Defense: Arnao didn't wipe e-mails
The defense attorney for Ruth Arnao said in his closing argument yesterday that prosecutors had not proven that she had tried to thwart an FBI investigation by destroying e-mails.
The defense attorney for Ruth Arnao said in his closing argument yesterday that prosecutors had not proven that she had tried to thwart an FBI investigation by destroying e-mails.
Arnao is a co-defendant in former asstate Sen. Vince Fumo's federal corruption trial and the one-time executive director of Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods, a nonprofit organization he founded.
Her attorney, Ed Jacobs Jr., said that the obstruction charges lodged against Arnao were related to the fact that her computers had been wiped, not that she had done any wiping herself. (Wiping is a process by which traces of e-mails are removed from a computer's hard drive.)
Prosecutors have portrayed Arnao, who did not testify in her own defense, as little more than a lackey for Fumo who permitted the destruction of e-mails at Citizens Alliance by computer aides in Fumo's Tasker Street office.
But Jacobs told jurors that the feds had not produced a single "live witness" who testified against Arnao regarding the obstruction charges.
Jacobs, citing his cross-examination of Don Wilson, a computer aide in the Tasker Street office, said that Wilson could not recall ever being asked to wipe Arnao's laptop, desktop or BlackBerry.
The other computer aide in Fumo's Philadelphia office, Leonard Luchko, who has pleaded guilty to obstruction charges in the case, did not testify for the government. (The feds did not call Luchko as a witness after they learned that he had been communicating with Fumo and other witnesses before and during the trial.)
Jacobs tried to persuade jurors that Arnao was merely a recipient and "not the instigator" of e-mails directing staff to destroy all e-mails to and from Fumo.
He said that she didn't possess the "guilty mind" of a co-conspirator, and had voluntarily turned over some e-mails to investigators that mentioned wiping computers.
In an e-mail that Luchko sent out to Fumo staffers on Dec. 1, 2003, including Arnao, then a Senate aide, he reminded them not to save any Fumo e-mails. Arnao replied: "What's this about again?"
"Are these the words of a co-conspirator?" Jacobs asked. "A co-conspirator has to be in on the deal . . . she doesn't know what he's talking about."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Bob Zauzmer had said earlier yesterday, wrapping up his closing argument, that Arnao "gave [Luchko] permission" to wipe her computer at her Ventnor, N.J., condo three weeks after the feds hit Citizens Alliance with a subpoena in January 2005 for all its e-mails.
He said that when the FBI came to Citizens Alliance in early February 2005 to search its computers, including Arnao's, agents recovered only 100 e-mails, most less than a month old.
"Citizens Alliance had wiped out its files in order to protect Ms. Arnao and Mr. Fumo from the investigation," Zauzmer said.
Zauzmer called part of Fumo's defense "a crazy idea," referring to the contention that lawyers Robert Scandone and Richard Sprague allegedly told Fumo in April 2004 that it was permissible to delete e-mails as long as he hadn't been served with a grand-jury subpoena.
Scandone and Sprague both testified that they had never given such advice to Fumo.
The prosecutor pointed out that such a defense requires the defendant to first disclose to the lawyer all material facts, but he said that Fumo did not tell either Scandone or Sprague about the computer wiping after the federal investigation became public in January 2004.
Zauzmer said that Fumo's advice-of-counsel defense to the alleged obstruction was "frivolous" and urged the jury to reject it.
And, he said, Fumo probably knew that, too, arguing that once a defendant learns a federal investigation is under way, "you don't get out the shredder." *
