In a crafty defense of his sexual conduct with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, President Bill Clinton uttered this line during the grand-jury proceeding about his infidelity: “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is,’ is.”
Andrea Adams
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Which brings us to another infamous philanderer. Ex-Sheriff Mike Carona traveled to Pasadena on Cinco de Mayo in hopes of convincing a federal appeals court panel that his 2009 witness-tampering conviction and 66-month prison sentence should be overturned. No, not because he’s innocent, but because of two alleged technical blunders: one involving a disputed definition of the word “withhold”; the other the use of a hidden microphone to record a now-infamous conversation.
By Aug. 13, 2007, then-Sheriff Carona had spent more than three years scrambling to avoid FBI and IRS arrests for his suspected criminal activities; that night, he met businessman Don Haidl, a trusted co-conspirator, for dinner at the Bayside Restaurant in Newport Beach. Believing that only Haidl could hear his words, the sheriff spoke freely about his efforts to sabotage a federal grand jury investigating corruption at the Orange County Sheriff’s Department. The self-styled Christian-conservative lawman wanted to know if Haidl had photocopied the serial numbers on the $100 bills he’d stuffed in envelopes and handed over as secret, illegal monthly gifts. Carona bragged that Debra Hoffman, his top mistress and the woman the sheriff got Haidl to pay $65,000 to keep happy, “isn’t going to say shit” to the grand jury. Indeed, none of his friends would admit anything incriminating to investigators, he asserted. The sheriff even talked to Haidl about “both [being] on the same page” if called to testify about the gifts.
“On my end of it, completely untraceable, completely untraceable,” Carona said as he enjoyed dinner; occasionally flirted with a waitress; and chatted with the wealthy used-car-auction businessman who’d given him free private jet rides, tailor-made suits, Las Vegas casino gambling chips and more than $100,000 in illegal campaign contributions in exchange for the unearned rank of assistant sheriff, full police powers (though he had no police training), a badge, an office and a patrol car.
A portion of Haidl’s payments to Carona went to pay for hotel rooms the sheriff used to rendezvous with mistresses. “I just want to make goddamn sure there’s no cameras at a hotel—any place where I’m on the fucking witness stand saying I did not give him that fucking money, and they fucking produce a fucking film,” Haidl said to Carona. “Then we’re fucked.”
The sheriff didn’t say, “Don, what are you talking about?”
He said, “Got it” and later noted, “I know you have been a standup motherfucker, and you have taken care of me, and you’ve taken care of my family. . . . No trail anywhere. Period. Period. Period. In fact, not even close to being a trail.”
We know these were Carona’s exact words because Haidl surreptitiously wore a microphone for federal law-enforcement agents that night. Two months after the recording, the sheriff was arrested for denying the citizens of Orange County honest services. Last year, a jury convicted the unapologetic Carona; a not-amused U.S. District Judge Andrew J. Guilford sentenced him to a 5.5-year stint in a federal prison.
Now the disgraced ex-sheriff, who remains free pending his appeal, is arguing he didn’t try to tamper with potential grand jury witness Haidl by asking him to “withhold” testimony if summoned to testify. But isn’t it withholding if, say, you reveal only two parts of a three-part transaction? For example, Carona pressured Haidl to tell the grand jury that a boat had been given as a gift, but that he (many months later) gave Haidl a check for the full value. What he wanted Haidl to withhold from jurors was the fact that Haidl had immediately given the sheriff cash back for more than the amount of the check, a move that rendered the transaction a sham.
“My sense is you’re going to be the first on the stand ’cause I don’t think you’re the target at all,” Carona told Haidl at the restaurant. “I think I’m the target. So bottom line is, you know, first person in there—what you say becomes the truth. It’s . . . it . . . it becomes the truth.”
Yet during oral arguments at the Ninth Circuit, Carona defense attorney John D. Cline said, “At no point is [Carona] trying to get [Haidl] to withhold evidence.” In Cline’s view, Carona could only be found guilty on the withholding charge if he had tried to prevent Haidl from physically taking the witness stand and withholding all testimony.
“[At the Aug. 13 meeting], Haidl and Carona discussed whether to tell false stories and make false denials, not whether to omit entire subjects from their testimony,” argued Cline.
