DOJ-OGR-00004835.jpg

Case 1:20-cr-00330-PAE Document 310-1 Filed 07/02/21 Page 23 of 80

less than flattering light,” as a threat to Ms. Constand and her attorneys should they attack his office. In a 2016 Philadelphia Inquirer article, in reference to this same sentence, Castor stated, “I put in there that if any evidence surfaced that was admissible I would revisit the issue. And evidently, that is what the D.A. is doing.” He testified that he remembered making that statement but that it referred to the possibility of a prosecution based on other victims in Montgomery County or perjury.

He testified that the press release was intended for three audiences, the media, the greater legal community, and the litigants. He testified about what meaning he hoped that each audience would glean from the press release. He did not intend for any of the three groups to understand the entirety of what he meant. The media was to understand only that [Cosby] would not be arrested. Lawyers would parse every word and understand that he was saying there was enough evidence to arrest [Cosby] but that Mr. Castor thought the evidence was not credible or admissible. The third audience was the litigants, and they were to understand that they did not want to damage the civil case. He then stated that the litigants would understand the entirety of the press release, the legal community most of it and the press little of it.

Mr. Castor testified that in November of 2014 he was contacted by the media as a result of a joke a comedian made about [Cosby]. Again, in the summer of 2015 after the civil depositions were released, media approached Mr. Castor. He testified that he told every reporter that he spoke to in this time frame that the reason he had declined the charges was to strip Mr. Cosby of his Fifth Amendment privilege. He testified that he did not learn the investigation had been reopened until he read in the paper that [Cosby] was arrested in December 2015, but there was media speculation in September 2015 that an arrest might be imminent.

On September 23, 2015, apparently in response to this media speculation, unprompted and unsolicited, Mr. Castor sent an email to then District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman. His email indicated, in pertinent part,

I’m writing you just in case you might have forgotten what we did with Cosby back in 2005 . . . Once we decided that the chances of prevailing in a criminal case were too remote to make an arrest, I concluded that the best way to achieve justice was to create an atmosphere where [Constand] would have the best chance of prevailing in a civil suit against Cosby. With the agreement of [Attorney Phillips] and [Constand’s] lawyer, I wrote the attached [press release] as the ONLY comment I would make while the civil case was pending. Again, with the agreement of the defense lawyer and [Constand’s] lawyers, I intentionally and specifically bound the Commonwealth that there would be no state prosecution of

[J-100-2020] - 22

DOJ-OGR-00004835