Metro

Dan Halloran guilty of masterminding failed $200K bribery scheme

Former City Councilman Dan Halloran was found guilty Tuesday of masterminding a failed $200,000 bribery scheme to get Democratic state Sen. Malcolm Smith the Republican line in last year’s mayoral election.

A White Plains federal jury deliberated for ​less than an hour and a half before finding the disgraced Queens Republican guilty on all five counts of bribery, wire fraud and racket ​eeri​ing charges that he faced. Afterwards, federal prosecutors accused Halloran of committing perjury on the witness stand and Judge Kenneth Karas also said he doubted the pol’s “candor” under oath.

The conviction ends a bizarre two-month trial in which Karas rejected Halloran’s bid to pursue an insanity defense related to a brain tumor he had removed in 2012 and also saw Halloran proceed with the case without Smith and another co-defendant — even after a mistrial was declared.

“With today’s verdict of guilty reached by an impartial and independent jury, the clean-up of corruption in New York in continues in courtrooms,” Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara said afterwards.

Halloran is set to be sentenced Dec. 12 and faces up to 55 years behind bars. He was released on bail but will be subjected to home confinement with an electronic monitoring device.

Smith and former Queens Vice Chairman Vincent Tabone will begin their retrial January 5. The earlier mistrial allows Smith to seek re-election.

Assistant US Attorney Douglas Bloom said he believes Halloran lied through his teeth about being innocent during his six days on the witness stand, adding he thinks the jury also saw through the pol’s mistruths.
“Quite frankly, he engaged in perjury,” Bloom told Karas. “The jury clearly found that.

“He’s a lawyer. He’s someone who took multiple oaths to tell the truth to this court, and he broke that.”

The judge agreed, saying, “I was also very troubled with Mr. Halloran in terms of his candor.”

Most jurors declined comment. The jury foreman said, “The verdict speaks for itself.”

Following the verdict, Bloom said Halloran should be considered a flight risk because he no longer has major ties to New York. Karas then looked at Halloran and bluntly said, “It would be monumentally stupid for you to flee.”

To get the GOP line, Smith — one of the state’s top Democrats — would have needed the support of three of the five borough Republican committees. Queens and the Bronx were allegedly secured for the scheme through Tabone and Savino, respectively.

The jury agreed with the feds that Halloran pocketed $20,500 in cash bribes for masterminding cross-party negotiations to help fix the Republican mayoral primary for Smith.

Halloran was also convicted for pocketing $18,300 in cash bribes and $6,500 in straw-donor campaign donations for agreeing to steer $80,000 of council discretionary funding for his district to a company he believed was controlled by those who paid him the bribes.

Halloran initially headed to trial on June 2 with Smith and Tabone, but a mistrial was declared on June 17 following a prosecutorial screw-up. The feds had failed to timely turn over as evidence for more 90 hours of phone calls – some of which were in Yiddish and yet to be translated – and more than 3,100 text messages from a wire-wearing government witness, crooked Rockland County developer Moses Stern.

Halloran, however, opted to resume his trial solo a week later after his lawyer, Vinoo Varghese, argued his client was “teetering on bankruptcy” and could not afford another courtroom go-round.

Prosecutors also alleged Smith and Halloran plotted with Stern for another $40,000 in cash bribes to be paid to Tabone and Savino.

Tabone allegedly received $25,000, and Savino copped a plea in November to accepting a $15,000 bribe while alleging that Halloran instigated the scheme.

During the trial, Halloran admitted taking $10,000 in cash from an undercover FBI agent who he thought was a “shady” and “crooked” businessman.

Assistant US Attorney Douglas Bloom hammered Halloran over his relationship with the agent, known as “Raj,” who posed as a politically connected developer in meetings with Halloran and Smith.