Former Pennsylvania Democratic Rep. Joe Sestak doubled-down and clarified the protestation he made earlier in the week that Penn State did not provide Joe Paterno his “due process” when they dismissed him as head coach of the football team.
On Saturday morning’s “Weekends with Alex Witt” on MSNBC, Sestak — who took heat for his comments defending Paterno — clarified that he wished the Penn State coach had resigned on his own accord.
“Joe Paterno did not report this to the police and he needs to be held accountable to that,” Sestak said. “He should have resigned immediately or been removed — that is what I learned in the Navy. You’re accountable if you’re a leader, especially for such a hideous crime and not reporting it.”
The two-term congressman explained his frustration was the way in which Paterno was ousted.
“On the other hand we are not like Libya, where they had Gadhafi and they meted out justice in the middle of the night. Due justice, but the way they did it. And so I watched the board of trustees, after a couple hours, in the middle of the night do the firing,” said Sestak.
Watch:
[dcvideo videoid=”24779459″ name=”ndnPlayer_24779459″ type=”ndn” /]
Sestak added that the school acted hastily more out of public relations concerns than for justice and the needs of the victims.
“Look Joe Paterno needs to be held accountable, and he was. But how we do things under our nation of laws and regulations, I am very interested in also,” said Sestak.
The former congressman went on to say that the focus needed to be on justice and the victims, not on what would make the school look good. He added that all people need to be responsible for their actions and concluded that Paterno should have resigned on his own.
Penn State removed Paterno as head coach of the football team Wednesday night in the wake of a Grand Jury report which revealed that Paterno did not report that his former assistant coach was sexually abusing young boys.