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Yavorcik blows lid off his case
On the side
With a name like Ohioans for Concealed Carry, you would expect little to no Democrats to be endorsed. Only four Democrats are on the list with two of them from the Mahoning Valley.
U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan of Howland, D-13th, is the only congressional candidate to be backed by the group, and state Rep. John Boccieri of Poland, D-59th, is one of only two state House candidates to get an endorsement.
Also, the Republican Liberty Caucus of Ohio, a very conservative organization, came out with a list of candidates it is recommending, and a list of those it’s recommending and endorsing. The first list is for candidates whose “voting record on-balance further(s) the stated values of” the organization. The second includes those whose “voting record represent(s) the model of a liberty legislator and the standard by which we measure adherence to liberty principles in the Ohio Legislature.”
No Republicans running for state Senate made the recommended and endorsed list, but Randy Law, a candidate for the 32nd District, was among four on the recommended list. There are five Republicans running for House seats on the recommended and endorsed list and 13 on the recommended list including Don Manning in the 59th District.
The decision by Martin Yavorcik, one of the defendants in the Oakhill Renaissance Place criminal-corruption case, to defend himself has provided insight of the evidence prosecutors have against him.
I don’t think that was Yavorcik’s intentions when filing motions seeking to dismiss charges and suppress evidence, but that’s what happened.
A motion last week to not permit secretly recorded tapes of him to be used as evidence in the upcoming trial included details of those recordings in a public document.
Judge Janet R. Burnside of Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court, who is overseeing the trial, had restricted the release of any of that information to only the attorneys and defendants in this case and to potential witnesses who need to hear the tapes in order to testify.
But Yavorcik gave dates and information from those recordings made by Harry Strabala, a political consultant who served as an FBI informant.
While serving as an informant, Strabala worked on Yavorcik’s failed 2008 independent campaign for Mahoning County prosecutor. Yavorcik lost to Paul J. Gains, the incumbent Democrat, by 38 percentage points.
The recordings, Yavorcik wrote in a motion, include conversations Strabala had with people in which the informant said he shared Yavorcik’s confidential planning and strategy information with Gains.
Yavorcik doesn’t point to a single conversation Strabala had with Gains or anyone on Gains’ campaign committee. And Gains said neither he nor his campaign committee members had any talks with Strabala about Yavorcik’s campaign.
Of greater interest was a motion Yavorcik filed Monday again seeking to dismiss charges against him contending the case against him came from three interviews he had with FBI agents and a special prosecutor on the 2010 Oakhill case. Yavorcik said those discussions were privileged and couldn’t be used against him.
Prosecutors say nearly all the evidence against Yavorcik came from the secretly recorded tapes and not the defendant’s statements.
In that motion was the 24-page PowerPoint slide presentation to Yavorcik from Dan Kasaris, the Oakhill case’s lead prosecutor, which spells out the case against the defendant.
The information was given to Yavorcik before the case’s May 14, 2014, indictment in an effort to have him take a plea and cooperate with prosecutors.
The presentation states prosecutors wanted Yavorcik to cooperate as he was “not the brains behind the enterprise and offenses.”
Why Yavorcik would include it in the motion is an interesting question, but I’m glad he chose to do so.
We get the specifics of the case against Yavorcik.
That includes statements from ex-Mahoning County Democratic Party Chairwoman Lisa Antonini, Yavorcik’s close friend, that she told prosecutors that the $2,500 loan she gave him during the 2008 campaign “was a bribe, and no return of money [was] expected.”
Also, Antonini told prosecutors that she along with ex- Mahoning County Auditor Michael V. Sciortino, an Oak-hill defendant, and ex-county Treasurer John Reardon gave Yavorcik cash to pay for poll workers that wasn’t reported on his campaign finance reports.
Yavorcik took a $100 cash contribution from ex-Mahoning County Prosecutor Gary Van Brocklin, and took cash from others and didn’t report it.
Prosecutors told Yavorcik they had tapes of him telling Kurt Welsh, Antonini’s boyfriend, that he would make a drunken-driving charge against him go away as well as a potential probation violation.
An indictment accuses Yavorcik, along with Youngstown Mayor John A. McNally in his former capacity as a Mahoning County commissioner, and Sciortino, both Democrats, of being part of a criminal enterprise that conspired to stop or impede the relocation of a county agency from a building owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary to Oakhill, the former Forum Health Southside Medical Center owned by the county.
The three have pleaded not guilty to 53 total counts including engaging in a pattern of corrupt activity, conspiracy, bribery, perjury, money laundering and tampering with records.
Yavorcik, an attorney since 1999, is defending himself in this case.
He got off to a rough start when he filed motions – through his previous attorney – that the judge soundly rejected.
While in court last week, Yavorcik compared himself to Jesus Christ, which led to prosecutors asking the judge to not permit him to do that during the trial. She granted that motion.