WASHINGTON — Two close friends of Sen. Ted Stevens schemed to conceal the fact that one was paying for expensive remodeling and repairs done at the senator’s cabin in Alaska, according to FBI audiotapes played Tuesday at Stevens’ corruption trial.
Bill Allen and Bob Persons are heard on tape fretting in February 2006 over a $1,000 plumbing bill that says, “Labor paid for by Bill,” after Stevens contacted them.
“We need to make that disappear from (the plumber’s) records,” Persons says in one conversation captured by an FBI wiretap of Allen’s phones. “Tell him Ted’s paying for everything. I mean, that’s the safest thing, Bill.”
Allen, the government’s star witness, and Persons, a neighbor who helped oversee the cabin makeover, agree that Allen should get a check from Stevens for the work.
But they also decide that instead of cashing it, it should be photocopied and saved in case the senator was ever investigated for ethics violations.
“If it ever comes up, you say, ‘Bull—. He paid me for that,’ ” Persons says.
Stevens, 84, is accused of lying on Senate financial disclosure forms to conceal more than $250,000 in home renovations and gifts from Allen, the former chief of an oil pipeline company.
Prosecutors used Allen to attack Stevens’ claim that he was clueless about the extent of free work that Allen and his company, Veco Corp., did on the cabin.
Before he left the stand, Allen quoted Stevens as saying during one of their many dinners together, “I know you’re putting more work in there than what you’re saying.”
Allen testified as part of a plea deal in a bribery investigation of Alaska legislators. U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan said he would hold a hearing today on repeated defense claims that prosecutors intentionally withheld evidence favorable to their client.
Allen’s attorney got a public scolding Tuesday morning from the judge.
Anchorage attorney Robert Bundy, who has been sitting in the spectator section of the courtroom in Washington while his client has been testifying, was accused Monday by the judge of trying to signal to Allen on the stand.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” Sullivan said Tuesday morning. “That’s borderline obstruction of justice.”
Bundy’s colleague Creighton Magid said Bundy “vehemently” denied signaling to his client.Sullivan conceded it was also possible that “maybe he was shaking his head in disbelief at something else.”
However, Sullivan also said he wasn’t content to let the issue rest and may ask for some sort of statement from the other attorney who witnessed the signals. He refused Tuesday to rule out any sanctions.
McClatchy Newspapers contributed to this report.
