By Dana Milbank
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
"I almost think I should begin with a joke about cold cash or frozen assets," defense lawyer Robert Trout told the jury at the start of his opening statement yesterday.
Probably a good instinct: Trout has little to lose.
His client is William Jefferson, the then-congressman caught on film by the FBI picking up a briefcase full of $100,000 in bribe money in a Pentagon City parking lot. That's the same congressman who was caught days later with 90,000 of those marked dollars wrapped in foil and put in food boxes in the freezer of his home.
As the trial opened at the Alexandria federal courthouse, prosecutors spent 75 minutes laying out their case, but really all they needed to do was show jurors the photo of the contents of Jefferson's freezer: a box of Pillsbury pie crusts (complete with the grinning doughboy), a box of Boca Burgers and stacks of greenbacks.
This left Trout little to work with. Could he say the pie crusts made his client flaky? Or might the Boca Burgers justify a health-food version of the Twinkie Defense?
It nearly came to that.
The money in the freezer? "He was leaving town for the month of August. He was looking to hide the cash . . . so it would not be found by the housekeeper or an intruder," Trout explained.
Payments made to Jefferson by a businessman who pleaded guilty to bribing the congressman? "Kind of a finder's fee," Trout reasoned.
The $100,000 bribe Jefferson had agreed to give the vice president of Nigeria? "An upfront payment."
Jefferson being caught on tape soliciting bribes? His client, Trout said, had consumed "a lot of wine."
You know you're in trouble when your lawyer describes you as sleazy but not technically a criminal. "He used who he was to help businesses in which his family members had an interest," Trout said. "These facts alone are not themselves crimes."
"A lot of what you hear you will disapprove of and find distasteful coming from a member of Congress," Trout readily confessed. "Did he say and do foolish things? . . . Yes, he did." But, the lawyer argued, "he is not charged with a violation of House ethics rules. He is accused of a crime."
Jurors wore incredulous looks as prosecutor Mark Lytle gave his "startling and often disheartening account of public corruption at the highest level of our government." He beckoned to the briefcase on the prosecution table that held the $100,000 given Jefferson by the FBI informant. The defendant, his legs crossed, watched the opening argument with the detachment of a man viewing a movie. A closer look revealed that he was clenching and unclenching his jaw muscles, and rubbing his fingers together underneath the defense table.
When Trout got up to make his defense, he was frequently met by squinty, skeptical glances from the jury box. One juror smiled the way parents do when listening to the dubious excuses of a child caught breaking the rules. "Let me start with the elephant in the room: the money in the freezer," Trout began.
Yes, but what to say about it? Washingtonpost.com readers were invited to give Jefferson some free legal advice, and they came up with dozens of possibilities: "Jefferson was conducting his own investigation of FBI agents trying to bribe members of Congress. . . . He has the disease monephorgis, i.e., he eats money. . . . Rep. Jefferson had earlier received an e-mail from His Royal Majesty Chike Ubah of Nigeria. . . . Jefferson was in fact preparing for his role in a new TV reality-based series, 'Cold Cash.' "
Trout went nearly that far when, in a variation of the Marion Barry defense, he suggested that the FBI informant set his client up. "Lori Mody is a damsel in distress," he said of the businesswoman who wore a wire to nab Jefferson offering to bribe the Nigerian vice president. "He was trying to respond to her needs and tell her what she wants to hear, and so he does something really stupid. He goes along with it."
To that, Trout added all the standard defenses, including the self-made man ("Neither of his parents graduated from high school") and the family man ("They decided, wouldn't it be nice if they created a company that included all the daughters?"). Then Trout added a healthy measure of race. He mentioned that Jefferson's brother and son-in-law are, like the defendant, African American. He mentioned three times that a particular meeting happened on "Martin Luther King weekend" and said Jefferson had a friendship with Robert Johnson of Black Entertainment Television. "He loves Africa," Trout mentioned.
He certainly loved doing business there. The defense lawyer said Jefferson hadn't violated the law because he enriched his family through dealings "in Africa, where William Jefferson had no authority." From there, the defenses piled up. Prosecution witnesses: "Their stories changed." Payments to Jefferson by the company's owner: "This was in recognition of the tremendous value William Jefferson had been able to put in." And, of course, the FBI entrapment defense: "With a lot of time, and a lot of wine, they set out to bag a congressman."
Jefferson was bagged? Maybe, but what really did him in were the Pillsbury and Boca Burger boxes.
To read more legal advice to Jefferson from Post readers, go to http://washingtonpost.com/roughsketch.
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