HILL MAN HAD ME 'FIX' $$
New York Post
By KENNETH LOVETT Post Correspondent
May 19, 2005
LOS ANGELES — A planner of the star-studded Hollywood gala to raise money for Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign testified yesterday that she was told by Clinton's former chief fund-raiser to alter her budget to hide expenses.
Bretta Nock, a hired event planner, said Clinton's former national finance director, David Rosen, also ordered her to obtain an invoice that she believed low-balled part of the cost of the event in 2000.
Rosen, 38, is on trial in federal court on three charges of concealing campaign contributions by grossly underreporting the cost of the gala to the federal government.
Nock is the second prosecution witness to say that Rosen — who faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted — not only had direct knowledge of the actual costs of the gala but also ordered expenses to be hidden.
She testified that Rosen told her that "the overall [budget] figure needed to project a lower cost, so hence, items were adjusted accordingly," she testified.
The altered budget, she said, "was to their liking." The budget documents that Nock prepared were circulated to various people involved in planning the 2000 gala.
The final budget set a cost for the concert portion of the event at $200,000 — a figure Nock said came from Rosen himself despite his once saying the event cost at least three times as much.
She testified that Rosen had asked her to get an invoice with the $200,000 figure from the production company Black Ink Productions.
Nock said she also was told by Rosen to delete from the budget $20,000 that was paid to a graphics-design company and instead list it as an in-kind contribution.
Meanwhile, Rosen's lawyer Paul Sandler is still pushing to introduce part of a transcript from a conversation with Rosen that was secretly taped for the FBI in 2002 by Sen. Ted Kennedy's brother-in-law in which Rosen apparently declares his innocence.
Judge A. Howard Matz said he is inclined to keep the transcript of the conversation between Rosen and Kennedy in-law Ray Reggie out of evidence because "all that is being excluded is backdoor hearsay — an assertion of innocence made out of court."
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