Strippergate Scandal Mayor Convicted

Touching Strippers Cunt Is Illegal…

Stripclubs

SAN DIEGO - Jurors have convicted two San Diego City Council members of a scheme to take illegal campaign contributions from the owner of a strip club who sought to ease a rule against contact between dancers and customers.
Jurors in the "Strippergate" trial deliberated less than three days before finding Councilman Michael Zucchet, who is also acting mayor, and Councilmen Ralph Inzunza guilty. Each faces three to four years in federal prison at sentencing for conspiracy, extortion and wire fraud.

Zucchet and Inzunza, each 35, and Councilman Charles Lewis were indicted two years ago after a lengthy investigation by the FBI and federal prosecutors in Las Vegas and San Diego. Lewis died of cirrhosis a year later.

Today’s political corruption verdicts added to the chaos at City Hall and struck another blow to the self esteem of residents of California’s second-largest city — the nation’s seventh largest.

This year the mayor resigned, charges were filed against six members of the city pension board and a $2-billion pension deficit is under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission and the U.S. attorney’s office.

The campaign investigation had begun as a probe of the strip club and pornography industries in Las Vegas. It spread when FBI agents, listening to wiretapped conversations of strip club owner Michael Gallardi, heard references to buying influence in San Diego.

In hundreds of secretly recorded conversations, the council members were heard discussing campaign contributions with Lance Malone, Gallardi’s lobbyist. They were also heard discussing Gallardi’s request that the city lift a now 4-year-old ban on nude dancers coming within six feet of patrons.

But on none of the recordings is an explicit agreement made by the council members to try to change the law in exchange for the contributions.

Still, after a six-week trial that began May 4, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Miller instructed jurors that if they could infer from the conversations that an agreement had been made, then they could vote for conviction.

Late in the trial, Gallardi, who had pleaded guilty and agreed to testify, provided a dramatic moment when he told jurors that he had given Malone $11,000 in cash to give to the council members. None of the charges involved allegations of cash payments.

On cross-examination, Gallardi admitted that he had failed to mention the cash payments when he was first interviewed by the FBI after agreeing to plead guilty. He has not yet been sentenced.

Jurors also convicted former Clark County, Nev., Commissioner Lance Malone, Gallardi’s lobbyist in San Diego.

Jurors acquitted David Cowan, an aide to the late Councilman Lewis, of a charge of lying to the FBI about the council members’ having discussed changing the "no-touch" law for strippers.

At the center of the trial was the "contact" law, passed in 2000, that resulted in reduced profits for the club and its dancers.

Legal experts have said that the case was unusual because it involved only campaign contributions, not allegations of cash under the table or other favors for personal use. Knowing the difficulty of persuading jurors that a contribution is a bribe, prosecutors often will not file charges unless they can point to money given for personal use.

To make their case, prosecutors from the U.S. attorney’s office had an undercover informant working at Cheetahs. Defense attorneys sought to undermine the informant’s credibility,noting his lengthy criminal history and the fact that he was paid $100,000 by the government.

None of the defendants testified during the trial, a fact alluded to by Assistant U.S. Atty. Michael Wheat during his closing arguments.

Looking at the council members, Wheat quoted the fabled line of a young boy to his idol, baseball legend "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, one of the infamous Chicago Black Sox players banned for taking bribes, when he said, "Say it ain’t so, Joe."


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