Goal was to get Yavorcik elected to stop Oakhill prosecution, Antonini testifies today

CLEVELAND

Lisa Antonini, former Mahoning County Democratic Party chairwoman, testified the only way she and other county officials being criminally investigated for their alleged involvement in the Oakhill Renaissance Place scandal were going to escape prosecution was to get Martin Yavorcik elected prosecutor in 2008.

“There was always the understanding Marty would kill the investigation” if elected, Antonini, also an ex-county treasurer, testified today.

Dan Kasaris, a senior assistant Ohio attorney general and special prosecutor on this case, got Antonini to say at least a half-dozen times that Yavorcik would get rid of the investigation if elected.

“This was a criminal investigation of myself and my colleagues at the time, and the goal was to have the investigation end by electing Marty,” Antonini said.

She called the $2,500 she gave Yavorcik during the 2008 race a campaign “donation” on the witness stand. In a presentation to Yavorcik to get him to take a plea before his indictment on March 14, 2014, however, prosecutors and the FBI said Antonini told them the $2,500 was a “bribe.”

Antonini also said Monday of Yavorcik, “If he was elected, there was an underlying understanding he would not investigate us.”

Prosecutors focused their attention on Yavorcik’s purported criminal activity. Most of the case, which started a week ago, has been to establish a supposed criminal enterprise that existed before Yavorcik ran for prosecutor as an independent in 2008.

He lost that race by 38 percentage points to incumbent Democrat Paul J. Gains.

Gains initiated an investigation into Antonini and other county officials in 2007. The contention is they – along with Anthony Cafaro Sr., then the president of his family-owned Cafaro Co. shopping center development business – illegally tried to impede or stop the county from moving its

Department of Job and Family Services from Garland Plaza, owned by a Cafaro Co. subsidiary, to Oakhill.

Read more about the case and today's testimony in Tuesday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.