Monday belonged to the prosecution.
In the tax evasion trial of Douglas Bruce, First Assistant Attorney General Robert Shapiro spent nearly all day establishing financial ties between Bruce and the controversial nonprofit group he founded in 2001, Active Citizens Together. The prosecution Monday burned through 11 witnesses.
Shapiro spent hours on testimony tying Bruce to financial deals in California that seemed to net him thousands of dollars. He spent even more time with witnesses who said Bruce was in complete control of ACT, despite Bruce’s past attempts to stay out of the limelight.
Bruce, an anti-tax activist from Colorado Springs, made the point time after time that nothing Shapiro raised was illegal, but it didn’t appear to matter to the prosecution.
The most telling witnesses were two of the three members of ACT’s board of directors, Fred Holden and Douglas Campbell, whose names figured prominently on the group’s state and federal tax papers.
Both Holden and Campbell said they never spoke with each other, or with the third member of the board, Jeffrey Wright, over ACT’s 10-year life span.
Holden said he never had contact with ACT after he signed his name to a government form for Bruce in 2001, and Campbell said Bruce was the “central hub” of ACT. He said his job was to advise Bruce on political matters and that he didn’t have any real responsibilities.
Shapiro also called several of Bruce’s business associates — an owner of a petition-circulating company, and managers of two companies that produces direct mail material, including political mailers.
Bruce has doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars to these three companies over the years on behalf of ACT, according to financial records presented by the prosecution.
Dan Kennedy, owner of Kennedy Enterprises, runs petitions for ballot measures, but his only client for years has been ACT. And the only person he has dealt with has been Bruce. It was the same with William Hugee and Harold Dallas, who run mailer companies.
Shapiro flew in four witnesses from California who testified about a complex real estate deal that Shapiro said Bruce profited from, since payment checks were always made out to him even though Bruce hadn’t been at the forefront of the deal.
Bruce hammered home for each witness that he hadn’t done anything illegal. He said he had acted as a conduit for a company called Tele Comm Resources, which he represented and through which he sent the income to ACT.
Bruce has been charged with tax evasion, attempting to influence a public official, failing to file a tax return and filing a false tax return. If convicted of all charges, he could spend up to 12 1/2 years in prison and be fined more than $700,000.
He will probably begin his defense Thursday morning, if the case stays on schedule.
