THE MONEY MAN:City Councilman Larry Seabrook, arriving at Manhattan federal court yesterday, is on trial for allegedly getting “corrupt payments.” (
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The corruption trial of city Councilman Larry Seabrook got off to a rocky start yesterday as a key prosecution witness denied paying kickbacks to the Bronx Democrat.
Boiler-company owner Leon Eastmond threw cold water on prosecution claims that Seabrook got “corrupt payments” from him for help landing a lucrative contract involving the new Yankee Stadium.
Eastmond, 85, said “donating to politicians is a way of life,” and noted that he made many contributions to Seabrook’s causes long before Eastmond’s Bronx-based business was hired in 2006 to build two giant hot-water heaters for the Bronx Bombers.
“He never said, ‘Give me money for the Yankee Stadium [contract]’ . . . It was never like a — what do you call it? — a quid pro quo,” Eastmond testified in Manhattan federal court.
Instead, Eastmond insisted that the $40,000-plus he gave Seabrook between 2006 and 2009 was both “because of the things he did for me, and the help he gave the community.”
Wearing a pair of borrowed reading glasses, Eastmond — who testified pursuant to a nonprosecution deal with the feds — struggled to make out the details on a dozen checks he signed on both his personal and business accounts.
Eastmond said Seabrook filled in the payee and amount on each of the checks, which ranged from $300 to $6,000 each.
Most went to Seabrook’s North East Bronx Community Democratic Club, although one check, for $5,000 in December 2007, was made payable directly to the 60-year-old politician.
Also yesterday, Yankee executive Lonn Trost said he agreed to pay a $13,000 “premium” over the lowest bid to hire Eastmond’s Easco Boiler Corp. to help meet the team quota for hiring local, minority-owned firms.
Trost said it was “a plus” that Easco was “heavily supported” by a local politician, but added he didn’t know it was Seabrook, whom Trost had never met, the team exec said.
During opening statements, Lee told jurors that Seabrook “served himself” instead of the city through a series of schemes that included defrauding about $1.5 million in “discretionary funds” he steered to “dysfunctional” nonprofits that employed “his mistress, his family and his friends.”
Defense lawyer Anthony Ricco accused Lee of trying to distract the jury by mentioning Seabrook’s mistress, Gloria Jones-Grant, 18 times during Lee’s half-hour opening.
“Is he perfect? Oh, no. He’s a man. He is a man. But he isn’t on trial for being a man,” Ricco said.