Alfonse D’Amato Tells Jury About Adam Skelos’s No-Show Job
Former U.S. senator testifies in public-corruption trial of New York state Sen. Dean Skelos and his son
Former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato outside Manhattan federal court. PHOTO: LARRY NEUMEISTER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
Former U.S. Sen. Alfonse D’Amato on Friday testified that he visited the offices of New York state Sen. Dean Skelos in 2013 to deliver a message: the lawmaker’s son wasn’t showing up to work at a medical-malpractice insurer.
Mr. D’Amato said he informed Mr. Skelos, a fellow Long Island Republican, that he thought Adam Skelos’s work performance at Physicians’ Reciprocal Insurers “was a problem that would probably result in Adam losing his job.”
The 78-year-old Mr. D’Amato was the marquee witness Friday at the public-corruption trial of Dean and Adam Skelos in federal court in Manhattan. Both men are charged with leveraging the elder Mr. Skelos’s political influence to enrich Adam Skelos.
Mr. D’Amato, who represented New York for three terms between 1981 and 1999, testified that Dean Skelos told him that his son needed the job because his wife was expecting a child and the family needed health insurance.
Physicians’ Reciprocal Insurers, which hired Adam Skelos in 2013, is one of several businesses that prosecutors allege Dean and Adam Skelos extorted for the son’s financial benefit. The company was a client of Mr. D’Amato’s lobbying firm, Park Strategies.
U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose Manhattan office is prosecuting the case, sat in the back of the crowded courtroom flanked by several deputies while Mr. D’Amato was on the witness stand.
EARLIER TRIAL COVERAGE
- New York State Sen. Dean Skelos ‘Defensive’ Over Son, Witness Testifies (Dec. 3)
- Dean Skelos Pressured Official Heading to Funeral, According to Taped Calls (Dec. 1)
- Dean Skelos Is Stoic After Learning of Sheldon Silver’s Conviction (Nov. 30)
- Cuomo Is on Exhibit in Lawmakers’ Trials (Nov. 29)
- CEO Describes Pressure to Raise Skelos Son’s Fees (Nov. 24)
Mr. D’Amato’s testimony was at times playful, drawing laughter in the courtroom at one point when he said Democrats in Albany didn’t care about Long Island.
Mr. D’Amato said he decided to speak with Dean Skelos after another Park Strategies partner raised concerns about Adam Skelos’s no-show job. When Adam Skelos did make an appearance, he was “disruptive” and “contemptuous,” Mr. D’Amato testified.
Mr. D’Amato said he had known Dean Skelos since the early 1980s and found him to be a “hardworking state senator.” He said on cross-examination that the legislator’s service was “fabulous.”
The meeting with Dean Skelos ended inconclusively, Mr. D’Amato said. Dean Skelos didn’t say whether he would speak with his son, he said.
Mr. D’Amato also told the jury that Adam Skelos later reached out to Park Strategies about a possible business relationship, but he said the firm ultimately decided not to work with him.
“I thought the appearance would be one that would in itself raise questions about conflicts,” Mr. D’Amato said.
Asked on his way out of the courthouse how it felt to testify against a friend, Mr. D’Amato said: “I didn’t testify against my friend. I just answered the questions.”
Later in the day, Richard “Rob” Walker, Nassau County’s chief deputy executive, described what he said was Dean Skelos’s role in pushing for a multimillion-dollar contract between the county and AbTech Industries, an Arizona environmental-technology firm where Adam Skelos worked as a consultant.
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Mr. Walker was compelled to testify under an order of immunity, which was signed Friday and presented as evidence. The U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn is investigating whether Mr. Walker steered county business to political donors and personal friends, prosecutors said.
The immunity order means his testimony at the Skelos trial can’t be used against him in the Brooklyn prosecutors’ investigation.
Mr. Walker said he was walking behind Dean Skelos and the Nassau County executive at the January funeral of a New York City police officer when Dean Skelos asked whether AbTech would be “getting paid any time soon” for work the company had done in Nassau County and which Adam Skelos had championed.
Mr. Walker said he offered to find out and made a call from the Brooklyn funeral to inquire about the payments. Dean Skelos thanked him, he said, and county records showed that a payment to AbTech was made shortly afterward.
—Erica Orden contributed to this article.
