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Puerto Rico Governor Sees Persecution; Critics See A Man Trying To Avoid Prosecution
Hartford Courant ^ | 11/23/2007 | Edmund H. Mahoney

Posted on 11/24/2007, 2:37:30 PM by cll

As a U.S. territory with no votes in Congress, Puerto Rico pays a platoon of lobbyists millions of dollars to press a Congressional agenda that often consists of such gripping issues as offshore tax credits and federal shipping policy.

But the agenda has turned anything but boring.

This fall, two top Washington lobbyists — both of whom collect hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from Gov. Anibal Acevedo Vila's administration — quietly tried to kill the confirmation of a federal prosecutor whose office is investigating whether the governor is involved in a wide-ranging campaign finance conspiracy.

Acevedo's lobbying effort, based on his contention that he is the unjust victim of a political prosecution, eventually found an ostensibly sympathetic senator. The senator exercised a procedural hold to block career prosecutor Rosa Emilia Rodriguez's appointment as the island's U.S. attorney.

Using government lobbyists to sidetrack the investigation of a personal legal problem was a brash tactic by Acevedo, if one that achieved only mixed results. With Rodriguez's confirmation indefinitely stalled in Congress, Puerto Rico's federal judges used their authority last month to make the appointment themselves. The investigation didn't miss a beat.

But political analysts in San Juan and Washington say the anti-Rodriguez lobby should be judged less for its effectiveness than for what they say it really was: An opening salvo in an extraordinary public relations campaign by the governor against what looks like his likely indictment.

The analysts say Acevedo is trying to save his personal and political life by appealing — before he is even charged — to public opinion and, by extension, to potential jurors.

He has begun to portray himself as yet another Democrat persecuted by Republican meddlers at the U.S. Department of Justice.

The strategy, his detractors say, conveniently deflects attention from his oversight of Puerto Rico's anemic economy as he begins what promises to be a combative campaign for re-election.

Lawyers and political analysts in San Juan aren't writing off the strategy.

The notion of politician-as- victim could get traction on an island where distrust of the federal government — and the Justice Department in particular — often underlies political debate.

The question is how much traction it will get.

"I think they have been working very hard and working strategically in order to have a hung jury if there is a trial," said Victor Garcia San Inocencio, an attorney, member of the island House of Representatives and member of the independence party, said of the governor's strategy. "I think they have played the strategy beautifully. "

Brioni Suits

For more than two years, federal agents have been looking at allegations of stolen campaign funds, sham donors and links between the award of Puerto Rico government contracts and Acevedo's record-setting ability to raise money, first as Puerto Rico's nonvoting member of Congress and later as governor.

Federal authorities, as Acevedo now complains relentlessly, have turned his life inside out.

Prosecutors grilled more than 100 political associates in front of a San Juan grand jury. FBI agents questioned his friends in the Puerto Rico media in an effort to learn whether secret payments for TV ads skirted campaign rules. They looked into whether he had hair plugs and cosmetic eye surgery.

And they want to know who supplied the cash that was used to buy the governor's closetful of $3,000 Brioni suits.

The governor's response in recent weeks has been ferocious. At an unusual San Juan press conference last week, he broke major news by acknowledging that his team of Washington lawyers has learned from the Justice Department that the investigation could conclude as early as next week, presumably with his indictment. Then, for almost two hours, he attacked the investigation and the prosecutors behind it.

At the press conference, the nominal Democrat and leader of Puerto Rico's pro-commonwealth Popular Democratic Party essentially underscored what he and his surrogates have been saying for weeks: that he is the victim of two entities, the Republicans in Washington who control the Justice Department and his local political rivals in the pro-statehood New Progressive Party.

He has called the Justice Department "cocky" and "arrogant." He accused prosecutors of intimidating witnesses, manipulating evidence and leaking distortions to the press. He said he is being unfairly targeted, and offered up a list of political and business figures in Puerto Rico who he said employed — with impunity — the same sort of fundraising tactics that FBI agents are now accusing him of in order to destroy him.

"It's been a long time since this investigation stopped being a search for the truth or for investigating particular facts," Acevedo said. "It has been turned into an obstinate desire to find something that they can attribute to the governor, something to destroy the governor and the Popular Democratic Party. I have no doubt that this is the reason for the existence of this investigation. "

Two days later his wife, Luisa Gandara, was complaining to a San Juan reporter that "what they are doing to us is extremely unfair, not just for him, but for all the people who have been by his side and are good people. What sustains us is faith. This family has been persecuted."

Distrust

Perhaps not coincidentally, the particulars of Acevedo's self-portrait as prosecutorial victim could have been lifted from the Washington scandal that erupted earlier this year over claims that the Bush administration' s Justice Department has condoned Republican meddling.

Initially, seven U.S. attorneys complained to Congress that political appointees at Justice forced them from office because they were not shaping their prosecutions to conform with the administration' s political agenda. Those complaints contributed to the resignation of Alberto Gonzales as U.S. attorney general.

As they worked to stall Rodriguez's confirmation as U.S. attorney for Puerto Rico, Acevedo's lobbyists essentially argued that the investigation of the governor is another example of political meddling. Congressional sources said Charles R. Black Jr. of BKSH & Associates and former Sen. John C. Culver, D-Iowa, contacted at least three Senate offices.

The senators initially agreed to use an anonymous procedural maneuver to hold or kill the appointment, but withdrew the offers after being persuaded that the Acevedo investigation had merit.

Eventually, the governor's camp found a willing senator. The congressional sources said it was Robert Menendez, D-N.J. — an Acevedo friend whom the governor has helped to raise campaign money on the island. The hold took effect just days before the maneuver was prohibited by a new ethics law.

Menendez will not confirm or deny being behind the hold, a spokesman said. Black and Culver could not be reached, but told the Washington Post they did not bill the Acevedo administration for their work on the Rodriguez confirmation.

A senior Justice Department official, speaking on condition that he not be identified, called the Acevedo accusations of politically motivated prosecutions "spurious" and said Acevedo's attempt to link his predicament to the issue is "political opportunism. "

"The problem with the U.S. attorney scandal is that it has made people more receptive to what were formerly considered outrageous allegations, like the one the governor is making," the official said.

A Justice Department spokesman would not discuss the specifics of the Acevedo investigation, but said the department's prosecutorial record against political figures — among them Connecticut' s former Republican Gov. John G. Rowland — proves that investigators follow evidence without regard to political affiliation.

The spokesman denied that federal prosecutor Rodriguez cooked up the Acevedo case with Washington Republicans for political advantage, as Acevedo supporters have claimed.

The spokesman said Rodriguez, a career prosecutor for 19 years before being named U.S. attorney, inherited the investigation from her immediate predecessor, former Puerto Rico U.S. Attorney Humberto Garcia. Garcia made his name building a string of political corruption cases against Acevedo rivals in the New Progressive Party.

Conspiracy

Acevedo's camp seems to be counting on the fact that a substantial portion of the local electorate doesn't necessarily believe whatever Washington says, and that the federal government often operates with a heavy hand in Puerto Rico and can be counted on to put the national agenda ahead of the island's.

Hundreds of thousand of people had to march in the streets of San Juan before Washington even considered closing its naval bombing range on the tiny, idyllic and populated island of Vieques. And Puerto Ricans have long criticized what they believe has been decades of harassment by the Justice Department of the small, but intellectually influential Puerto Rico independence movement.

Skepticism of the federal government is most commonly expressed by voters who oppose statehood or support independence, a group that makes up roughly half the jury pool.

Eduardo Bhatia, the Acevedo loyalist who runs the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration in Washington and who gives island lobbyists their marching orders, contends Acevedo is a victim of the mainland Republican Party's 2008 presidential election strategy.

And, he says, the man behind the strategy is recently retired White House political adviser Karl Rove — often portrayed as a master political manipulator on the opinion pages of San Juan newspapers.

If Bhatia's analysis reads like conspiracy theory, he says that's because it is.

The White House, Bhatia says, wants to replace Acevedo in the San Juan governor's mansion with Luis Fortuno.

Opinion polls show Fortuno to be Acevedo's most credible opponent in what already has become a knock-down, drag-out campaign for the November 2008 election.

Fortuno, a Republican and member of the pro-statehood New Progressive Party, replaced Acevedo as Puerto Rico's nonvoting member of Congress when Acevedo became governor in 2004.

Bhatia says that if Republicans can substitute Fortuno, a Republican, for Democrat Acevedo, they have a better chance of winning over the hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans who have settled over the past decade or so in the central part of Florida, a presidential swing state.

"Now, we can go into conspiracy theory, and I am not a conspiracy theorist," Bhatia said. "But the fact is there are about 600,000 Puerto Ricans who have moved to Florida over the last fifteen years. But they are not yet participants in the political process in Florida. Now, you realize that the last two elections were decided in Florida."

"So, am I connecting a lot of dots?" Bhatia asked. "Maybe I am. But Alberto Gonzales has resigned. Seven prosecutors have been fired for not conducting political investigations. There is a cancer eating at the Justice Department of the United States."

Deflection

Cooler heads suggest that, in Puerto Rico's perpetually white-hot political climate, conspiracy theory can be a good thing — particularly for a politician who wants to deflect the attention of voters from other issues. In Acevedo's case, it is the moribund Puerto Rico economy.

"A lot is being made of this investigation and with good reason," said Fernando Martin, executive president of the Puerto Rico Independence Party. "But it is also a fact that, whether this investigation existed or not, the smart money would tell you that he is on his way to losing the election. To cite one of your former leaders, 'It's the economy stupid.'"

Puerto Rico, Martin said, is stuck with the hemisphere's lowest growth rate. Exacerbating the situation are successive budget deficits in the hundreds of millions of dollars produced by the Acevedo administration.

A year and a half ago, Acevedo temporarily shut down the island government when it ran out of money. Despite painful tax and utility rate increases following the shutdown, Martin and others say the administration in on track for another deficit in June.

"We have been going through 18 or 20 months of continuous recession," Martin said. "There is no light at the end of the tunnel."

If deflection of the budget issue is one of Acevedo's goals, it may be working. The politics of the federal investigation has become such a big story that it is taking news space away from the economy. Acevedo is running for re-election with his party's nomination and says he will not be stopped. Fellow Popular Democratic Party members have closed ranks around him, at least publicly.

"I will continue to do what I have to do for Puerto Rico," he said recently. "Injustices like this give one greater motivation to do what needs to be done."

Given the skepticism with which many Puerto Rico voters view the federal government, some observers are not writing off his chances.

"Before this, he was doomed. Hopeless," Victor Garcia San Inocencio said. "Now, I don't know."


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government
KEYWORDS: acevedo; acevedovila; puertorico
The "experts" are speculating that the governor will be indicted next week.
1 posted on 11/24/2007, 2:37:33 PM by cll
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To: rrstar96; AuH2ORepublican; livius; adorno; Teófilo; wtc911; Willie Green; CGVet58; Clemenza; ...
Puerto Rico Ping! Please Freepmail me if you want on or off the list.


2 posted on 11/24/2007, 2:38:49 PM by cll (Carthage must be destroyed)
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To: cll
Yet another corrupt Democrat. And so it goes . . .


3 posted on 1/12/2008, 5:15:18 AM by winstonwolf33 ("Priapus, king and master! Master of the Universe! King of the Jungle!"--Bonfire of the Vanities)
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