HARRISBURG -- Mike Manzo has answered hundreds of questions about his role in a cash-for-campaigning scheme, his admiration for his former employer, his extramarital transgressions and his ultimate decision to come clean with prosecutors in a government corruption probe.

He is the first witness and has been on the stand for five days and still isn't through.

Defense attorneys get one more chance this morning to grill him on e-mail messages and conversations he detailed for prosecutors during a redirect examination Monday.

Prosecutors still have at least 20 more witnesses to call, and maybe as many as 60. Then defense attorneys will get their chance to call witnesses.

On trial are former state Rep. Mike Veon and former legislative aides Brett Cott, Stephen Keefer and Annamarie Perretta-Rosepink. All are charged with theft, conspiracy and conflict of interest for their alleged roles in a wide-ranging scheme to use public resources to pay for political campaigns, including through taxpayer-funded bonuses distributed to campaign workers.

Mr. Manzo was charged along with them, but he is among seven defendants who are cooperating with prosecutors as part of plea deals.

He testified Monday that he began cooperating "once I made a decision on how I was going to proceed with my life."

Throughout five days of testimony, he mentioned attempts to cover up the bonus scheme after the fact, including through an e-mail message he wrote to several staffers after it came under public scrutiny in February 2007. In the message, he thanked employees for their work on legislation to increase the minimum wage and legalize casinos.

He now says the e-mail message "was meant to throw off [suspicion] and assuage the fears of a lot of people who were very, very afraid. ... I had a lot of very nervous staff people at the time."

Those staffers, he said, knew that the bonuses actually were rewards for campaign work.

Defense attorneys waged an unsuccessful battle Monday to get that statement -- and the rest of Mr. Manzo's testimony -- stricken from the record.

Veon attorney Dan Raynak argued that all of Mr. Manzo's testimony should be disregarded because Mr. Manzo indicated he had spoken about it with his wife, Rachel Manzo. Mrs. Manzo is a potential witness in the case.

Mr. Raynak also wanted Mrs. Manzo's testimony to be declared inadmissible.

Instead, Dauphin County Common Pleas Judge Richard A. Lewis ordered all witnesses not to discuss testimony with each other in the future.

After court adjourned, Mr. Raynak explained his objection this way: "I don't think one witness should be telling another about their testimony. ... Now Rachel Manzo knows what her husband testified. So now, is she going to dovetail her testimony to match that of her husband? We don't know."

Also Monday, Judge Lewis ordered defendants to stop using social networking sites from inside the courtroom. Defendant Stephen Keefer had been using Twitter to post updates about his case during testimony last week.

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