Brian Foley, the husband of a 2012 Republican congressional candidate, told jurors that he wanted to hire former Connecticut Governor John Rowland for campaign services, but the risk of hiring a convicted felon posed a big political hurdle.
Then Foley got an idea. “I felt that if I hired him as a consultant for Apple [Health Care, Inc.],” he said, speaking of his nursing home business, “he would be supportive for the campaign. That was a way not to have to report him to the Federal Elections Commission.”
Rowland is in the second week of his federal corruption trial in New Haven. Prosecutors say he participated in a scheme to hide payments for campaign work. Specifically, the government alleges Rowland was paid by Brian Foley’s business for work on a congressional campaign for his wife, Lisa Wilson-Foley.
Foley is one of two people who have already pleaded guilty to charges surrounding Rowland’s scheme to use bogus contracts to mask contributions. On Monday, he told jurors it was his idea to pay Rowland in an off-the-books scheme for political consulting work.
“I really hired him for Apple to work from the campaign,” Foley told the jury. “Then it moved into legitimization. In a sense, I tried to legitimize it in many ways, so that if it was ever examined, it would pass muster, and it wouldn’t be discovered that the real purpose was to have him work on the campaign.”
Earlier in the morning, Foley recalled a meeting he and his wife had with Rowland about the prospect of having him consult on the campaign. Rowland tried to sell the couple on his political abilities. They didn’t talk money, but they did talk about how Rowland could get her elected.
Rowland also had some choice commentary on the news media. “Newspapers don’t matter,” were the words Foley remembered Rowland using. Foley added, “I would say that I don’t agree with that, for the record.”
Prosecutor Liam Brennan responded, “You’re old school, Mr. Foley.”
Later, Foley told the court of his efforts to have his attorney draft a contract with Rowland, but one that didn’t mention campaign services. When the initial draft came back with reference to the campaign, Foley had his attorney strike it.
To keep it in, he said, would have been a “smoking gun.”
“I made really sure over the two-year period to not write in an emails or to say to anybody...that this is really for the campaign,” Foley said. “I was very careful never to use those words to acknowledge that this is really for the campaign.”
Eventually, Foley said he arranged to have Rowland paid $5,000 a month. The money went from one of Foley’s companies to his attorney. It was that attorney, Chris Shelton, who actually entered into the agreement with Rowland and cut him his checks.
Brennan spent much of his time trying to prove that the content of Rowland’s work for his nursing home company was a “cover” at best. But the point was clear – the work Rowland was doing had everything to do with politics.
“I think some people on the campaign trail were surprised when he showed up at a fundraiser,” Foley said. “Personally, I would take his advice over Chris Healy’s or the campaign manager’s. He’s got a lot of history and really understood politics.”
When asked by people what Rowland was doing for the campaign, though, Foley told them that he was a “volunteer.”
At one point, Rowland made that same case to Lisa Wilson Foley in an email displayed at court.
“I am just a volunteer helping you and ‘many other Republican candidates’ in case anyone asks,’” Rowland wrote the candidate. He said he wanted to “stay under the radar as much as possible and get the job done.”
The governor said he wanted “to avoid a bad article.”
Eventually, news accounts made the relationship between Rowland and Apple public. In public statements, however, Foley’s company denied that the former governor had been paid by the campaign.
In the brief time remaining before court adjourned for the afternoon, Rowland’s attorney Reid Weingarten got a few minutes to begin his cross examination of Brian Foley. As he did, he tried to establish through questions that Rowland had previously volunteered for Lisa Wilson-Foley’s campaign for lieutenant governor.
“He was mentoring; he wanted her to win?” Weingarten asked. He went on to ask whether Rowland called Wilson-Foley “grasshopper” – an apparent term of endearment. The former governor thought Wilson-Foley was “the perfect candidate,” Weingarten said.
Brian Foley agreed with him on all counts.
The trial resumes Tuesday morning.
