Talk about the nexus between Pupie's vote-by-mail operation and incumbent City Council candidates...
Today (again), GA will be sourcing the fine reporting by devilishly handsome John Heinis of Hudson County View. Heinis wrote two stories yesterday, the 2nd day of the Raia trial, , corresponding to morning and afternoon sessions.
DAY 2: MORNING BOMBSHELLS
The morning session provided bombshell testimony that cooperating witness Matt Calicchio had worn a wire starting on or about December 2018*. (*correction) On instruction from the F.B.I., Calicchio secretly recorded Hoboken politicos including, but not limited to, Anthony Romano, Perry Belfiore, Eduardo Gonzalez, and Frank Raia.
Federal Rules of Evidence required that these tapes be handed over to Raia's criminal defense attorney, Alan Vega. All apparently were except for Raia tapes, which for some reason were unavailable and not furnished to the defense. What happened to the Raia recordings? Was taping his former mentor a bridge too far for Calicchio? One can assume that the F.B.I.has wired other cooperating witnesses- not only Calicchio. Perhaps we will find out who they are and who they recorded as the Raia trial continues.
And Calicchio provided the second bombshell, courtesy of John Heinis:
DAY 2: AFTERNOON BOMBSHELLAfter cross examination and it appeared that Calicchio’s meaningful testimony may be over, Agarwal decided to finally shed some light on the 2015 aspect of the case.“In 2015, you weren’t working for Mr. Raia, right,? Agarwal questioned.“Yes,” Calicchio answered.“Which candidate were you working for?,” Agarwal followed up.“Eduardo Gonzalez,” Calicchio responded.While under the initial direct examination from Agarwal, Calicchio also affirmed that Bluewater Operations, a Clifton-based consulting firm run by Ryan Yacco, had been helping Raia and the One Hoboken team in 2013.“We were friends at one time and we’ve worked together. Frank wanted to hire somebody to write the checks so he didn’t have to. He didn’t want to write the checks, he wanted to circumvent the ELEC process so he didn’t have to show all the checks,” Calicchio said when asked why Yacco’s services were solicited.He continued that Raia felt if he wrote one big check to Bluewater and they wrote all the small checks, he wouldn’t have to disclose all the voters receiving $50 checks.“I delivered the payment to Bluewater, at an office in Clifton, directly to Yacco and he was provided a list of voters to write checks to,” Calicchio also said.
In the afternoon session, two voters testified that they accepted money in exchange for handing over open mail-in-ballots. They also signed a declaration stating that they had done campaign work. One witness identified the worker who provided her with the ballot as Lizaida Camis. Camis was indicted as part of the Raia-Braxton vote-by-mail bribery scheme, and later plead guilty. Note: such testimony from paid voters is critical to undermine the presumed defense argument that the ELECs reporting them as "campaign workers" should be taken at face value.
The next witness was the former treasurer of Raia's Let the People Decide, Andrew Canonico. This had to be awkward because Andrew is purported to be a close personal friend of Raia's. Canonico testified that he signed off on the paperwork, but did not prepare it. The Let the People Decide ELECs were prepared by Hudson County political operative, Jack Butchko.
Interestingly, as of January 2019, Butchko took the helm of Let the People Decide, as Chairman and Treasurer. The account is nearly empty; the last reported balance was $17.63
LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE- JANUARY 2019
And the bombshell?
Anybody remember "Entity 1," the mysterious unidentified payroll service which the Camis complaint had alleged cranked out the $50 checks to voters in exchange for votes?
Well, that payroll service was revealed as Bluewater Operations, headed by the final witness of the day, Ryan Yacco.
Yacco's role as a government witness is murky. The extent of his cooperation with the F.B.I. and/or U.S. Attorney's Office is unknown. Since it appears that the Hoboken investigation and prosecutions may be continuing, it is unknown what information Yacco has to provide for future prosecutions, or has already provided or the full extent of his cooperation with the government.
What we do know about Yaaco is that he was Campaign Manager for Michael DeFusco for Hoboken Mayor. This is a partial list of Schedule D-1 disbursements from Michael DeFusco for Hoboken Mayor's 20-Day Post-Election ELEC report.
No that's not the bombshell.
It's this, reported by the Jersey Journal:
Stay tuned for trial updates. Mike Holmes has finished testifying.
Anybody remember "Entity 1," the mysterious unidentified payroll service which the Camis complaint had alleged cranked out the $50 checks to voters in exchange for votes?
Well, that payroll service was revealed as Bluewater Operations, headed by the final witness of the day, Ryan Yacco.
Yacco's role as a government witness is murky. The extent of his cooperation with the F.B.I. and/or U.S. Attorney's Office is unknown. Since it appears that the Hoboken investigation and prosecutions may be continuing, it is unknown what information Yacco has to provide for future prosecutions, or has already provided or the full extent of his cooperation with the government.
What we do know about Yaaco is that he was Campaign Manager for Michael DeFusco for Hoboken Mayor. This is a partial list of Schedule D-1 disbursements from Michael DeFusco for Hoboken Mayor's 20-Day Post-Election ELEC report.
MICHAEL DEFUSCO FOR HOBOKEN MAYOR
No that's not the bombshell.
It's this, reported by the Jersey Journal:
Yacco, who is involved with the Passaic County Democratic Organization, has been a consultant for First Ward Councilman Michael DeFusco and is currently working his reelection campaign for city council.Wow. The owner of (now-defunct) "Entity 1" is going to work on the campaign of Team Ramos. That's good to know.
Stay tuned for trial updates. Mike Holmes has finished testifying.
Interesting fellow, that Eduardo Gonzalez. Always polite, professional and soft-spoken, yet decidedly, unfailingly with the Old Guard — even as most of his allies fight for a lifestyle that’s a completely different world from his private-sector, presumably hard-won gainful employment.
ReplyDeleteI asked him about this dichotomy once. Was having a friendly chat with him sometime during the Mason-Russo council presidency, when every week, the council majority seemed to spawn a new breed of havoc and destruction. The hospital debacle in particular springs to mind. “Eduardo,” I said, “How does a young, highly educated financial professional and family man look at the garbage coming out of the Mason-Russo-Occhipinti team and say to himself, ‘yeah, that’s good government, that’s a set of policies and stewardship that serves my interests as a taxpayer and professional contributor to society’? How do you look at the Zimmer/Reform team and say, ‘no, thanks — not for me’?”
His answer was remarkably candid — I don’t remember the exact wording, but the gist was, yeah, he agreed their governance was shitty, and that Zimmer was doing a good job and serving his interests more, but he wanted to be somebody in local politics — run for council, or whatever, just be on a track toward bigger and better things — and he’d cast his lot with the team he was on and had standing on their totem pole, and wasn’t about to get in the back of the line for being fielded for higher office, which is what he thought would happen if he switched over to the team he, in his heart of hearts, actually agreed with more.
Pretty icy, blunt and unabashedly transactional. So, I have to say, I’m not surprised, in light of that, about any of this.
Funny, I asked myself that same question many times. Why? He wasn't some clown crawling out of Church Towers with GED and a penchant for grifting. He actually might've done better as a politician if he were.
DeleteI don't think anyone knew what to do with him. Not brazenly OG, and he didn't really strike a chord as newboken. He had no natural constituency but kept trying to find one.
Welp... he finally jumped to the front of the line. Congratulations, sort of.