Sharpton wrongly brought into probe
He attracted FBI attention when he was heard on conversations with Ronald A. White.
By John Shiffman and Mark Fazlollah
Inquirer Staff Writers
In a rare public acknowledgment, a prosecutor said yesterday that an FBI pension-fraud investigation of the Rev. Al Sharpton while he was a candidate for president was based on misinterpreted wiretaps.
Sharpton attracted the FBI's attention in 2003, when he began to raise campaign money and discuss business with lawyer Ronald A. White, then a target of the federal probe of Philadelphia City Hall. Their calls were recorded on FBI wiretaps.
In May 2003, FBI agents filed a sealed affidavit alleging there was "probable cause" to believe Sharpton, White and several others were conspiring to commit major fraud against the New York pension fund. Agents used the affidavit to obtain a court order to videotape a meeting between White, Sharpton and others.
On Thursday, a portion of the still-secret document was filed as part of the City Hall pay-to-play trial by defendant La-Van Hawkins. The excerpt from the FBI document named Sharpton, White, Hawkins, and New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson Jr. as suspected violators of federal law.
In response yesterday, a prosecutor said in court that the affidavit had been based on wiretaps that agents had misinterpreted.
"To put it very simply, we were wrong," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer said in comments made outside the presence of the jury. "If you look at the later [sealed] affidavits, you will see that their names are dropped out as we figure out what it going on here."
Sharpton, who may be called as a defense witness in the Philadelphia trial, has not been charged with any wrongdoing.
Sharpton gratified
Yesterday, his lawyer, Michael Hardy, said his client was gratified by the prosecutor's statement.
"He has always said he didn't do anything wrong in this case," Hardy said. "Certainly he's happy that the U.S. attorney has made it clear that they were wrong about any criminal wrongdoing."
After court, Zauzmer said Sharpton "was not a focus of our investigation... . He simply walked into it."
Hawkins' lawyer, Anthony Chambers, who had argued that repeated references to Sharpton during the trial had unfairly prejudiced his client, said he was surprised by Zauzmer's remarks in court.
"My client wasn't a target, either. He also just walked into the investigation," Chambers said. "I've never seen something like that happen. I'm so disappointed in what's gone on here. We've been misled."
One central charge against Hawkins is that he lied to a grand jury about what happened in New York.
At the time of the meeting, the FBI believed White and Hawkins were trying to use Sharpton's connection to Thompson to defraud the pension funds of enough money to finance a $40 million business deal.
Hidden camera
They met one May morning in 2003, in a suite at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. The FBI taped the encounter with a camera hidden in a lamp.
According to people familiar with the meeting, White and Sharpton discussed the New York pension fund plan and raising money for voter registration. White gave Sharpton checks and Sharpton asked for $50,000 more. Within days, White raised the money from colleagues in Philadelphia, according to wiretaps.
Also within days, Sharpton used his influence and arranged a meeting between Thompson and White, Thompson's office acknowledged.
Thompson's spokesman, Eduardo Castell, said the comptroller already had talked to the FBI about his meeting with White and Sharpton.
"He was reached out to by the FBI regarding a meeting that occurred in New York City involving Ron White," Castell said. "It was made clear that Mr. Thompson was not the target of the investigation."
Hawkins is one of five defendants, including former City Treasurer Corey Kemp, on trial in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia. White, also charged in the case, died of cancer in November.
As prosecutors rested their case yesterday, government witness Jonathan Schnatz, a criminal investigator for the Internal Revenue Service, testified. He said Kemp falsely claimed on tax returns from 2000 to 2002 that he gave a total of $25,000 to his church in Reading, when in fact he gave only $1,055.
Defense attorneys are scheduled to begin presenting their case on Monday. |
