Pete Kott Trial Day 11 - Pete Kott takes the Stand

It's lunch break.

Debeorah Stovern continued on the stand till about 11:30am. Overall she seemed to be a good witness. She looked nice without being flashy. She spoke well. She was consistent in her answers about the books and how she kept the records and why invoices said what they did.

When asked if she would be surprised to know that none of the FBI tapes had a conversation about using the $7,993 check from Allen to pay for flooring, she said, yes she would, she knows there were conversations. How does she know? Pete called her to tell her about the check from Allen's house when he and Peter Jr. and Allen talked about it. My sense of that was that she was told it was flooring and believed the conversation was about flooring.

She also gave a somewhat less cynical explanation of the Corrupt Bastards Club. She'd been invited for cocktails at the Baranof lounge and Rick Smith was reading a newspaper article and had her read it. It talked about how all the legislators who got money from Veco were corrupt and named some, including Pete Kott. The reaction was an ironic "hey, we're the corrupt bastards club' and the people listed in the article were the members. I recall back in the Sixties it came out that President Nixon had what he called an "enemies list." The people on that list took it, eventually, as a badge of honor to be on that list. I can see this being the same sort of thing. Of course, there is a difference. Nixon was impeached and resigned in disgrace, so people on his enemies list turned out to be 'good guys.' But two Veco executives have pleaded guilty to corruption and one of the people on the list, Tom Anderson, has been convicted of corruption and several others have been indicted. And Pete Kott is in Day 11 of his trial.

Even though Stovern was a strong presence on the stand, it seemed the prosecution made some points. They asked why Peter Jr. hadn't been paid with campaign funds for his work as campaign manager instead of getting future work for flooring to pay him. Prosecution asked whether it wasn't really so it wouldn't show up in the APOC report. She said it wouldn't look good for family members to get paid too much. But it wasn't a problem to pay family members a fair amount. When questioned about her payment for work on the campaign, Goeke asked why she didn't get paid until January 2007, near the end of the reporting period, way after the campaign, and why it listed Captial Consulting instead of Deborah Stovern? She answered reasonably, they had agreed that she would be paid if there was money left over, otherwise not, and by then it was clear they had money left over. And she had created the Capital Consultants billing form because now that she had learned the APOC reporting procedures, she was thinking of doing work for other campaigns. But she never did create the company. Goeke then asked, so your pay was listed to a company that never existed so it wouldn't embarrassing. And the he compared that to leaving Peter Jr.'s payment being called flooring work because it wouldn't have to go on the APOC report. There was an objection, but the jury heard the question.

The defense also asked Stovern about Pete's relationship with his wife. Not good. Seems they are having trouble with the terms of the divorce.


Pete Kott took the stand about 11:35 and Wendt immediately asked him about the $30,000 in cash in the house. We already heard yesterday from Peter Jr. that he prefers to use cash. The Kott's don't seem to trust banks it seems. Pete also prefers cash. The money was basically from his per diem checks as a legislator over two years. If he isn't spending them, perhaps the legislature should review the per diem policy. It is supposed to be for living expenses while in Juneau. Maybe the pay is too high. But that's another issue altogether.

He said none of the cash came from Allen or Smith, except for the $1000 Allen reimbursed him for his contribution, at Allen's request, to Murkowski's campaign. (Actually, Pete said he only got $900 back.) I recall Allen being questioned earlier about making campaign contributions through his employees illegally. This sounds like the same sort of thing.

Kott also testified about several campaign fliers that showed he's been using "Experienced Leadership" as a slogan since 1994, long before he got that advice from Dave Dittman. He also said he never asked for the poll or used the poll. Again, this would be to establish that the payment of the poll by Allen wasn't an illegal act by Kott since he wasn't a part of it. But he did hire Mackie as a campaign consultant, and it was mentioned already that the candidate is responsible for the campaign. We'll see where this goes.

One other point. I mentioned the jury's laughter at the Judge's humor this morning. I think it probably was a way to relief some stress and a show of trust of the judge. He made another mildly humorous comment when Wendt needed to lower the microphone. Something about Wendt being shorter than the government attorneys, but taller than the judge. The jury laughed loudly again. But when Kott joked about how he knew a campaign brochure's date, "in the photo I look a little younger , so it must have been earlier" that wasn't the slightest titter from the jury.

I've got to go eat before court resumes at 1:30