Bloomberg’s car parked inside the Correction Facilities today as he arrived for court. (BRIGITTE STELZER)
Mayor Bloomberg kept his cool during more than two hours on the witness stand as the victim in a blockbuster $1.1 million election larceny trial today — though he did come across as a startlingly hands-off campaign money manager.
Defense lawyers are trying to portray alleged thieving consultant John Haggerty as a scapegoat, and the mayor as a win-at-all-costs billionaire who skirted campaign finance laws and common business sense in funding a $1.1 million ballot security operation during his last run for office.
But in his typical prim, nasal monotone, the mayor calmly deflected Haggerty lawyer Raymond Castello’s attempts to question his credibility and raise his hackles.
The mayor remained unruffled even when Castello brought up the sensitive topics of the CityTime boondoggle and Stephen Goldsmith — his alleged wife-beating former deputy mayor.
“He promised things that he did not do,” the mayor said of Haggerty at one point, staying on topic during defense lawyer Raymond Castello’s attempts at a more wide-ranging cross examination
“Isn’t that what you regularly did at Salomon Brothers?” Castello snapped back.
“I have no idea,” a puzzled-looking mayor answered, as lead rackets prosecutor Eric Seidel shouted, “Objection!”
“You wrote a book,” Castello began to explain, handing up to the mayor a copy of his decade-old autobiography, Bloomberg on Bloomberg.
“I was a lot less gray then,” the mayor quipped, looking at his picture on the cover. “I wrote it a long time ago.”
Castello was stopped by another defense objection as he tried to read aloud from page 145 — “As I found out at Salomon and again with the Bloomberg terminal, you promise users everything; then you build what you can and what you think they need.”
“I want to ask questions about the alleged victim’s credibility,” Castello protested to the judge, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Ronald Zweibel, who barred the line of questioning on relevance grounds.
Bloomberg admitted that he never signed a contract with Haggerty to secure the ballot security operation, and never ordered up an accounting of how the loot was spent afterward.
“I don’t believe in contracts,” in private dealings with consultants, he claimed. “If I look someone in the eyes and he seems trustworthy, a handshake is worth more to me than a piece of paper.”
Bloomberg also admitted that he never negotiated with Haggerty directly, relying instead on assurances by his campaign aides that Haggerty would provide ballot security as promised.
He couldn’t even remember who, specifically, was in the room when he authorized the payment, or who decided how it should be broken up for wiring to the Independence Party’s housekeeping account.
“I don’t know whether it was sent in one big check, or in small one-dollar bills,” he said, somewhat flippantly.
Haggerty’s mistress — mayoral aide Fiona Reid — is due to take the stand this morning, her testimony delayed yesterday by unsuccessful defense arguments that jurors would be prejudiced against Haggerty if prosecutors were allowed to grill her about the romance.
According to disclosures in open court last month and today, mayoral aide Fiona Reid began an affair with the newly-married Haggerty back in August, 2009.
Two months later, in October, Reid, who was the CFO of the last campaign, gave preliminary approval to Haggerty’s plan for the $1.1 million ballot security operation at the trial’s center.
Haggerty’s plan was a hoax, prosecutors say — he spent a mere $30,000 on ballot security. And his affair with a woman on the first rung of the approval process just shows how manipulative Haggerty was in his larcenous scheming, they argue.
“This is just another case of the defendant manipulating people to get what he wants,” Seidel said during a pretrial hearing last month.
The affair has nothing to do with the case, argue defense lawyers, who are eager to keep jurors in the dark about it.
“It would be Machiavellian beyond Machiavelli,” Castello protested, for Haggerty to decide in August to have an affair because he knew in the fall he’d need her approval.
To which Seidel answered, “Perhaps that is Machiavellian. And it’s something the jury should know.”