Contractor fights charges that he bribed lawmaker
He is alleged to have given $700,000 to now jailed former U.S. Rep. Randy Cunningham.
SAN DIEGO - Defense contractor Brent Wilkes hosted fancy dinner parties and chartered jets for powerful members of Congress while his company was racking up more than $100 million in government contracts.
The lawmakers who enjoyed the largess were often the same ones who approved his contracts. They included former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who pleaded guilty in 2005 to accepting $2.4 million in kickbacks in the largest corruption scandal ever to strike Congress.
Wilkes is scheduled to go on trial Wednesday to fight federal charges that he funneled more than $700,000 in bribes to Cunningham in cash and perks ranging from a Sea-Doo jet boat to the services of two prostitutes at a high-end Hawaiian resort.
He says he is a victim of a "vendetta."
It will be the first criminal trial for anyone in the Cunningham case and a rare opportunity for a jury to pass judgment on one of the corruption scandals that have swept Congress in recent years.
Cunningham, a San Diego Republican who was sentenced to more than eight years in prison, helped the government prepare for trial. Prosecutors indicated in court documents that they may call him to testify.
Wilkes, 53, spurned plea bargains and was charged in February with 25 counts of conspiracy, bribery, money laundering, and unlawful monetary transactions. If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison.
Prosecutors have amassed hundreds of thousands of pages of bank records, phone logs and other evidence they say show Cunningham repaid Wilkes by making sure he got government work.
Wilkes is expected to argue there was no quid pro quo. He hired prominent Los Angeles trial attorney Mark Geragos, who subpoenaed testimony from a dozen members of Congress - including former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R., Ill.) - who knew Wilkes or sat on committees that oversaw his contracts. House lawyers are trying to quash the subpoenas, arguing that the Constitution protects members of Congress from being forced to disclose communications that are part of their official duties.
Even without their testimony, Wilkes' trial may reach beyond Cunningham. As Wilkes expanded his Poway, Calif.-based Wilkes Corp. in the late 1990s, he was a generous campaign donor, and hobnobbed with lawmakers who played key roles in defense appropriations.
Wilkes has said little publicly since Cunningham tearfully resigned in front of the federal courthouse in San Diego in November 2005.
After his indictment this year, Wilkes lashed out at prosecutors for being "more interested in forcing me to plead guilty to something I did not do than in learning the truth" and said he was a victim of a vendetta. He wrote that Cunningham and others supported his projects on their merits alone.
He has also said he was simply very successful at a well-established Washington ritual he described in a 2006 New York Times interview as "transactional lobbying" - doing favors for lawmakers or contributing to political campaigns or causes.
