MICHAEL CARONA — GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL…..
Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times
Prosecutors will try to prove that Michael Carona and others misused Carona’s office and compromised the public’s trust in a furious dash for cash and gifts worth an estimated $700,000.
Prosecutors say Michael S. Carona, accused of misusing the sheriff’s office, was driven by greed. Defense lawyers say the government’s star witnesses were the swindlers.
By Christine Hanley and Stuart Pfeifer
12:24 PM PDT, October 29, 2008
The corruption case against the former Orange County lawman once dubbed “America’s sheriff” opened this morning with federal prosecutors describing Michael S. Carona as a political manipulator whose ambitions were fueled by power and greed. Defense lawyers fired back that it was the government’s star witnesses who had tried to “scam” money.
“This is the case of the two Mike Caronas,” Asst. U.S. Atty. Brett Sagel told the 11-man, one-woman jury in federal court in Santa Ana.
“Sheriff Mike Carona, who went from underdog in 1998 to being the sheriff of Orange County. And then there’s this Mike Carona: the Mike Carona who declared, ‘We’re going to be so rich. We’re going to make so much money.’ These are the words of defendant Mike Carona.”
But Carona’s attorney, Brian A. Sun, told jurors that Carona did not sell his influence. Rather, he told jurors, the only people who became rich were the chief prosecution witnesses, former Assistant Sheriffs George Jaramillo and Don Haidl and onetime Carona confidant Joseph Cavallo.
“The evidence in this case will show the only people who made money, who tried to scam money . . . are the government witnesses,” Sun said.
Carona sat at the defense table with former longtime mistress Debra Hoffman as prosecutors set out to prove that they and others misused Carona’s office and compromised the public’s trust in a furious dash for cash and gifts worth an estimated $700,000. Carona’s wife watched from the gallery. She also is charged in the case but awaits separate trial.
Carona, who has denied any guilt, faces prison time if convicted on all felony charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and witness tampering. He is being represented free of charge by white-collar-crime specialists Sun and Jeffrey Rawitz of the Jones Day law firm
The trial is expected to last up to two months with testimony from about 100 witnesses.
During opening remarks this morning, Sagel described a 1997 meeting among Carona and political supporters George Jaramillo and Don Haidl, who went on to become assistant sheriffs under Carona. Sagel said Carona and Jaramillo told Haidl, a multimillionaire businessman from Newport Beach, that if he funded the campaign, he would own the sheriff’s department.
“Don Haidl was looking to buy power,” Sagel said. “Mike Carona and George Jaramillo were selling it.”
During his opening statement, which stretched to about 80 minutes, Sagel played portions of a secretly recorded conversation between Carona and Haidl. Sagel told the jury that Haidl made cash payments during secret meetings in his home.
“Carona is confident nobody will learn of the cash he got from Don Haidl. If nobody talks, there’s nobody to say what happened,” Sagel said.
Unknown to Carona, Haidl began cooperating with federal prosecutors in 2007.
“Unless there was a pinhole in your ceiling that evening, it never . . . happened,” Carona said on the tape. “And that part is why I sleep real well at night.”
Sagel told the jury that Carona’s reference was to a pinhole camera.
“Defendant Carona knows about pinhole cameras. He had four pinhole cameras in the ceiling of his office,” Sagel said.
Sun, though, told jurors that Carona, his wife and Hoffman “made no money.”
Hanley and Pfeifer are Times staff writers.
AND CALIFORNIA’S SCHOOLS ARE STARVING FOR FUNDING…GIVE ME A BREAK MR. CARONA