{"id":321233,"date":"2026-11-04T20:36:10","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T20:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/321233\/"},"modified":"2026-11-04T20:36:10","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T20:36:10","slug":"lehigh-county-commissioner-may-see-venue-change-for-drug-trial","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/321233\/","title":{"rendered":"Lehigh County Commissioner may see venue change for drug trial"},"content":{"rendered":"

Complaining that his client\u2019s case is being \u201ctried in the media rather than the courtroom,\u201d the attorney for Lehigh County Commissioner Zachary Cole-Borghi told a judge Wednesday that he may seek a change of venue.<\/p>\n

At issue, attorney Gary Asteak said, is an in-depth article on confidential informants that ran in The Morning Call in May.<\/a><\/p>\n

Asteak questioned whether prosecutors suggested the story to a reporter. Chief Deputy District Attorney Craig Scheetz said that didn\u2019t happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s accusing us of some media blitz and that\u2019s not the case,\u201d Scheetz said.<\/p>\n

The Morning Call reporter came up with the story idea without any input from the DA\u2019s office, according to Editor in Chief John Misinco.<\/p>\n

In the end, Monroe County Judge Arthur Zulick, who is overseeing the case because all Lehigh County judges recused themselves due to Cole-Borghi\u2019s position as a commissioner, ruled that the Lehigh County district attorney\u2019s office must hand over all news releases related to Cole-Borghi\u2019s arrest.<\/p>\n

Cole-Borghi, of Bethlehem, is among more than three dozen people charged last year following a grand jury investigation into an alleged multistate drug operation based in Allentown. Prosecutors allege he conducted drug deals from various locations, including a Board of Commissioners meeting and Bethlehem City Hall, where he was employed at the time.<\/p>\n

Cole-Borghi declined to comment as he left the courtroom Wednesday, and has resisted requests from several of his fellow commissioners to resign in light of the charges against him.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Complaining that his client\u2019s case is being \u201ctried in the media rather than the courtroom,\u201d the attorney for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321234,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[119,121,120,2376,46,202,182,139,432],"class_list":["post-321233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-allentown","tag-allentown","tag-allentown-headlines","tag-allentown-news","tag-breaking-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\/321233","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=321233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}