Friends, associates testify against Jefferson
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ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The bribery trial of former U.S. Rep. William Jefferson has been like a segment of the old television show “This Is Your Life.”
Friends and former associates have to walk around the defense table where the man they knew simply as “Jeff” sits during the proceedings. They go to the witness box and must turn, look and identify their former colleague, who has pleaded innocent to bribery, conspiracy, racketeering and money laundering.
Trial resumes this morning in federal court here.
Those testifying for the prosecution have included Jefferson’s former chief of staff for 11 years, his accountant for 23 years and an AT&T executive who would take trips on the company’s Lear jet with Jefferson’s wife, Andrea.
Jack Swetland, the New Orleans Democrat’s accountant, appeared somber after testifying last week for the prosecution.
“It’s hard,” Swetland said. “He was my friend. I know the whole family.”
Swetland began working with Jefferson in 1982 when Jefferson ran a furniture rental company called Remco. He eventually became treasurer to Jefferson’s campaigns and the personal accountant for Jefferson and about a half-dozen of his family members.
On the stand, Swetland recalled the day that he severed his ties with Jefferson. FBI agents raided Swetland’s office and confiscated Jefferson tax records.
“I can’t be associated with someone like this who is under this suspicion,” Swetland recalled telling Jefferson.
Jefferson’s former chief of staff, Lionel Collins Jr., has known the Harvard-educated lawyer for 40 years. Collins was 15 years old when Jefferson studied in his dad’s New Orleans law office. On the witness stand, Collins recalled how he thought his boss was conducting official business for a Kentucky communications firm, iGate.
Jefferson had meetings with company officials in his congressional office and wrote letters on the company’s behalf on congressional stationery, Collins said. The man who Collins would do anything for, including picking up family members at the airport, told the jury that he didn’t know that Jefferson or his family had a financial interest in iGate.
Prosecutors allege that Jefferson steered money to family members in return for pushing the iGate project in Nigeria. Had Collins known about the arrangement, he would have handled differently planning a trip for the congressman to Nigeria.
“I would have definitely called the ethics office and discussed it with them,” Collins said.
Another old Jefferson cohort was Bill Oliver, president of AT&T Louisiana in New Orleans. Oliver, who has known Jefferson for 16 years, would go on hunting trips with him, attended the Kentucky Derby with him and once served as king of Washington Mardi Gras, where four of Jefferson’s five daughters served as queens.
When Jefferson asked Oliver to look into iGate and its unique technology of transmitting audio, video and data over copper wire, Oliver agreed out of “a combination of friendship and respect.” The two companies never linked, but Oliver ran the idea by his product representatives for Jefferson, he told the jury.
“It mattered to me that he was a member of Congress and I was reporting back to him,” Oliver said.
But under questioning by prosecutors, Oliver said he had no information that Jefferson had a financial stake in iGate.
“I would have been concerned,” Oliver said.
Then there was James C. Smith, another longtime Jefferson friend, who invested $100,000 in iGate despite knowing nothing about the company. He lost the money.
“I based my investment on Jeff bringing the opportunity to the table,” Smith testified.
Jefferson is prevented from talking about the case by his attorneys. But L.J. Hymel, a former U.S. Attorney from Baton Rouge, said defendants don’t likely hold grudges against former friends who testify.
“In some instances, the people on trial realize that this person is being squeezed by the federal government,” Hymel said.
Swetland, who has not been charged with a crime, said he was not pressured to testify by the government. But his attorney, Richard Westling, said testifying can be rough on the witnesses.
“There are few experiences that test you the same way,” Westling said.
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