TIME TO REASSIGN THE DELAY POSSE:

Sex, lies, secret tape at center of trial: Reggie recording key as feds launch case (Martha Carr and Gordon Russell, May 07, 200, New Orleans Times Picayune)

Hotshot political fund-raiser David Rosen didn't hesitate when an old friend, visiting Chicago, called to invite him to a pricey meal at Morton's steakhouse.

What Rosen didn't know was that his buddy, Democratic Party operative Ray Reggie of New Orleans, was working with FBI agents to record secretly the entire conversation, a tape that is expected to be key evidence as one of the hottest political trials of the year begins Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles.

A partial transcript of the Sept. 4, 2002, tape obtained by The Times-Picayune captures a conversation rife with gossip about the seamy side of political life, including the sex, drugs and prostitutes enjoyed by big-name Democratic stalwarts. But in due course Reggie deftly steers the conversation toward the feds' main interest: an August 2000 Hollywood fund-raiser for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton that is at the center of Rosen's alleged crimes.

In a detailed discussion of the event, Rosen acknowledges that the gala probably cost far more to produce than he reported on federal campaign forms, a criminal offense and the central question at issue in the case.

In return for his cooperation and testimony at trial, the feds have recommended that Reggie, whose sister is married to U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., get no more than five years in prison on two bank fraud convictions unrelated to the political fund-raising scandal. He is set to be sentenced in October. [...]

The specific targets of those probes remain a mystery, although the affidavit describes the first as involving a political figure who solicited illegal campaign contributions from foreign nationals, and the second about a Louisiana state senator who allegedly approved a fraudulent contract worth $5 million.

The Rosen trial comes at a time when Hillary Clinton, perennially short-listed as a potential Democratic presidential candidate in 2008, is also facing a 2006 Senate re-election fight in New York. Though neither Hillary Clinton nor her husband, President Clinton, has been charged in connection with the fund-raising scandal, it has been seized upon by conservative bloggers and media commentators. At the same time, it is decried by Clinton supporters as an attempt to sabotage the senator's presidential ambitions.

The man who underwrote the cost of the Hollywood gala can now be numbered among Clinton foes. Both Clintons are targeted, along with Rosen, in a civil lawsuit Paul filed stemming from the event.

Paul, who partnered with the creator of comic book superhero Spider-Man to create the Internet entertainment company Stan Lee Media, alleges in his civil case that he gave close to $2 million to Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign based on a promise that President Clinton would join the company when he left office. That promise was never fulfilled, he said.

Paul's civil allegations are similar to those in the government's criminal probe.

In the transcribed conversation with Reggie, Rosen says his defense in the civil case was being coordinated with lawyers for the Clintons, and he expresses concern that this might not be in his best interests.

"The former White House wanted to hire, or argue the case in a certain way," Rosen says in the transcript. "And I did it for them. Like, I bit the bullet and went in as a guinea pig, and argued their argument for me. Instead of frettin' and runnin' and coverin' my ass, I was a good soldier. . . . So far it's worked out, but I coulda done it a lot different."

Should move the Tom DeLay hoohah deeper in the paper anyway.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 7, 2005 5:59 PM