Just weeks before his arrest, and after suggesting to a friend that he thought he might be dealing with undercovers, a desperate Assemblyman William Boyland Jr. rejected a $5,000 bribe as too small, saying he wanted $250,000 in exchange for political favors, a video played at his Brooklyn corruption trial Tuesday revealed.
At a June 2011 meeting at the Double Tree Hotel in Manhattan, Boyland told two federal agents posing as businessmen that he needed to raise the heavyweight cash for a lawyer to represent him in a Manhattan federal corruption case he was facing at the time.
Boyland eventually skated on those charges but was later arrested on fresh payola raps in Brooklyn federal court and faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Prosecutors allege that he offered the fake businessman access to profitable development deals in exchange for payoffs.
Ignoring his instincts, Boyland continued to meet with the agents despite telling an aide at one point that he suspected they were law enforcement.
“What do you need as — whatever you want to call it — a finder’s fee, compensation, whatever?” an agent asked Boyland at the Double Tree sitdown. “I’m willing to pay you for what you do. This is work. This s–t isn’t free.”
But the agent balked when Boyland requested the mammoth payoff in exchange for access to powerful city officials.
“Well that’s a lot of money for not having done anything yet,” the agent told him. “I’m not going to give you $250,000.”
“I got you,” Boyland said. “But that’s what I need help with right now.”
“Why don’t we do this,” the agent countered. ‘Why don’t we do this in installments. Then you tell me what helps you now. $5,000 a person?”
But with visions of crushing legal bills ahead, Boyland rejected the paltry offer and pushed for more, prosecutors allege.
“I’m not talking about $5,000 folks,” he said of the real or imagined politicos he could deliver. “I’m talking about people that can actually get these projects…I’m talking commissioners of every one of these areas that can pull triggers in these projects.”
A few months later – fresh off his Manhattan acquittal – Boyland again found himself in handcuffs on a whole new set of graft charges related to the alleged bribe requests.
The political scion – who abruptly rejected a 9-year plea deal – will have to overcome testimony from his duplicitous chief of staff and former mistress Ry-Ann Hermon to win a second federal acquittal.
She was arrested alongside Boyland for soliciting bribes and quickly flipped on her flame and is expected to testify against him.
Hermon was captured on tape scheming to score her own payoffs from undercover agents without Boyland’s knowledge and once proclaimed that a $1,000 bribe was making her “hot.”
Jurors heard Hermon coldly call Boyland an “idiot” yesterday in a private conversation with one of the agents about his lack of vigor in delivering on his endless stream of promises.