I agree with the previous poster. It sounds like this guy is trying to have it both ways. He fought the charges and went to trial in an attempt to get off completely . . . but now that he’s been convicted he wants to be sentenced as if he had cut a plea deal with the prosecution.
Relatives of a rabbi accused of misappropriating $700,000 in federal funds two years ago have contributed more than $20,000 to the mayoral campaign of Rep. Anthony Weiner. Campaign filings show that Menachim Balkany, principal of Krasna Yeshiva, Brooklyn — son of Rabbi Milton Balkany — gave Weiner $4,500 on July 1, 2004. Two other Balkanys, Levi and Sarah, chipped in $4,000 apiece this month. That was near the $4,950 maximum allowed per individual under the city's campaign finance rules.
Rabbi Balkany, principal of Bais Yaakov day school, rounded up so much money for politicians in the 1990s that the good-government group Common Cause labeled him "the Brooklyn bundler." Politicians began steering clear of the rabbi after prosecutors in 2003 charged him with diverting $700,000 in federal funds to pay administrative expenses at two schools he operated in Brooklyn.
Balkany avoided prosecution by agreeing to return the money to the Department of Housing & Urban Development and to engage in "good behavior" for six months. Since then, he has kept a relatively low profile. But Balkany's large extended family has continued to write large campaign checks.
Two members of a family related to Balkany by marriage added $9,000 to Weiner's war chest. Records show Menachem and Tzippa Rubashkin each wrote checks for $4,500 on July 11, 2004 to Weiner's campaign. After being questioned by The Post about the contributions, Weiner's spokesman said he was giving the money back, "Out of an abundance of caution....However, we have and had no reason to believe that these donors did anything wrong."
The Rubashkin family operates one of the nation's largest kosher meat packaging plants, AgriProcessors Inc. in Iowa. Last year, various Rubashkin family members contributed $20,000 to Florida Rep. Katharine Harris and another $20,000 to Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter. Last Dec. 1, the Iowa plant was cited for violations of the Clean Water Act.
SOURCE http://www.nypost.com/news/regionalnews/39041.htm
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REFERENCE The Department of Housing and Urban Development approved a 1999 tax grant to fund the building of a supposedly “sectarian” facility adjacent to Bais Yaakov, the religious day school in Brooklyn that Rabbi Balkany directs. However, Rabbi Balkany spent the $700,000 tax grant on his own life insurance, his credit-card bills, and his federal income taxes, according to a criminal complaint unsealed by Manhattan federal prosecutors.
Rabbi Balkany also diverted $300,000 of federal tax grants to an Israeli company where Balkany’s son-in-law is an officer, and another $5,000 in tax monies to a New York import company where another son-in-law is president. Rabbi Balkany escaped punishment when a lien was placed on his property.
No stranger to getting tax grants, Rabbi Balkany devised a unique lobbying technique with an aide to then-US Senator Daniel Moynihan because Rabbi Balkany believed he was not cooperating in Balkany's quest for a $25 million federal tax grant, and that the aide, David Luchins, was blocking the rabbi's requests for Moynihan's help in securing aid for Balkany’s projects.
Rabbi Balkany, a leading figure in the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the US and Canada issued a summons to Sen Moynihan’s senior aide, David Luchins---a devout member of the Orthodox congregation---to appear before a rabbinic court to answer unspecified charges. Rabbi Balkany hoped to secure an order from the Orthodox rabbinical court to coerce Luchins into behaving more sympathetically to Balkany’s requests for US government money.