[NYTr] Corruption: Defense Contractor Heads to Trial on Bribery

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

AP - Sep 30, 2007
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CONGRESSMAN_BRIBERY?SITE=NJMOR&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

Contractor Heads to Trial on Bribery

By ALLISON HOFFMAN
Associated Press Writer

 SAN DIEGO (AP) -- Defense contractor Brent Wilkes hosted fancy dinner
parties and chartered jets for powerful members of Congress while his
company was racking up more than $100 million in government contracts.

The lawmakers who enjoyed the largesse were often the same ones who
approved his contracts. They included former Rep. Randy "Duke"
Cunningham, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to accepting $2.4 million in
kickbacks in the largest corruption scandal ever to strike Congress.

Wilkes goes on trial Wednesday to fight federal charges that he
funneled more than $700,000 in bribes to Cunningham in the form of both
cash and perks ranging from a Sea-Doo jet boat to the services of two
prostitutes at a high-end Hawaiian resort.

He says he is a victim of a "vendetta."

It will be the first criminal trial for anyone in the Cunningham case
and a rare opportunity for a jury to pass judgment on one of the
corruption scandals that have swept Congress in recent years.

Cunningham, a San Diego Republican who was sentenced to more than eight
years in prison, helped the government prepare for trial. Prosecutors
indicated in court documents that they may call Cunningham to testify.

Wilkes, 53, spurned plea bargains and was charged in February with 25
counts of conspiracy, bribery, money laundering and unlawful monetary
transactions. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in
prison.

Prosecutors have amassed hundreds of thousands of pages of bank
records, phone logs and other evidence they say show Cunningham repaid
Wilkes by making sure he got government work.

Wilkes is expected to argue there was no quid pro quo. He hired
superstar Los Angeles trial attorney Mark Geragos, who subpoenaed
testimony from a dozen members of Congress - including former House
Speaker Dennis Hastert - who knew Wilkes or sat on committees that
oversaw his contracts. House lawyers are trying to quash the subpoenas,
arguing that the Constitution protects members of Congress from being
forced to disclose communications that are part of their official
duties.

Even without their testimony, Wilkes' trial may reach beyond
Cunningham. As Wilkes grew his Poway-based Wilkes Corp. in the late
1990s, he was a generous campaign donor and hobnobbed with lawmakers
who played key roles in defense appropriations.

Several lawmakers are now under investigation for their ties to
lobbyists.

Wilkes gave about $46,000 in campaign contributions to Rep. John
Doolittle, R-Calif., a former member of the House Appropriations
Committee who has acknowledged helping Wilkes win $37 million in
contracts. Wilkes contributed about $60,000 to former Appropriations
Committee chair Rep. Jerry Lewis, R-Calif., with whom he once went
scuba-diving in Belize.

Wilkes has not been implicated in those investigations, and no charges
have been filed against Doolittle or Lewis.

Wilkes grew up in suburban Chula Vista and went to Washington in the
early 1980s to work for an accounting firm. In 1996, he started a
document-digitization company that expanded into far-flung areas like a
charter plane service and even party planning.

Wilkes has said little publicly since Cunningham tearfully resigned in
front of the federal courthouse in San Diego in November 2005.

After his indictment this year, Wilkes lashed out at prosecutors for
being "more interested in forcing me to plead guilty to something I did
not do than in learning the truth" and said he was a victim of a
"vendetta." He wrote that Cunningham and others supported his projects
on their merits alone.

He has also said he was simply very successful at a well-established
Washington ritual he described in a 2006 New York Times interview as
"transactional lobbying" - doing favors for lawmakers or contributing
to political campaigns or causes.

Claiming innocence based on such a well-established behavior when
others haven't been charged is a difficult defense, said Paul F.
Rothstein, a legal and government ethics professor at Georgetown Law
School.

"The defense always argues 'Why me? It isn't fair,'" he said. "There is
a moral argument that equal wrongdoers should be treated equally, but
it has limited utility in law and before juries."

Wilkes is also charged in a separate federal case against his boyhood
friend, former top CIA official Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, which grew from the
probe into Wilkes' affairs with Cunningham.

Prosecutors claim Wilkes treated Foggo to luxurious golf vacations and
offered him a job in return for help winning more than $100 million in
proposed contracts for the spy agency. Wilkes' lawyers have said their
clients was just generous to an old friend. Both men have pleaded not
guilty to 30 counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

No trial date has been set in that case.

© 2007 The Associated Press.