Johnny Doc threatened to ‘beat up,’ ‘run over’ and put potential witnesses ‘under the water’ after indictment, feds say

With closing arguments set for Monday in the federal embezzlement trial of former labor leader John Dougherty, the door may be closed on new testimony in the case.

But there was one provocative batch of evidence the jury didn’t hear.

In the months following his 2019 indictment, Dougherty was repeatedly caught on tape threatening to “beat up,” sue, or “run over” potential witnesses against him — and in one case urged members of his union to put a suspected turncoat in their ranks “under the water,” prosecutors said in court filings last week.

He warned union members on several occasions that he’d eventually find out who’d cut deals with the FBI and that the consequences for betraying him would be severe, they said.

“I’ve got every interview,” Dougherty said during one recorded July 2020 meeting with union officials, according to prosecutors. “I can tell you every word that everyone here said.”

» READ MORE: Closing arguments in John Dougherty’s union embezzlement trial set for next week as prosecution and defense rest

Government lawyers contended that those threats — secretly recorded in 2019 and 2020 by an FBI informant inside the ex-union chief’s inner circle — are indicative of Dougherty’s guilt and his use of mob-like intimidation tactics to bully those close to him into silence.

But prosecutors never played them in court before resting their case against the former labor leader Thursday. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey L. Schmehl did not publicly respond to their motion to admit the recordings as evidence — nor did Dougherty’s lawyers.

Still, the tapes — on which the labor leader fumes about his fate, rages at those he suspects of snitching, and likens himself to a mob boss character in a Netflix crime drama — have remained a frequent point of conflict as Dougherty has sought to prove his innocence against three sets of federal charges.

Defense lawyers have previously denied those recorded statements were an attempt to intimidate anyone and have accused the government of using them to unfairly taint Dougherty in jurors’ eyes. They’ve also argued that the FBI violated his constitutional rights by secretly listening in on his conversations as he prepared to fight the charges against him in court — a claim Schmehl rejected earlier this year.

Dougherty had already been convicted in a 2021 bribery trial alongside then-Philadelphia City Councilmember Bobby Henon, when the existence of the recordings was first revealed.

His current trial — on charges he and others embezzled more than $600,000 from their union, Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — is likely to wrap up this month before Dougherty is due to face a third trial on extortion charges next spring.

Meanwhile, the identity of the informant who made the recordings remains a closely held secret.

» READ MORE: John Dougherty trial: Day-by-day recap

The FBI has said only that the person first approached agents in the summer of 2020 — more than a year after Dougherty was first indicted. By that time, the mole had already recorded a November 2019 meeting between the labor leader and roughly 30 union officers, business agents, consultants, and employees.

Despite Dougherty’s public pronouncements at the time that his membership was standing strong together in the face of what he described as antiunion persecution from prosecutors, agents said the informant’s recording showed that behind closed doors the union chief had made clear that he suspected some of his union members of turning against him.

“I’m coming after everything you have and everything you ... own,” he warned the room, according to their description of the tape.

He continued: “I’m going to make sure everybody, everywhere — everybody at your kids’ school — knows that you’re a punk and a rat and a creep.”

Death might be a better option, he told the room, than waiting to incur his wrath. “Go right to the bridge,” he added. “Jump right off the bridge. Make it easy.”

Dougherty’s paranoia had only grown by the following year, prosecutors said, when he and his lawyers had begun reviewing the government’s evidence in the case against him.

Before a July 14, 2020, swearing-in ceremony for newly elected Local 98 officers — attended by at least four people who would later go on to testify for the government in Dougherty’s current trial — he warned a group of union business agents that he now had access to every FBI interview.

“Here’s the problem,” he added, according to prosecutors’ description of that meeting. “I have to sue you. Because I can’t bring you up on [internal union] charges … and I can’t beat you up.”

Midway through that speech, however, he appeared to change his mind.

“You can say, ‘Oh, well, he can’t beat me up anyway.’ Yeah, I can,” Dougherty continued. “At this level when you’re playing with my family and my life … I can. And there’s nobody here [that] will get back up a second time. The first time you get up, the second time I run you over.”

As time wore on, Dougherty appeared to grow more introspective about the threat posed by potential moles within his ranks.

On a union conference call two weeks later, prosecutors said, he likened himself to the mob boss central character in Bad Blood — a Canadian crime drama that he said he’d been watching on Netflix.

“Every show, they say one thing,” he said according to the government’s description of a recording of that call. “‘Everybody is brought down by someone on the inside.”

Quoting another line from the show, Dougherty added: “The one who is given the most will hurt the family the deepest.”

But within weeks, prosecutors said, Dougherty was once again spoiling for a fight.

He appeared to believe he was onto at least one mole and boasted during an Aug. 6, 2020, meeting of his prowess in a scrap.

“You know how many f— fights I had early on?” he told a crowd of roughly 30 union members, according to government filings. “Thirty f— fights.”

He identified one union member by name whom he suspected of being a turncoat and urged others in attendance to do something about it. “One of you guys gotta choke” that person, Dougherty said, “Put him under the f— water.”

» READ MORE: Who’s who in former labor leader John Dougherty’s second trial

Despite that bellicosity, Dougherty’s lawyers have previously noted that prosecutors have not charged him with witness intimidation or other associated crimes.

Yet in the government’s filing last week seeking to admit the recordings as evidence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason Grenell maintained that the tapes undercut the labor leader’s defense throughout his embezzlement trial — that he would never act contrary to the interests of his union’s members.

“These are not the words and deeds of a person convinced of his innocence,” Grenell wrote. “They should not be hidden from the jury.”

He could find out as early as this week what the jury made of the case without them.