Attorneys for both James Botti and the U.S. government Monday revealed some legal arguments they may use in court once the corruption case goes to trial next month.
A possible defense: Botti is just hyperbolic and bombastic — fancy words that mean he brags a lot. So if he was taped admitting to corrupt acts, it doesn’t mean he actually did them.
That’s what Botti’s attorney, William Dow III, will likely say at trial, according to assistant U.S. attorney Richard Schechter.
Or: Botti needed to get Shelton Mayor Mark A. Lauretti in his back pocket to develop three major projects on Bridgeport Avenue. To do so, he needed to give Lauretti cash.
That’s what federal prosecutors will likely argue, according to Dow.
Federal investigators have been probing the alleged corruption in Shelton construction projects since 2003, Dow said Monday during the pre-trial hearing.
Botti was charged in November 2008 with conspiracy to defraud the citizens of Shelton, bribery of a public official, mail fraud, conspiracy to structure cash deposits, structuring and two counts of making false statements to the Internal Revenue Service. The charges stem from three retail projects Botti developed on Bridgeport Avenue in Shelton between 2002 and 2006.
The public official has been identified as Lauretti in many news reports — and by Dow at Monday’s hearing.
Lauretti has denied involvement and has not been charged with any crime.
Botti’s trial is scheduled to take place in mid-October at the U.S. District Court in New Haven.
Pre-Trial Hearing
The potential arguments and other new details came up at Monday’s hearing, which was held to hash out each side’s arguments about issues such as evidence and witnesses before the trial.
Attorneys on each side filed a series of motions this month — motions which were sealed by Senior District Judge Charles Haight and remained sealed after the hearing.
The secretive nature of the motions made some of the hearing seem like insider baseball.
But based on the hearing, the nature of some of the motions became clear.
Dow, for example, had requested to have local land-use attorney Dominick Thomas sit at the defense table during the trial — something the U.S. attorneys objected to because of ethical questions.
Thomas is also scheduled to be a witness in the trial.
“He wants his cake, and he wants to eat it too,” Schechter said about Dow. “You can’t be both the lawyer and the witness.”
Dow argued that Thomas’ insider knowledge of politics and land use in Shelton would be essential to his defense of Botti.
On the other side, federal prosecutors had requested that Botti be prohibited from contacting his ex-wife as a term in his bail conditions. The U.S. attorneys allege Botti contacted his wife on Christmas Eve to try to coerce her to change her testimony if she was called as a witness in the trial.
Without imposing the new condition or weighing in on whether he believed the allegations were true, Haight gave a stern warning to Botti to refrain from making statements to witnesses that could be inferred as threats.
Haight extended the warning beyond witnesses when U.S. attorneys said Botti threatened a Shelton police detective and a state’s attorney this summer.
“Threatening a law enforcement officer is very serious business,” Haight said. “Don’t do it.”
New Details Emerge
Schechter said Botti walked into the Shelton Police Department Aug. 17 to make that threat. Botti allegedly told a detective that a state prosecutor would “get his” for getting involved in the corruption trial.
Dow said he didn’t believe the accuracy of the allegation, and the name of prosecutor was not revealed Monday.
It was one of several bits of new information released, in portions, during the hearing Monday.
Others include:
- Federal investigators tapped two of Lauretti’s telephones and had some people engage in conversations with him while wearing wires, Dow said.
- Botti paid more than $100,000 in cash to two separate masonry companies in 2007, after telling IRS agents he had no cash on hand, U.S. attorneys allege.
- The U.S. attorneys want Botti’s former wife to testify in the case, although it’s not clear if her testimony would be viewed as protected under marital privilege. Schechter said her testimony would included things she saw while working in Botti’s office, conversations she had with Botti in the presence of a third party, and the incident on Christmas Eve.
Separate trials?
Monday’s prominent motion – the one Haight will decide on before tackling the other arguments – requested that Botti’s charges be tried as two separate cases.
Dow said the charges of structuring and making false statements to an IRS agent don’t have a clear connection to the charges Botti allegedly bribed a public official.
“Are these properly joined?” Dow asked rhetorically. “We say no.”
The federal prosecutors allege Botti gave money to Lauretti, but don’t say the money comes from the pool of funds involved in the structuring charge, Dow said.
“Just because there’s an overlap in time, that doesn’t make it one conspiracy,” Dow said about the timeline of the two allegations.
But U.S. attorneys said the structuring charge — which alleges Botti made several cash deposits of just below $10,000 between June 2006 and January 2007 — plays into the corruption charges because it shows Botti had the cash on hand to make bribes to public officials to get his Bridgeport Avenue developments approved.
“The common theme in all these charges is cash,” said assistant U.S. attorney Rahul Kale.
