Categories: Courtroom Buzz
      Date: February 23, 2009
     Title: Prosecutor Says Vince Is A Glutton

Live at the Fumo trial: the prosecution's closing statement

By Ralph Cipriano

The prosecutor in the Vince Fumo political corruption trial today painted the defendant as a glutton who helped himself to free yacht trips, free power tools, and free services from state employees and contractors who had to wait on him like servants.

In his closing statement to the jury, Ast. U.S. Attorney Robert Zauzmer described Fumo as a "very smart man" who had all the perks of power, and lots of praise, "but for him it was never enough."

"He spent everything that came into his hands," yet he kept wanting more, Zauzmer told the jury. And whatever the former state senator wanted, he got, the prosecutor said.

Zauzmer described Fumo as being surrounded by yes-men and women who waited on him hand and foot, 24/7. Meanwhile, every time those employees and contractors did a personal or political favor for the senator, the prosecutor said, they were cheating the taxpayers they were supposed to be working for. 

Fumo had state senate staffers who tended to his 33-room castle on Green Street, his farm in Harrisburg, his vacation home down at the Jersey Shore, as well as his rental properties, the prosecutor told the jury. Fumo also had state staffers doing political fundraisers for him "day after day," as well as staffers who had to tend to his girlfriends, ex-wives and children, the prosecutor said.

Zauzmer told the jury that in the government has presented "an avalanche of evidence" during the 19-week trial, parading 82 witnesses to the stand, along with 1,300 exhibits. And, the prosecutor told the jury, he was worried that after being bombarded all those facts, jurors had become numb to the goings on in "Fumo World."

"The outrageous has become mundane," Zauzmer warned. The prosecutor talked about how Fumo had three drivers, a butler, a full-time staffer on the state senate payroll who wrote out his checks and collected his rents, and another staffer who worked as a maid, cleaning his 33-room castle on Green St.

Zauzmer talked about how there was no limit to what state employees were called on to do in the service of the former state senator from Philadelphia. To Zauzmer, nothing summed it up like the day Don Wilson, a state computer techician, was "standing on the senator's roof" at his vacation home in Florida, installing an antenna for a weather channel to benefit the senator.

When Wilson was standing on that roof, he was "1,000 miles away from the job the taxpayers were paying him to do," the prosecutor said.

"That's what this case is about, it's gluttony," Zauzmer declared. Fumo didn't just "cross the line, he obliterated" it, the prosecutor said.

But for Fumo, it wasn't enough to help himself to all those freebies, the prosecutor continued. Fumo had to spread the wealth around by hiring two political cronies for two jobs that paid a total of $100,000 for doing "no work," the prosecutor said. Zauzmer also told the jury that Fumo had to take all his frends on $100,000 worth of "yacht trips," where they dined on French food.

Fumo also always "wildly overpaid" his staffers, to keep their "loyalty and devotion," the prosecutor said.

And, Zauzmer told the jurors, "When the newspapers started asking questions, and when federal investigators started asking questions," that's when Fumo began to destroy evidence "so the government, and ultimately you, cannot find out what happened."

As soon as Fumo and his staffers learned of the federal investigation in the press, "They started to destroy evidence with abandon."

The prosecutor reminded the jurors how it was reported in the Phialdelphia Inquirer that the government originally sought to investigate PECO's gift of $17 million to a Fumo nonprofit, the Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, as well as Fumo's request of $50 million from Verizon.

That's when Fumo staffers systematically deleted emails. "With respect to PECO and Verizon, the purge was total," Zauzmer said.

Zauzmer reminded the jurors of Gov. Ed Rendell's visit to the courtroom a few weeks ago. The prosecutor confided to the jury that he had no idea why the defense called the governor as a witness. But Zauzmer told jurors to remember a few quotes from Rendell, namely, "The rules are the rules" and that there are no exceptions for exceptional legislators.

The prosecutor also reminded jurors of Fumo's attitude about his transgressions on the witness stand, as well as one of his pithier quotes, about how spitting on the sidewalk was also against the law, but that it wasn't always enforced.

"In Fumo World, the same rules that applied to the rest of us don't apply to him," the prosecutor said.

Zauzmer also attacked Fumo's reputation for being the hardest working legislator in Harrisburg. If he was that, Zauzmer declared, rather than a compliment to Fumo, it was a poor reflection on the rest of the legislators.

Zauzmer also said that the government had used Fumo's own appointments schedule to show that he was out of the state at least four months out of the year, vacationing in Florida or Martha's Vineyard. The Fumo defense was that all the favors staffers were doing for the senator enabled him to be a "more efficient senator." But in reality, the staffers were just making Fumo "a more efficient vacationer," the prosecutor said. 

The prosecutor also ripped Fumo and his staff for submitting misleading job classifications for staffers such as Dave Nelson, one of Fumo's drivers.

"This is fraud," Zauzmer said. He said that Fumo should have told the legislature "Dave Nelson is my driver. He stocks my refrigerator with soda. He carries my coat."

Zauzmer poked fun at Nelson's testimony that when he wasn't driving the senator around, he was doing errands such as stocking the fridge.

"How much soda can you drink," the prosecutor said, prompting laughs from jurors.