Star-Ledger Staff
A fund-raiser for Gov. James E. McGreevey yesterday admitted extorting $40,000 in cash and political donations from a Middlesex County farmer and said he prompted the governor to utter the now infamous code word Machiavelli as part of a political payoff scheme.
During a plea hearing in Newark, David D'Amiano did not directly implicate McGreevey but said he spurred the governor to say Machiavelli during a February 2003 conversation with Mark Halper, who was fighting a government plan to condemn his land.
D'Amiano said he and Halper agreed that McGreevey and Middlesex County officials involved in the scheme should use a word during their meetings to indicate that "they knew a deal was in place" for them to act in his favor.
"Did you tell Halper that you would ask the officials to use the word Machiavelli or Machiavellian?" U.S. District Judge William Walls asked D'Amiano.
"Yes, I did, your honor," he said.
But D'Amiano's pleading did not clear up one of the state's central political mysteries: Did McGreevey know the code word was part of a bribery scheme or was he, as his supporters contend, innocently repeating it without realizing its true import?
D'Amiano, a 44-year-old mulch salesman, pleaded guilty to two counts of mail fraud. As part of his admission, he also acknowledged demanding an additional $60,000 from Halper for help rezoning a parcel in a separate deal and to stealing $1,000 in contributions to the state party.
The hearing ended a case that, before McGreevey's announcement last month that he would resign because of an extramarital homosexual affair, might have been the biggest potential liability for the governor. For 18 months, Halper worked as a cooperating witness for the FBI and secretly recorded meetings with D'Amiano, McGreevey and three Middlesex County officials, Freeholder Director David Crabiel, Administrator Walter DeAngelo and Counsel Thomas Kelso.
None has been charged and each denied any wrongdoing after D'Amiano was indicted in July.
But D'Amiano refused to cooperate with prosecutors and instead accepted a deal that almost ensures he will serve at least two years in prison. And his plea left the critical questions regarding McGreevey's knowledge of the bribery scheme unresolved.
As part of his plea, D'Amiano answered 52 questions drawn up by prosecutors and asked by the judge, but none requires him to describe how he "prompted" McGreevey or the others to say the word or if the officials understood its significance. After the hearing, he declined to comment. His attorneys, Edward Plaza and Robert Weir, would not elaborate on the narrowly worded plea agreement.
Plaza said he believed that "there's no one else criminally involved in this matter" but acknowledged that prosecutors had not told him that.
U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie also declined to disclose details of the prosecution, citing what he said was an ongoing investigation. He called the plea "the end of another wretched chapter in the book that we have been writing about New Jersey politics over the last 2 1/2 years."
The lack of a resolution in the case, however, gave ammunition to the governor's defenders, who had contended the indictment was a political smear by an ambitious U.S. attorney. Though prosecutors never identified McGreevey by name, their indictment referred to him as "State Official 1" more than 80 times in 47 pages.
McGreevey acknowledged two months ago that he was that official and said he gave FBI agents and prosecutors a detailed interview in March. Though he did not recall his specific use of the word, he said it was an innocent literary allusion, a defense his supporters echoed yesterday.
"They clearly had an extensive, extensive investigation. At the end of all those efforts, what happened today in court was a plea to a theft by fraud case, without any indication of misconduct by any public official, including the governor," said William Lawler, a defense attorney representing McGreevey.
"If the government had any evidence that the governor used it knowingly as a code word, you would have heard that in court today, and you didn't."
Despite a barrage of questions from reporters, Christie would not say what he believed the governor knew or whether he may yet face charges. But he said that D'Amiano's admission in court contradicted McGreevey's public account.
"The governor's statement was that it was a coincidental literary allusion as he uses many times. We now have Mr. D'Amiano, the other party to that conversation, saying under oath that he prompted this statement," he said. "So I think we now have an open inconsistency: one that was said under oath and one that was not."
D'Amiano, an Edison resident, was largely unknown to the public when FBI agents raided Democratic Party headquarters in Trenton in March, seeking documents related to his fund-raising.
He and McGreevey had been high school classmates and he served on the campaign finance committees for McGreevey's 1997 and 2001 bids. Last year alone, he helped Democrats raise almost $100,000 in contributions.
Prosecutors said that he proposed the payoff to Halper in November 2002 while Halper was fighting off attempts by the Democratic-controlled county administration to condemn his family's 74-acre tract.
D'Amiano arranged phone calls and a few meetings involving Halper and McGreevey, Crabiel, DeAngelo and Thomas Kelso. After the landowner's donations in early 2003 to the state Democratic Party, the government offered to pay $7.4 million for the farm, up from about $3 million two years earlier.
The deal ultimately collapsed. A Superior Court judge is expected to hear arguments on the condemnation next month, but Halper used D'Amiano's plea yesterday to urge Piscataway Township to abandon its attempts to take his family's land. He called it "evidence of the fact that the condemnation of the Halper farm is tainted by corruption."
Crabiel, whose offices were searched by FBI agents, argued that the plea eliminated the need for a trial and renewed his demand that Christie's office release tape-recordings made by Halper.
"The release of the tapes to the public will clear away the cloud of suspicion that continues to hover over the heads of the county officials," he said in a statement. "The citizens of Middlesex County deserve to know the whole truth about the Halper-D'Amiano matter."
Prosecutors previously declined to release the information, contending that it would violate grand jury rules. Christie defended his office's actions and invited the public to examine its record "when all of the yelling and the screaming of the political process in the state dies down."
D'Amiano will have the opportunity to say more when he returns for sentencing on Dec. 28. Asked why his client committed the crimes, Plaza said, "Like a great many people, he made a mistake."
Staff writers Jeff Whelan and Diane C. Walsh contributed to this report. John P. Martin can be reached at (973) 622-3405 or at jmartin@starledger.com.
© 2004 The Star-Ledger.