Today was Agent Mike Doyle's sixth and final day on the stand in the trial of the mayor and his brother Ralphiel Mack.
By Alex Zdan and Jenna Pizzi
TRENTON — Less than three months into Mayor Tony Mack’s administration, a conversation between Joseph “JoJo” Giorgianni and a wired-up government informant convinced the FBI that something had to be done in Trenton, an agent testified today.
Giorgianni was showing former attorney Lemuel Blackburn a row of cigars inside his “club house,” a building Giorgianni owns next door to JoJo’s Steak House on Martin Luther King Boulevard. As they spoke, Giorgianni mentioned corrupt 19th-century Boss William Tweed and receiving little white envelopes filled with cash as bribes in exchange for city work.
Listening to that recording was FBI Supervisory Special Agent Mike Doyle, who knew Giorgianni was within Mack’s inner circle. Testifying in Mack’s federal corruption trial today, Doyle said he feared that the Mack administration, with the help of Giorgianni, had the potential to extort millions from the city’s taxpayers.
“Based on the allegations that Mr. Giorgianni made during those ... initial meetings, I was fearful that an organized criminal element had taken over City Hall,” Doyle said. “And if so, I believe the cost to the taxpayers would be in the multi-million dollars as part of a criminal arrangement that had been inherent in the city.”
“That is the reason we had such a robust investigation,” said Doyle, who is a 17-year veteran of the FBI and was the lead agent on the case.
During the investigation, which led to charges filed against two city officials, the FBI used wiretaps, a surveillance camera, body wires, and paid a developer to cooperate with the government and pose with Blackburn as being interested in building an automated parking garage on a city-owned lot, Doyle said.
Today was Doyle’s sixth and final day on the stand in the trial of the mayor and his brother Ralphiel Mack. Most of Doyle’s time was spent under cross-examination by Mack’s attorney Mark Davis.
Davis attacked some of the government’s most striking evidence so far, from an April 17, 2012, meeting between Mack and Giorgianni at JoJo’s Steak House. It has been indicated during the trial that bribe money may have passed between the two at the meeting.
In answers to Davis’ questions, Doyle testified he and other agents were watching the steak shop when Mack was there. Doyle was in a car, driving around the block in a loop two or three times, he said.
“You didn’t see him inside the steak house at any time?” Davis asked.
“No, but I saw him (outside) when I went around,” Doyle said.
Minutes after Mack left the steak shop, Mack called a landscaper he owed money to, but Davis said the payment was not a significant amount.
“Only gave $100,” Davis said. “And that did not clear the balance (Mack owed the landscaper), correct?” Doyle agreed.
It also was shown that a large tax lien payment Mack made around the time of the meeting could not have been funded with any money exchanged at the same April 17 meeting.
The $6,168 tax lien paid to the city two days after the meeting was paid with a check issued by TD Bank before the meeting took place, Doyle said in response to Davis’ questioning.
“Would you agree the check was cut on April 13, 2012?” Davis asked. Doyle agreed. The lien was paid on April 19, 2012.
Davis and the prosecution tussled over details in papers Giorgianni, and then Mack, are seen holding in a video of a November 2011 meeting between the two in Atlantic City.
Blackburn had given Giorgianni a photocopied brochure containing information on parking garages. The defense has attempted to show that Mack did not have knowledge of the parking garage plan until later.
Davis repeatedly questioned whether Mack ever got the papers, culminating during re-cross-examination when he had Doyle hold a copy of the brochure in his hand.
Davis compared the distinctive black bar on the brochure with video of Mack holding rolled-up papers in his hand after the meeting. There was no visible black bar, but Doyle said it was because Mack’s hand was blocking the marking.
Immediately afterward, Davis showed surveillance footage of Mack leaving the casino in which Mack moves the paper up and down.
“You do not see a black bar on those papers,” Davis said.
“I do not see a black bar,” Doyle said.
In the video of Giorgianni coming out of an elevator to meet Mack, papers in hand, it appears there is a white envelope sandwiched between the folds of the brochure.
Davis tried to show a difference between Doyle’s grand jury testimony, where Doyle said Giorgianni passed Mack bribe money and parking garage information during the Atlantic City meeting, and the government’s case in the trial where that argument has not been presented. But later in the day when the prosecution was given another chance to ask Doyle questions following the defense’s cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Eric Moran prompted Doyle to clarify his position.
“Do you maintain the same position today as you did in your grand jury testimony?” Moran asked.
“I do,” Doyle answered.
Doyle testified that the complex case included several agents listening to phone calls in real time from the FBI field office. Sometimes agents were sent to conduct in-person surveillance, and they twice traveled to Atlantic City to where meetings between Mack and Giorgianni took place.
On July 19, 2012, a swarm of roughly 20 agents raided City Hall armed with a search warrant. That search followed the July 18, 2012, early morning searches of the homes of Mack, Giorgianni and Mack’s brother Ralphiel, a former football coach and guidance counselor at Trenton Central High School.
During those searches, federal agents found $9,441 at Giorgianni’s house, Doyle said. Of the money found inside Girogianni’s home, $2,900 of it matched serial numbers found on the bills that were passed to Giorgianni from the FBI cooperators, the agent said.
Doyle said while he did not order all of the money that was passed to Giorgianni through the course of the investigation to be catalogued, they did not find any of the bills that were catalogued in the search of Mack’s home. Doyle was not asked about the search of Ralphiel Mack’s home, but the FBI search of his River Drive home yielded $2,500 in cash. Mack’s attorney Robert Haney has contended that his client took the money as a loan from Giorgianni two days before.
During his cross-examination, Davis played an April 24, 2012, phone call during which Mack yelled at and cursed at his friend Thomas Cardwell after Cardwell tried to set up a meeting on Mack’s behalf. The nature of the proposed meeting was not explained.
“You don’t meet with people anymore,” Mack said in a recording of the call. “People have wires on them, try to get you arrested.”
“I don’t even want to be in a meeting where I’m second guessing what it is,” he said.
Mack wanted to meet with the person Cardwell was suggesting he talk to in Atlantic City rather than Trenton. Mack was going to a mayors conference in the resort town the next day and said it would be better to meet there because he would have “four or five mayors” sitting with him.
With then-Hamilton Mayor John Bencivengo arrested by the FBI the week before, Mack said he was not taking any unnecessary risks.
“Google John Bencivenga and call me back,” Mack said.
When Cardwell asked Mack how he could do his job without meeting with people, Mack started screaming at Cardwell.
“Cause you have surrogates who meet with people,” Mack said. “You stay away from possible corruption.”
“How you know someone’s offering something that’s corrupt?” Cardwell said.
Cardwell eventually gave up on setting up the meeting and ended the call.
Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.
Contact Jenna Pizzi at jpizzi@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5717.
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