TRAFICANT TRIAL A case of no horse sense?
The prosecution presented its case. Now it's the congressman's turn.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
CLEVELAND -- Two and a half years ago, a contractor gave the government a torn placemat with a "to-do" list for U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr.'s horse farm.
That placemat fragment turned Traficant's world upside down.
The FBI learned that many contractors did work at the 76-acre spread on state Route 165 in Greenford. Agents found the once run-down farm had been transformed over the years with new outbuildings, roads and an addition to the farmhouse.
Bills for the work were few and far between.
The contractors, caught in tales of deceit and bribery, agreed to tell a grand jury what congressional favors they got from Traficant in return for the labor and materials.
The investigation led beyond the farm, to Traficant's 17th District office in Boardman, his 37-foot wooden boat near Washington, D.C., his home in Poland and to staffers who had to kick back part of their salary each month or work at the farm.
The grand jury heard it all from a stream of witnesses.
When the congressman learned of the investigation, in December 1999, three months after it began, he called it a vendetta. He said the FBI, IRS and U.S. attorneys, stinging from his victory over bribery charges in 1983, intimidated, coerced and threatened the witnesses.
The 60-year-old congressman's racketeering trial began Feb. 5 with jury selection. Unlike the first time around, no jurors are from his district.
The prosecution team -- Craig S. Morford, Bernard A. Smith and Matthew B. Kall -- presented 55 witnesses in 22 days of actual testimony.
Now it's Traficant's turn.
The congressman began his defense Thursday.
Cooperation: One witness for the prosecution, contractor A. David Sugar Sr., said he tried to "cover his butt" by creating fake invoices. In the end, caught in his lies, Sugar decided to cooperate.
Sugar wasn't alone.
UR. Allen Sinclair, administrative counsel to Traficant for 13 months, admitted kicking back $2,500 each of those months. Sinclair said he continued the tradition of his predecessor, Henry A. DiBlasio.
Sinclair also disguised his true ownership of the building at 11 Overhill Road in Boardman, as DiBlasio had done. That way, Sinclair could continue another tradition, renting the congressman a district office and secret hideaway efficiency apartment.
Outside court, Traficant said the FBI bugs everybody and if they thought they could have got him to confess to Sinclair, "They would have had wires up his rectum."
UJ.J. Cafaro paid $40,000 in cash and boat repairs to "thank" Traficant for using his muscle with the Federal Aviation Administration for USAerospace Group.
Cafaro admitted that he lied at Phil Chance's racketeering trial when he said he had not given Chance cash during the 1996 Mahoning County sheriff's race. Chance won the race but was found guilty at trial in July 1999 and is in federal prison.
Traficant asked if Cafaro lied then but is telling the truth now. "That is correct," Cafaro said.
UAlbert Lange Jr., directed by Richard E. Detore at USAG, joined a boat club and pretended to buy the congressman's decrepit boat. Lange also spent months overseeing $26,000 worth of repairs.
UFBI Special Agent Bruce Hess said Traficant failed to claim $33,123 in bribes, kickbacks and free boat repairs on his 1998 tax return and an additional $45,200 in 1999.
UJackie Bobby said DiBlasio and Charles P. O'Nesti had grumbled to her about having to kick back part of their congressional salaries.
UGrace Yavorsky Kavulic deposited in Traficant's personal account bundles of cash that turned up in the inter-office mail. She, too, heard O'Nesti complain about not being able to keep all his pay.
Traficant has portrayed Bobby and Kavulic as disgruntled staffers who left in 1998 when he hired Claire Maluso at their salary and wanted them to train her.
UGeorge F. Buccella and Richard Rovnak admitted doing work at the congressman's horse farm while collecting federal paychecks.
UContractor James R. Sabatine said he gave the congressman $2,400 in cash, rather than do $10,000 work at the farm.
UContractor Anthony R. Bucci, who had kept the placemat fragment in his wallet, decided to forego pursuing payment of a $13,000 bill from Traficant and "own a congressman."
Traficant tried, unsuccessfully, to show that Sugar, Sabatine and Bucci had faced 20 years in prison and reduced the time to a few months by testifying. Judge Lesley Brooks Wells told the congressman, several times, to stop misrepresenting the facts.
ULeisel Bucheit, on behalf of her father's construction company, sent a bill to Traficant in 1993 for renovations to the farmhouse but had no idea if it was paid. It wasn't paid by the time she left in 1996.
DiBlasio, Detore and Bernard J. Bucheit are under indictment.
Detore has been subpoenaed but his lawyers say he will invoke his Fifth Amendment right to protect himself against self incrimination.
Traficant had wanted DiBlasio to admit rough treatment by the FBI, but what the congressman heard was DiBlasio invoke his Fifth Amendment right and add: "Sorry, Jim." DiBlasio, too ill to travel to Cleveland from Florida, was allowed to phone in his refusal to testify.
Testimony throughout the trial has shown that Traficant employed unqualified people, others at big salaries for little work, treated some like migrant farm workers and had three employees kick back part of their salaries.
Horse farm: The prosecution team, through its witnesses, described a congressman with an expensive hobby -- saddle horses -- and an unwillingness to pay out of his own pocket for the sprawling farm's renovations.
The government's evidence has included $24,000 in cash from kickbacks, deposit slips, handwritten notes, bank records, letters, photos, false invoices, checks, receipts for boat repairs, receipts for a welder and generator and an assortment of other documents. Some of the photos show the addition to Traficant's farmhouse, paid for by Bucheit.
For most of Traficant's performance as his own defense lawyer since Feb. 5, he has appeared ill prepared, ill at ease and forgetful. He asked prosecution witnesses the same questions over and over.
If Traficant's fumbling, slow-shuffle is an act, it's not a good act, Roger M. Synenberg, a Cleveland defense attorney and former federal prosecutor, has said. "It's annoying and you don't get points if you annoy."
When reporters asked Traficant to assess his courtroom behavior, which includes screaming matches with the judge, he answered: "The courtroom is a theater."
meade@vindy.com