The Ferragamo bag had Cuban cigars for Hannukah, not a $60,000 cash kickback for a $20 million union hedge fund investment.
So said a defense lawyer for former city jail-union boss Norman Seabrook Tuesday during summations at Seabrook’s Manhattan federal court bribery trial, telling jurors star informant Jona Rechnitz falsely twisted an innocent holiday gift into the linchpin of an alleged payoff scheme.
“He created a crime to get himself out of trouble,” defense lawyer Paul Shechtman said during a full day of summations in the two-week trial. “If you’re Jona Rechnitz, you cut and paste to serve your purposes. If you’re Jona Rechnitz, you create history.”
Seabrook, 57, the once powerful head of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association, is charged with bribery and conspiracy for allegedly taking cash in return for putting $20 million into co-defendant Murray Huberfeld’s hedge fund, Platinum Partners.
Rechnitz, 33, a real estate investor at the center of multiple federal probes of corruption in City Hall and the NYPD last year, testified that he wined and dined Seabrook on vacations and at cigar bars, and then was the bagman who delivered the bribe on Dec. 11, 2014, in a Ferragamo bag later found at Seabrook’s house.
He was targeted by the defense throughout trial, admitting links to two Ponzi schemes and an array of dishonest acts — lying to become a police chaplain and get a gun license, doctoring emails with Mayor Bill de Blasio — and character issues such as dressing