Police Identify 1 Of 4 Missing Men In Common Grave In Rural Pennsylvania

The investigation of four men who went missing last week in Bucks County, Pa. — Thomas Meo (from left), Dean Finocchiaro, Jimi Patrick and Mark Sturgis — led to a common grave on Pennsylvania farm, where Finocchiaro’s body was found.

Bucks County District Attorney’s Office via AP

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Bucks County District Attorney’s Office via AP

The investigation of four men who went missing last week in Bucks County, Pa. — Thomas Meo (from left), Dean Finocchiaro, Jimi Patrick and Mark Sturgis — led to a common grave on Pennsylvania farm, where Finocchiaro’s body was found.

Bucks County District Attorney’s Office via AP

The body of one of four young men who went missing in rural Pennsylvania last weekend has been identified as being in a common grave, police say. A man whose parents own the property in Bucks County has been arrested; he is accused of trying to sell the car belonging to one of the missing people.

Cosmo Dinardo, 20, of Bensalem, Pa., is being held on a $5 million cash bail after being arrested Wednesday; one day earlier, he had been deemed a “person of interest” in the missing-persons case by Bucks County District Attorney Matthew D. Weintraub.

Weintraub spoke to the media after informing the parents of Dean Finocchiaro, 19, of Middletown Township, that their son’s body had been identified after being recovered from a grave that was more than 12 feet deep.

Cosmo Dinardo, 20, has been deemed a person of interest in the case; his parents own the property where one of the men’s body was found.

Bucks County District Attorney’s Office

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Bucks County District Attorney’s Office

“This was a homicide. Make no doubt about it,” Weintraub said at a news conference late Wednesday night, describing how investigators had spent days searching land owned by Dinardo’s parents in Solebury Township — an area that the district attorney’s office describes as normally placid and picturesque.

“I don’t understand the science behind it, but those dogs could smell these poor boys 12 1/2 feet below the ground,” Weintraub said.

The investigation “is still wide open,” the district attorney said.

In addition to Finocchiaro, the missing men are:

• Thomas Meo, 21, of Plumstead Township
• Mark Sturgis 22, of Pennsburg
• Jimi Patrick, 19, of Newtown Township

Patrick has been missing since July 5; the other three have been missing since July 7.

Meo and Sturgis were friends who worked together, police say. Both of their cars were found after they were reported missing last week — and Dinardo was arrested after a friend of his told police that Dinardo had approached him about selling Meo’s 1996 Nissan Maxima for $500 on July 8. The car was later recovered from the Dinardos’ land in Solebury Township.

It’s the second time in recent days that Dinardo has been arrested. He was charged with an unrelated weapons offense but was released late Tuesday after his father posted part of a $1 million bail.

On Wednesday, prosecutors argued for a higher bail amount, on the grounds that Dinardo “had a history of severe mental illness, that he had been committed to a mental health facility after firing a shotgun, that the new charges involved one of the missing men, and that Dinardo and his family’s property are at the nexus of the ongoing investigation,” the district attorney’s office says.

Police say they were able to establish that Dinardo’s and Meo’s vehicles were at the same place around the same time on the night of July 7, after their search for the license plate numbers of Dinardo’s Ford pickup truck and Meo’s Nissan in a local database.

The tags of both vehicles were captured by a mobile police license plate reader within seconds of each other on that Friday night in Peddler’s Village, an area of restaurants and stores less than two miles from Dinardo’s parents’ property, investigators say. Less than 1 mile from that spot, police also found Sturgis’ vehicle.

As Newsworks reports from member station WHYY, an attorney representing the Dinardo family “issued a statement earlier Wednesday saying they sympathize with the families of the missing men and are cooperating ‘in every way possible with the investigation.’ “

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CBO: Trump’s budget doesn’t balance federal ledger

A new government analysis of President Donald Trump’s budget plan says it wouldn’t come close to balancing the federal ledger like the White House has promised.

Thursday’s Congressional Budget Office report says that Trump’s budget, if followed to the letter, would result in a $720 billion deficit at the end of 10 years instead of the slight surplus promised.

CBO said Trump’s budget would reduce the deficit by a total of $3.3 trillion over 10 years instead of the $5.6 trillion deficit cut promised by the White House. The nonpartisan scorekeeper estimated that deficits in each of the coming 10 years will exceed the $585 billion in red ink posted last year.

CBO says that Trump relied on far too optimistic predictions of economic growth and that Trump’s rosy projections are the chief reason his budget doesn’t balance as promised.

“Nearly all of that (deficit) difference arises because the administration projects higher revenue projections — stemming mainly from a projection of faster economic growth,” CBO said.

Trump’s budget predicts that the U.S. economy will soon ramp up to annual growth in gross domestic product of 3 percent; CBO’s long-term projections predict annual GDP growth averaging 1.9 percent.

“The CBO report shows that the president built his budget on fantasy projections,” said Rep. John Yarmuth of Kentucky, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee.

Trump’s May budget submission proposed jarring, politically unrealistic cuts to the social safety net for the poor and a swath of other domestic programs. Many of its recommendations were deemed dead on arrival and are being ignored by Republicans controlling Congress.

CBO also said that the Trump budget contained too little detail to accurately predict its effects on the economy. The White House promised that its juiced-up economic projections will produce $2.1 trillion in deficit reduction, mostly from overhauling the tax code and reducing the burden regulations have on the economy. But Trump’s tax overhaul plan is so far so sketchy that it can fit on a single page.

The analysis came as the administration and Republicans controlling the House are struggling to unite Republicans behind an alternative congressional budget plan that’s a prerequisite for a hoped-for tax reform effort this fall.

The stakes on completing a budget are high for the Trump administration. Budget Director Mick Mulvaney said Thursday that the administration’s plans to cut taxes hinges on completing a 2018 budget, a procedural requirement so that the tax cuts can be passed without having to rely on Democratic support in the Senate.

“The tax reform concepts rely almost entirely on the budget resolution passing,” Mulvaney said at a breakfast with reporters.

Mulvaney said that discussion continues among House lawmakers about fashioning a package of cuts from so-called mandatory programs that can win support from both conservative and centrist Republicans.

But Mulvaney was quick to downplay calls for an aggressive timeline on the administration’s agenda. He said it was unreasonable to expect Congress to raise the government’s borrowing authority, replace the 2010 health insurance law and pass a 2018 budget in the “next couple of weeks.” Mulvaney said that the priority is completing the GOP’s rewrite of health care first.

CBO is the nonpartisan scorekeeper charged with giving lawmakers independent analysis of legislation, the budget and the economy. While the White House and many Republicans have criticized CBO’s coverage estimates for the Obamacare health law and the House and Senate GOP replacement plans, the White House hasn’t been critical of CBO’s budget predictions.

“While it does very well at times predicting things on budget — whether it’s revenue or spending, we don’t always agree that it does a great job predicting (health care) coverage,” White House deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters last month.

On Thursday, the White House budget office took heart that CBO credited it with $4.2 trillion worth of spending cuts over the upcoming decade, including $1.9 trillion from health care programs; it also says the administration would cut taxes by almost $1 trillion over that time, mostly because of its plans to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The deficit cuts may come up short of balance, but the White House noted they are still very ambitious.

“We are thrilled that CBO confirms that the president’s proposed budget resulted in the largest deficit reduction they have ever scored. CBO agrees that this is the largest deficit reduction package in American history,” said White House budget office spokeswoman Meghan Burris, promising that Trump’s economic agenda “will jumpstart the economy.”

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Associated Press writer Josh Boak contributed to this report.

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