ALBANY — A lawyer for the GOP operative convicted of stealing $750,000 of Michael Bloomberg’s money went before the state’s highest court Tuesday to argue that his client deserves a retrial because the source of the looted funds wasn’t clear.
Defense lawyer Paul Shechtman told the Court of Appeals it was never proven that the money John Haggerty was convicted of stealing actually came from Bloomberg.
“He never testified to the source of the money,” Shechtman said of Bloomberg.
He said his argument is based on the “best-evidence rule,” claiming prosecutors never proved that a trust fund from which the $750,000 was drawn actually belonged to Bloomberg.
Prosecutors relied on the testimony of the person who drew up the terms of the trust instead of producing a document proving Bloomberg’s authority over the fund, the lawyer maintained.
The fund transferred $1.2 million to the state Independence Party, which acted as an intermediary to transfer funds to Haggerty for what was supposed to be an election-day ballot-security operation in 2009.