By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 12, 2006
For the Maryland lawmakers who have spent eight months investigating why so many state employees were fired by Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.'s administration, yesterday was supposed to be the big day.
After more than 20 witnesses subpoenaed, sworn and grilled, it was time for the main event. Time to get back to where it all started. Time to hear from Joe Steffen.
"I half expected him to burst in the hearing room in dramatic fashion, wearing a cape or something," said Ward B. Coe III, the special counsel hired last year to conduct the probe.
But the man who signed his e-mails "POD," for Prince of Darkness, whose boasts on the Internet brought about the probe, who went on radio and promised to come clean before the committee was nowhere to be found.
And that was not for lack of trying.
Coe said he called Steffen's cellphone repeatedly and got no answer. He called people who he thought might know Steffen's whereabouts. A process server he sent to Steffen's northeast Baltimore apartment knocked on doors and talked to neighbors. Nothing.
Coe considers Steffen "a central figure in this investigation," and there was no question yesterday why he wants to put Steffen under oath.
Testimony came from two of Steffen's close friends; one said he had made Steffen a groomsman in his wedding. Both took the witness chair before the committee to answer questions about the Republican governor's personnel policies.
Craig Chesek, who once worked alongside Steffen in Ehrlich's congressional office, became chief of staff at the independent agency that regulates the state's utilities, where five employees were handed termination letters April 15, 2004, then were escorted from their offices by armed guards.
Months before the firings at the Public Service Commission, those actions were foretold by Steffen.
"Chesek is CoS at PSC -- and once [Chairman Kenneth] Schisler is confirmed as PSC Director, they can start cleaning house," Steffen wrote in an e-mail to a friend.
During the second hour of testimony, Coe presented Chesek with the e-mail and asked him whether its contents were true. Did he ever tell Steffen about "a potential housecleaning"?
"No I did not," Chesek said.
Coe said in an interview that when the investigation was beginning, he and Steffen talked frequently, first by phone and then in a lengthy discussion in Coe's law office north of Baltimore.
"He was very, very cooperative," Coe said. "And he told me he would appear. I remember very specifically. He said he was very interested in appearing."
Steffen kept a low profile during the months after his name surfaced in the news, in connection not with the personnel questions but with his Internet discussions about one of Ehrlich's chief political rivals, Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley (D). In those communications, Steffen took credit for helping "give float" to a widely circulating rumor that O'Malley was having an extramarital affair -- a rumor the mayor vehemently denied.
Ehrlich fired Steffen for making the claims. But Steffen did not disappear. He was a guest on talk radio several times, and at one point he even suggested that his newfound fame had led him to consider running for governor as a Libertarian. In April, he turned up at a dance party celebrating the end of the General Assembly session.
Steffen smiled and swapped stories with guests, including Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. (D-Calvert), who said, laughing, that he found Steffen so disarming that at one point he instinctively told the former Ehrlich operative to call if he ever needed anything.
But in the past few weeks, as Coe began hunting for Steffen to testify, the "Prince of Darkness" dropped out of sight.
His absence yesterday confounded Democrats on the committee. Sen. Thomas M. Middleton (Charles) wondered whether the governor had helped Steffen land a job to buy his silence. "If I were the governor and he was a potentially dangerous witness, I'd do anything I could to keep him happy," Middleton said.
Ehrlich communications director Paul E. Schurick decried that suggestion. "It's not true. . . . He should be ashamed to even make such a stupid comment."
Coe approached the problem more actively.
Coe: "When was the last time you saw him?"
Chesek: "Actually, he came to my birthday party, on July 1, 2005."
Coe: "Do you know where he lives now?"
Chesek: "No."
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