Pride may be a problem when Bloomberg testifies in court
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(Reuters) - Defense lawyers are hoping New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's famous self-confidence will be his downfall when he testifies on Monday against the political consultant accused of stealing more than $1 million from him, legal and political experts say.

John Haggerty is charged with promising to provide a high-priced poll-watching operation for the 2009 election but, instead, using most of money to buy a house. Haggerty convinced the billionaire mayor to give the state Independence Party the money to finance "ballot security" during his reelection campaign.

Doug Muzzio, a professor at the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College, said the defense team will try their best to use Bloomberg's own self-confidence against him when he takes the witness stand in state Supreme Court in Manhattan.

"He believes that he is right. He never looks back," Muzzio said. "They've got to hope that the mayor in his arrogance says something that damns him."

Others say Bloomberg, who ran for a third term as an independent, will play it safe, following the advice of his campaign consultants and lawyers to tread carefully while testifying in the somewhat convoluted case.

Jerry Goldfeder, a campaign finance and election attorney who worked for Bloomberg's opponent in 2009, Democrat Bill Thompson, said he expected the mayor's testimony to be straightforward.

Even if no sparks fly, the appearance of a big city mayor on the witness stand -- especially in a criminal case -- is certain to capture public attention.

That was the case when New York Mayor Ed Koch appeared as a witness in 1982 in a civil lawsuit over his dismissal of the city's chief medical examiner. It was true more recently when Rahm Emanuel, just a week into his tenure as mayor of Chicago, testified at the corruption trial of former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich.

And the spotlight shined on Bloomberg himself when he sat through hours of deposition two years ago as part of a federal discrimination lawsuit against his company, Bloomberg LP.

Bloomberg already testified in the Haggerty case during grand jury proceedings, which are conducted in secret and without cross examination -- a far cry from sitting in the witness stand in open court with a hostile defense lawyer and dozens of reporters hanging on every word.

Haggerty's lawyers have made it clear they won't make it easy for the mayor.

They have said they plan to refocus the trial on whether funneling money through the state Independence Party, rather than paying Haggerty directly, was a violation of campaign finance law intended to distance the mayor from "ballot security," a practice some say discriminates against minority voters.

(Editing by Barbara Goldberg and Ellen Wulfhorst)

Mike mystery money went to key elex aide
By DAVID SEIFMAN City Hall Bureau Chief, January 30, 2010
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A $750,000 personal campaign contribution that Mayor Bloomberg channeled through the state Independence Party during last year's mayoral election landed in the hands of a top aide, The Post has learned.

The aide, John Haggerty Jr., served as a Bloomberg "volunteer involved in some of the activities" of Special Election Operations LLC, a hastily formed company that hired 200 to 300 workers to do poll watching on Election Day, according to Ken Gross, counsel to the campaign.

But the company didn't register with the state Secretary of State's Office until Dec. 3 -- a full month after the election.

Haggerty was also the recipient of a separate, eye-popping $120,000 personal contribution from the mayor on Nov. 20, which went to a political committee he had formed a month earlier and registered at his home in Forest Hills, Queens.

Until yesterday, mayoral aides and party officials had refused for a week to say who was behind Special Election Operations.

Frank MacKay, the Independence Party chairman, went so far as to claim that not only didn't he know, but that he couldn't recall the name of the consultant who supposedly recommended he hire the firm.

Special Election Operations listed an address in Albany that's the same as that of Capitol Public Strategies, a lobbying firm operated by aides to former Gov. George Pataki.

David Catalfamo, one of the partners in the lobbying firm, said he gave permission for the address to be used on Special Election Operation's incorporation papers, but that was the end of any connection to the company. Some members of the lobbying firm are close with Haggerty.

Although Haggerty worked in the mayor's re-election campaign along with his brother, Bart, Haggerty didn't get paid.

Sources said John Haggerty was instrumental in helping Bloomberg land the Republican ballot line in the face of strong initial opposition from some GOP leaders and that the mayor considers him a trusted adviser.

"There are two people that can get the mayor's ear anytime they want -- [Deputy Mayor] Kevin Sheekey and John Haggerty," said one source.

Leaders of the city Independence Party -- which has been feuding with MacKay for years -- suggested the entire set-up might be "corrupt."

"We have nothing to do with MacKay and Company and we're not the least bit surprised that what they're doing looks fishy, perhaps even corrupt," said Jacqueline Salit, a spokeswoman for the city party and a Bloomberg ally.

One veteran GOP consultant said he believed Special Election Operations was designed to dispense "street money" -- cash that's spread around on Election Day to volunteers and for such incidentals as lunch.

But Howard Wolfson, the mayor's campaign spokesman, insisted the $750,000 -- part of a $1.2 million personal contribution Bloomberg made to the state Independence Party right before the election -- didn't go for that purpose.

"The [Independence Party] made the same Election Day expenses that all party committees make every election for Election Day workers," he said in an e-mail.

"Because the IP does not have the infrastructure to handle this kind of activity in-house, it used Special Election Operations to handle the payroll payments to all these individuals."

Gross said he couldn't immediately provide a list of those workers, saying that was the responsibility of the state Independence Party. Haggerty didn't return repeated phone calls.

david.seifman@nypost.com

October 2, 2011, 1:57 pm
When Hizzoner Takes the Stand, Things Can Get Testy
By SAM ROBERTS
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The New York TimesA New York Times account of Mayor James J. Walker, who was a canny, combative and witty witness before a committee investigating corruption in his administration.

“State your full name,” the Federal District Court clerk in Manhattan asked.

“John Vliet Lindsay.”

“John what?”

“John Vliet, capital Vliet, Lindsay,” the mayor of New York City replied.

“Capital Vleet?”

“Capital V-l-i-e-t,” the witness retorted icily.

It is unusual for mayors of New York City to be summoned to the witness stand. So whenever it happens, all the familiar formalities take on a starkly different tone. Suddenly, the legal arcana, courtroom theatrics and judicial niceties are bathed in a political veneer.

After all, the judge and the jurors may well have voted for the witness — or against him. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg will get his moment on Monday, when he is scheduled to testify in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Past mayors have been called on behalf of plaintiffs, prosecutors and defendants, as character witnesses, occasionally as defendants and, in Mr. Bloomberg’s case, as the victim of what the Manhattan district attorney maintains was the theft of $1 million in campaign money by a political consultant.

“We don’t believe there’s ever been a case in which a sitting mayor was a victim of a crime like this,” Stu Loeser, the mayor’s chief spokesman, said.

Mr. Bloomberg, however, is no rookie when it comes to the witness stand.

In 2003, he emerged from testifying in another case in which he was being extorted — the case predated his election as mayor — and took part in a potentially dangerous sting operation. “It wasn’t exactly James Bond,” Mr. Bloomberg joked at the time, “but if you characterize it that way, there’s a lot of similarity between Sean Connery and myself.”

If Mr. Bloomberg was a hero in that case, this time the defense will try to paint him as an incumbent intent on “winning at all costs,” said Raymond R. Castello, the lawyer for the political consultant, John F. Haggerty Jr.

In 1932, Mayor James J. Walker memorably sparred from the witness stand with Samuel Seabury, the head of a state committee investigating municipal corruption.

Under at times withering questioning from Judge Seabury, Mr. Walker displayed injured pride, humility, indignation, rapier wit and defiance in what turned into a popularity contest. When he was accused of making a speech, he replied: “Well, they’re not so bad. Did you ever listen to any of them?”

Had he ever shaken hands with a certain financier? “I do shake hands with a great many people I don’t know,” he replied, “and try to make them believe I do.”

When he complained that the interrogation was keeping him from pressing mayoral duties, one observer described it as “the first time anyone had ever heard Mayor Walker complain that he had to leave the center of any stage to go to work.”

It was under wholly different circumstances — testimony involving a 1972 lawsuit over subsidized housing — that Mr. Lindsay tried to spell his middle name.

Few officials, however, can match Edward I. Koch’s record of court appearances as a witness.

As a freshman congressman, he testified as a character witness on behalf of a colleague, Bertram L. Podell. “I don’t mean to be disrespectful,” the prosecutor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, began, but had not Mr. Koch similarly testified on behalf of another congressman who was recently convicted?

“They say, What is the person’s reputation?” Mr. Koch recalled. “So I gave their reputation, and they were both convicted.”

Mr. Koch was unfazed, though. “Even then,” Michael B. Mukasey, a member of the prosecutorial team and later the United States attorney general, recalled last week, “Koch was larger than life, and he left the courtroom through the well of the court shaking hands.”

Mr. Koch testified in a suit brought by Dr. Michael M. Baden, the city’s chief medical examiner, whom Mr. Koch had fired. Yes, he had appointed Dr. Baden, he said, adding, though: “I made an initial mistake — I was correcting it.”

Two of Mr. Koch’s most noteworthy turns on the witness stand occurred during the trial of a doctor accused of punching him and assaulting him with an egg during a protest against hospital budget cuts, and during the trial of Bess Myerson, his former consumer affairs commissioner, who was accused of hiring a judge’s daughter to influence her lover’s divorce settlement.

“I’m on the stand and the attorney for the doctor says to me, ‘You don’t really know who struck you; the person was to the rear of you,’ ” Mr. Koch recalled. “And I said, ‘Yes, I do,’ and turned my chair to the jury, and said: ‘What happened, ladies and gentlemen, was I was standing at the lectern and I feel a hand on my neck and a fist in my eye and something liquid coming down my cheek and felt, ‘I’m going to be assassinated,’ and fought for my life. I threw him to the ground, and sat on him and I looked at his face.’ ”

Then, pointing to the defendant, Mr. Koch said: “That’s him.”

“Who knows what impact my testimony had,” he added. “I can’t get into their heads, but I assume they were fascinated by the story. The doctor was convicted and got a $1,000 fine and 30 days, which for attempting to assassinate a mayor is big time in New York City.”

The Myerson case was more problematic. Mr. Koch was called by Mr. Giuliani, then the United States attorney in Manhattan, to testify against Ms. Myerson, a friend and supporter. The case hinged, in part, on the credibility of a mayoral aide who had testified earlier that he had angrily complained to the mayor about Ms. Myerson’s decision to hire the judge’s daughter.

Mr. Koch testified that the conversation “could have occurred,” but said he was unsure.

But under questioning by Ms. Myerson’s lawyer, Frederick P. Hafetz, he acknowledged that he had initially told federal prosecutors that he had had no such conversation.

“It was delicate,” Mr. Hafetz recalled. “You don’t want to do a really aggressive cross-examination, because he’s really a popular leader. I wanted to get my point across, but try not to go too far.”

If Mr. Koch was treated gingerly, the same may not be true for Mr. Bloomberg, who appears likely to face an adversarial defense that will produce questioning more akin to what Mayor Walker experienced 80 years ago.

Despite the sport to be found in legal parrying, Mr. Koch said: “You can never enjoy being on a witness stand. You don’t know what you’re going to be asked. You don’t know how it’s going to come out.” Referring to the assault case, he added: “If they don’t believe you, how’s it going to look? That I deserved to be beaten up?”