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Admitted Briber Wade Takes The Stand
Now we're getting somewhere. On Friday, Mitchell Wade took the stand.
He's the government's star witness in its case against Brent Wilkes, a defense contractor who says that the hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts he gave to Cunningham weren't bribes: Wade's an admittedly dirty defense contractor who admits that all those gifts were intended as bribes.
It was a simple set-up, Wade testified. Once he found out that the secret to Wilkes' success as a contractor was Cunningham, he decided to get himself a piece. And sure enough, it worked. The downside? Keeping a congressman on the hook meant you had to spend time with the guy. From The San Diego Union-Tribune:
Despite the lucrative deals that Wade said he and Wilkes got from Cunningham, the two contractors did not hold the legislator and war hero in high regard. They considered him to be “of below-average intelligence,” Wade said.The expensive dinners also became a bit of a chore, he testified.
“We would dread having dinner with (Cunningham) and having to listen to him repeat the same jokes,” Wade said.
But it was worth it: "Wade insinuated himself so close to Cunningham that, he testified, he kept a stack of blank stationery with Cunningham's letterhead in his MZM office. He would use it to write letters and memos that Cunningham dutifully signed." Of course, Cunningham being a little slow on his feet, Wade had to "spell out for Duke exactly what he had to say" when Wade needed him to lean on Pentagon officials who weren't following through on contracts Cunningham had earmarked.
As an answer to that testimony, Wilkes' lawyer Mark Geragos reminded jurors that Wade was angling for a better sentence by admitting to the bribery. And he tried to draw a distinction between Wade and Wilkes by having Wade admit that Wilkes didn't know about Wade's gifts to Cunningham. He was also at pains to show that Wade supplanted Wilkes as Cunningham's favorite.
It's clear that the story Geragos wants jurors to believe is that Wilkes just played the game the way it's always played in Washington -- and Wade, that "absolute devil," took it way too far. I remain curious of how Geragos plans to demonstrate that Wilkes' courtship of Cunningham was business as usual in the capital.
Comments (11)
henk wrote on October 15, 2007 11:22 AM:They considered him to be “of below-average intelligence,” Wade said
The R next to his name should have been a tip-off.
Richard L. Adlof wrote on October 15, 2007 11:34 AM:"But . . . But . . . But . . . Can we believe him? He is afterall a felon . . .," cried our boy Brent's Defense Attorney!
r€nato wrote on October 15, 2007 11:59 AM:did any of you see the story about the hand-written letter which Cunningham sent from prison to the San Diego Union-Tribune earlier this year? My god... it was like it was written by a third-grader. Rife with misspellings, and extremely poor penmanship.
The guy may have been a war hero, but he truly was a moron who had no business holding any sort of elected office at all, let alone being in Congress.
In other words, the perfect GOP candidate.
anonymouse wrote on October 15, 2007 12:13 PM:"It's clear that the story Geragos wants jurors to believe is that Wilkes just played the game the way it's always played in Washington "
Sad, but, at least for the past several years, this statement is proving to be pretty much true...
I believe this is the basis for the minimum penalties and/or prison terms coming out of Washington recently. Billions of dollars of fraud and destruction of our democratic nation is penalized by tousands of dollars of fines (mostly ill gotten to begin with) and a few years of probation or prison time.
Our justice system is no longer viable for protecting the commoners, just the "important" people.... IMHO
ihatebeets wrote on October 15, 2007 1:41 PM:I wonder if Mitchell Wade also found Katherine Harris to have "below average intellegence." Or were all those thousand dollar dinners just so he could ogle her cleavage?
r€nato wrote on October 15, 2007 2:07 PM:I am pretty sure he was just ogling her cleavage. If he'd had to look up and gaze upon her Tammy Faye Messner-ish made-up horse face, he'd not have been able to keep his dinner down.
mac2151 wrote on October 15, 2007 4:10 PM:Don't confuse us mentally challenged. WaPo & your Bio of Wilkes says that Wilkes paid off Duke's mortgage on the second house. Union Tribune says that Wade paid it off. Who's right?
Researcher-8/16/2007 wrote on October 15, 2007 7:13 PM:From what I have seen so far... I may have been neither one... Looks like they both gave their "hard worked" money to Tommy Kontogiannis who KEPT it himself and just made the monthly payments... it would be too funny if the crooked were crook'd themselves... wouldn't it??
mac2151 wrote on October 15, 2007 11:04 PM:Yeah, I noticed that the Wilkes-Beck deal/feud involved Coastal Capital too.
Researcher-8/16/2007 wrote on October 16, 2007 8:34 AM:Is that his motto? Tommy K is never too far away? Except when vacationing in Greece.
I am wondering if they are going to call "Tommy K" against Wilkes... That should make for good reading...
Dawn wrote on October 16, 2007 9:51 AM:If no contractor were willing to break our laws and bribe Cunningham, then Cunningham would have been forced to adhere to contracting laws: Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).
There are companies that refused to do as Wilkes' ADCS and Wade's MZM did. Because Wilkes and Wade bribed Cunningham the result was the companies unwilling to do so became injured parties. Many of these injured party companies had products/services that ran circles around the technical merit of Wilkes and Wade's products/services!
Geragos' defense isn't a defense! Wilkes didn't play a game the way it had to be played. Wade learned from Wilkes what standards Wilkes had established for everyone to compete against and in the case of Wade it was "monkey see, monkey do!" I both head government operations for one of the injured parties, and kept it financially afloat through Wilkes' repeated sabotage of it. I am a woman, busted my butt in school (neither man's education touches mine!) and professionally.
Wilkes created the rules of the game Geragos is referencing! Those rules didn't just include bribery via common methods of money and gifts but included prostitutes! Every day since The Wall Street Journal story broke of the provision of prostitutes I have been overly disgusted by the rules of the game Wilkes invented! Never in my professional career did anything remotely that immoral arise!
Importantly, Geragos' defense that Wilkes simply played the game the way it had to be played is a load of bull, because Wilkes instead was the game's creator!