's state-paid staffers asking for comp time so they could do political work. She testified, rather, that she and other staffers sometimes were awarded comp time for working after hours at political events, as well as events with a legitimate legislative purpose.

The only other new witness Thursday was Joanne Crane-Tsucalas, a Philadelphia political fundraising consultant hired by Melvin's 2009 campaign.

Tsucalas testified that Pavlot and some Orie staffers were involved in Melvin's campaign, but when she was cross-examined by Janine Orie's attorney, James DePasquale, about some relevant e-mails, she provided virtually no details about what Orie staffers may have done to help Melvin's campaign.

Tsucalas noted that Pavlot knew about many aspects of planning an October 2009 fundraiser for Melvin -- but Tsucalas could not recall any specific instance in which Pavlot ordered any Orie staffers to participate.

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