{"id":204602,"date":"2026-05-28T16:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T16:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/204602\/"},"modified":"2026-05-28T16:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T16:52:09","slug":"zachary-cole-borghi-waived-his-preliminary-hearing-faces-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/204602\/","title":{"rendered":"Zachary Cole-Borghi waived his preliminary hearing, faces trial"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Zachary Cole-Borghi, the Lehigh County commissioner accused of more than 100 drug-related crimes, waived his right to a preliminary hearing Thursday and is headed to trial.<\/p>\n<p>Cole-Borghi, 35, of Bethlehem, is among more than three dozen people charged in a multistate drug operation following a grand jury investigation. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2026\/03\/31\/witness-testifies-about-delivering-drugs-to-lehigh-county-commissioner\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Prosecutors allege he conducted drug deals from various locations,<\/a> including a Board of Commissioners meeting and while attending the March 2025 Peace and Justice Symposium at Northampton Community College.<\/p>\n<p>His attorney, Gary Asteak, said Thursday that he would examine the evidence and then decide whether to file any motions. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mcall.com\/2026\/04\/07\/lehigh-county-commissioner-charged-in-drug-probe-out-of-jail-after-posting-bail\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Cole-Borghi, who remains free on $50,000 bail and is still participating in county commissioner meetings<\/a>, declined to comment.<\/p>\n<p>The next hearing in the case is scheduled for July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Zachary Cole-Borghi, the Lehigh County commissioner accused of more than 100 drug-related crimes, waived his right to a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,46,202,182,139,432],"class_list":["post-204602","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-courts","tag-crime-and-public-safety","tag-local-news","tag-news","tag-top-stories-tmc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204602","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=204602"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/204602\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=204602"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=204602"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=204602"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}