Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner asked a federal judge on Wednesday to step aside from a post-conviction case after that judge suggested Krasner may have committed crimes. In filings submitted overnight in federal court, Krasner said U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond should no longer oversee the matter.
The filings matter because they turn a fight over who can participate in the case into a direct challenge to the judge running it. Diamond had already disqualified Krasner and Matthew Stiegler from participating moving forward, and Krasner appealed that ruling while asking that Diamond be removed as well.
In mid-September, Diamond filed a memorandum saying Krasner and Matthew Stiegler may have committed crimes including conspiracy, obstruction of justice, or perjury, and he referred the matter to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for potential investigation. Federal prosecutors have declined to comment, leaving Krasner under the shadow of allegations that could still be taken up, or not, by prosecutors outside the case.
Krasner and Assistant District Attorney Thomas Gaeta answered with a nine-page letter that did not try to soften the clash. They called Diamond’s reasoning baseless and illogical, saying his analysis rested on nothing of substance and that his conclusions were more closely resembling fever-dream conspiracy theories than evidence. Krasner also wrote that Diamond’s factual findings and accusatory legal conclusions twist the truth to the point of breaking in ways that defy logic and employ Orwellian language.
The filing goes further than a simple objection. Krasner and Gaeta said the proceedings had become a circus, with Diamond the ringmaster, and argued that his questions to witnesses and his treatment of credibility showed bias against Krasner. They also said the judge improperly blamed and discredited Krasner for not testifying even though he had never been asked to take the stand. In one passage, Krasner said the accusations could be litigated as civil claims of defamation, slander, or libel.
Diamond, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, remains the judge at the center of a dispute that has legal and political weight far beyond one case file. His ruling already bars Krasner and Stiegler from participating as the matter moves forward, and the open question now is whether the U.S. Attorney’s Office will do anything with the referral that started this latest round of filings. For now, Krasner has made his move, and the fight over who should decide the case is not over.
