Friend: Stevens ‘Gets Hysterical’ At Spending Own Money
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008
WASHINGTON (CNN) – A recorded phone call from one of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens’ longtime friends kicked off the prosecution’s closing arguments Tuesday in the Alaska lawmaker’s corruption trial.
“Ted gets hysterical when he has to spend his own money,” Bob Persons told a mutual friend in the recording, which was played for jurors by Joe Bottini, the assistant U.S. attorney for Alaska.
Persons is a restaurant owner in the small Alaska ski town of Girdwood, where the Stevens family owns a residence that had doubled in size by 2001 after extensive renovations.
Prosecutors say the senator did not pay for some of the improvements, and that he was required to report the value of the changes as gifts on Senate financial disclosure forms.
Stevens, who spends most of his time in Washington, gave Persons power of attorney so he could get the required building permit to work on the chalet Stevens has owned since 1983.
Persons made the comment about the senator during a phone conversation wiretapped by the FBI with the consent of Bill Allen, then CEO of VECO Corp., who was at the other end of the line.
Persons also confided to Allen that he didn’t believe Stevens had enough money to do the remodeling.
Allen has admitted trying to bribe two Alaska state senators, and agreed to testify against Stevens in an attempt to get less jail time.
Stevens, the Senate’s longest-serving Republican, has pleaded not guilty to seven felony counts of making false statements. The indictment accuses him of knowingly accepting home repairs and gifts worth more than $250,000 from VECO, an oil services company, and failing to report them on disclosure forms from about 2000 through 2006.
Stevens is not charged with bribery.
Defense attorney Brendan Sullivan, who began to present his closing arguments after Bottini, told jurors that “to believe the government’s version of the evidence, you have to think [Stevens is] some kind of mastermind of conspiracy.”
Bottini had told jurors there is “substantial” evidence of Stevens’ guilt. A significant example, he said, was a generator that Stevens requested from Allen to protect against possible utility system failures related to Y2K, the millennium bug.
But since the generator is not among the gifts listed in the indictment as allegedly concealed, the defense has moved to have the item stricken from the jury’s consideration. The judge will address limitations on the evidence Wednesday when he instructs the jury before sending them to deliberate.
Stevens, during more than two days on the witness stand, testified he wanted a small, rented generator “with a rope-pull to start it like a snowblower,” but said Allen, without his knowledge, arranged to have a $6,000 automatic generator permanently installed behind the home.
“Is there any question the defendant asked for the generator?” Bottini asked Tuesday. “Remember the e-mail from Stevens: ‘I asked Bill Allen to hook up a generator at the chalet for Y2K just in case.’”
“He knew if he asked for a generator he was going to get one,” the prosecutor said. He added that Allen sent VECO employees to Stevens’ home to install it, and the transfer switch alone cost $930.
“We’re talking about a free benefit to the defendant of well over $6,300,” Bottini said. “It was his obligation to report this.”
“If he didn’t want such a large generator why did he go to Allen? Why didn’t he go down to the local hardware store and spend $300 to $400 like everyone else? Because the price is always right when it’s free.”
Sullivan, the defense attorney, told the jury Tuesday that Stevens and his wife, Catherine, repeatedly tried to get a full accounting from Allen as to the cost of materials and labor Allen was arranging.
“The Stevens family paid 160,000-plus [dollars] for this renovation. They paid fair value for what was received,” Sullivan said.
The attorney referred to a 2002 e-mail in which Stevens told Allen, “Thanks for all you did on the chalet. You owe me a bill.”
In that same e-mail, Stevens also warns Allen to “remember Torricelli” and reminds him he’s running for re-election, the lawyer said.
It was during the same period that the Senate Ethics Committee admonished Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-New Jersey, for accepting and failing to disclose expensive gifts from a campaign contributor. Torricelli dropped his re-election bid.
“The government has not proven its case beyond a reasonable doubt because they have not proven he knowingly and materially concealed” anything, Sullivan said.
U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan, no relation to the defense counsel, said he wants closing arguments finished Tuesday. He plans to give jurors their instructions Wednesday so they can begin deliberating.
Source — CNN