Kevin Rennie: The last excruciating mile of the road to justice in Connecticut. Money at the center.
The 22 counts alleging extortion “by threat of economic fear,” bribery, conspiracy, and making false statements, will be a dispiriting affair for anyone paying attention to it.
The first federal criminal trial of former state deputy budget director Konstantinos Diamantis begins Monday.
At the center of this scandal is money, as it so often is. Not just any money, but money spent on building schools for children. Or, as the government will seek to show, money that was supposed to be spent on schools but was diverted for corrupt purposes. Diamantis was doing double duty in the state budget office and as head of the state’s generous school construction finance program when some of the alleged crimes he is charged with are said to have occurred.
The trial will not resemble anything you see on television — justice done in 60 minutes. This will be a workmanlike exercise that goes on for weeks. The government submitted a list of more than 275 trial exhibits it may or may not need to offer. Diamantis, who enjoys the presumption of innocence, may have some silent regrets when those documents form a Niagara of evidence that sound tough to explain.
The grand jury indictment included references to texts between Diamantis and two already-convicted officers of Monarca, a masonry company hoping to do more business on school construction projects. Diamantis was able to arrange that because he wielded a lot of power as the bullying head of the school construction finance program. The government will present evidence of cash bank withdrawals by one of the convicted conspirators and deposits of similar amounts of cash by Diamantis shortly after.
Antoinetta DiBenedetto Roy, who pleaded guilty to bribery charges last year, will also testify. She was the head of Construction Advocacy Professionals, or CAP, a company that would be hired on construction projects to make sure the customer was getting what it paid for. Diamantis allegedly insisted that a couple towns receiving tens of millions of dollars in state school construction money hire Roy to do a job that was already being performed by others or could have been. In return for Diamantis parachuting Roy into construction projects, prosecutors, according to their trial memorandum, will show that Roy hired one of Diamantis’ daughters, Anastasia Diamantis. You are right to shudder at the thought of a father enmeshing a daughter in an alleged bribery scheme.
The trial may at last reveal what Anastasia Diamantis did for that money from Roy. While she received some of those payments, Ms. Diamantis was employed as a $99,000 a year executive assistant by former Chief State’s Attorney Richard Colangelo, a position exempt from the state’s merit system, during some of the time she received payments from Roy, who has also pleaded guilty to bribery charges in this squalid saga. Whatever Roy paid the Diamantises was a small portion of the many hundreds of thousands of dollars she allegedly reaped from Mr. Diamantis’ patronage. Colangelo’s alliance with the Diamantises made him one more casualty of appalling judgment.
At the center of the charges is the construction of the Birch Grove Primary School in Tolland. It showed signs of the crumbling concrete has vexed buildings in central and eastern Connecticut for more than a decade. When it was detected in a school, concern became a crisis. On her way out the door as head of the state’s Department of Administrative Services the now late Melody Currey approved the suspension of competitive bidding in the plan to construct a new school in Tolland.
Currey and Diamantis had been allies as fellow Democrats in the state House of Representatives, Currey representing East Hartford, Diamantis Bristol. She brought Diamantis into DAS and the school construction program over the reservations of members of former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy’s administration. When Currey declared the emergency in Tolland she instructed town officials to work with Diamantis.
The trial may provide Tolland officials — three are listed on the list or potential witnesses — with an opportunity to testify to their ordeal. Superintendent of Schools Walter Willett has said that Diamantis threatened to interfere with the financing of the urgent Birch Grove if Tolland did not obey Diamantis’ hiring orders. Diamantis says he was only trying to be helpful. The jury, as juries do, will listen to conflicting testimony and decide which witness they believe. That part of the trial may come after many unsavory text messages, checks, and bank deposit and withdrawal slips have been introduced into evidence.
Diamantis’ lawyer says his client cannot wait to get before that jury and tell his story. That appearance, if it occurs, will be after Dr. Willett and, perhaps, two other earnest Tolland officials testify. The contrast between them and Diamantis ought to make a profound impression on the jurors. The people in Tolland were trying to get a school built. That was their sole goal. They harbored no alternative motives. One of them, Beverly Bellody, had overseen the construction of the local high school several years before the Birch Grove emergency. Diamantis deemed her inadequate to the task of performing the same duties on the smaller Birch Grove project and allegedly insisted, the testimony likely will reveal, that Tolland pay Roy hundreds of thousands of dollars to do what Bellody would have done in the normal course of her job.
Thursday saw Diamantis, so eager to testify, ask for a postponement of the trial due to the shutdown of some government agencies. The courts are open and proceeding as usual. Diamantis offered a convoluted argument that political differences over the role of government, state and federal, may draw in jurors and deny him a fair trial.
On the eve of Friday’s jury selection, Diamantis added Gov. Ned Lamont to his witness list. This seems like a stunt. No testimony Lamont offers is going to help Diamantis. While the governor is the direct victim of the muck on display in this trial, he would be right to feel betrayed by the misbegotten trust he placed in Diamantis. A wounded Lamont will be no help to the flailing defendant on this last excruciating mile of the road to justice.
Kevin F. Rennie can be reached at kfrennie@yahoo.com
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