Thomas C. Green Interview 8

207
ORAL HISTORY OF THOMAS C. GREEN
This interview is being conducted on behalf of the Oral History Project of the Historical
Society of the District of Columbia Circuit. The interviewer is Judy Feigin and the interviewee is
Thomas C. Green. The interview is taking place at the office of Sidley Austin in Washington, D.
C. on March 21, 2025. This is the eighth interview.
MS. FEIGIN: Good afternoon.
MR. GREEN: Good afternoon.
MS. FEIGIN: Returning to your career, I know one of the cases that you consider
important in your long inventory of interesting and fascinating cases is the
Poyiadjis case.
MR. GREEN: Yes. Roys Poyiadjis is an enormously interesting guy. A very bright guy
and in many ways accomplished. He was born in Cyprus, I think around
1974. His family was caught up in the kind of tensions and actually kind
of warfare between the Greeks and the Cypriots on the island of Cyprus.
For a while I think he lived in a refugee camp.
He was very committed to getting an education. He received a
degree from the University of Kent in England and he got an MBA from
London Business School, so he became a very accomplished guy. He
worked for Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers in the United Kingdom
in the early and mid-1990s. He was working in the financial world and in
the late ’90s he met a fellow by the name of Lycourgos Kyprianou.
Kyprianou was a fellow Greek. They formed a company called
AremisSoft. They took the company public on the NASDAQ in around
1999 or 2000.
208
Then they embarked on what turned out to be an incredible scheme
if you will, in which they bought other companies and pumped up the
stock. It turned out that there was a lot of fraud in connection with these
acquisitions and the public statements concerning the earnings of the
acquired companies and so forth. In 2001 the SEC began to investigate
AremisSoft based on press reports that AremisSoft had overstated the
value of certain of its business dealings and contracts.
In October of 2001, the SEC filed a civil enforcement action
against AremisSoft. And a grand jury on December 19th of 2001 returned
an indictment against Poyiadjis and Kyprianou charging a lot of counts
relating to securities fraud. There were, I think, also forfeiture counts in
the criminal indictment that sought the return of millions and millions, if
not hundreds of millions of dollars. So that’s kind of the background.
I’m sitting in my office one day and I get a call from Roys
Poyiadjis. This call must have come to me right around that time, 2001,
2002, somewhere in that time frame. Roys gave me a brief description of
the problem that was confronting him. He said he was in Cyprus and it
was his intention to remain in Cyprus because there’s no extradition from
Cyprus but that he’d like to talk to me. And I said the typical thing that
lawyers do, engaged in some further conversation and then said I’m
intrigued enough to be willing to fly over to talk to you, but you’ll have to
send me X amount. I don’t know how much money I asked for, but I said
209
you’ll have to send me X amount of money and if it hits the bank here, I’ll
come.
He said fine. And whatever it was, I’m sure it was a sufficiently
abundant number, he sent it. So I got on a plane, along with a younger
lawyer by the name of Brad Berenson. I think I mentioned Brad’s name
before [Session 7]. Brad practiced at Sidley for a number of years. He was
an enormously gifted young lawyer. I played a small role in recruiting him
to Sidley, which is one of the best things I ever did in my life. He stayed at
Sidley for a number of years, then went to General Electric, I think as head
of litigation, and then moved on to become the general counsel of I think
it’s TPG out in California. He’s had a great career.
Brad’s been with me on a number of cases. He was with me on the
Poyiadjis matter and he was with me in Governor Aníbal Acevedo’s case
that we’re going to talk about. He was also with me when we together
tried Sylvester Lukis and Vicki Lukis’s case in Florida. And I’m grateful
that he was beside me in all those cases because he’s an extraordinarily
talented guy. He took a lot of the laboring oars, if you will. I’m just very,
very fond of him.
So the two of us got on an airplane and we flew to Cyprus. We
went to a hotel where Roys had commandeered a huge conference room.
That’s where we were scheduled to meet with him. So we find ourselves
in the conference room before Roys arrives, but soon after he comes in
and he’s tugging and pulling three of the biggest suitcases I’ve ever seen.
210
Pulling them into the conference room. And of course I was dumb enough
to ask what are you bringing us, lunch or what? [laughter] And he said
“These are all my documents.” So to shorten this story, because this all
could go on for a long time, he lays all these documents out on the table.
And essentially the first day’s efforts are devoted to Roys’s explaining to
us how he’s innocent of everything.
MS. FEIGIN: Is that the typical first day with a client?
MR. GREEN: It’s not atypical. It happens a fair amount. We had prepared ourselves,
just given the public documents that were out there, so we knew
something about this case. And I don’t want to be too critical of Roys
because what he was doing is kind of a natural facet of behavior for men
in these situations. But as we sat there listening to him hour after hour, the
needle on my bullshit meter is percolating and it finally rises to a level
where I needed to enter into a bit of a debate with him.
My recollection is that over a period of either two or three days,
through a process of confronting him with this question and then that
question and perhaps this document and that document, the story began to
change and fall apart. And it finally migrates to the point where I told him
that regardless of what he thinks, he’s got big problems.
If I had to guess, and this is now over 20 years ago, I think he
acknowledged it. And I think we told him that the best course of action
would be to start talking to the prosecutors in New York City where the
U.S. Attorney’s office was. That’s the office that had indicted him. To
211
start talking to them and seeing just what we could do, if there’s any
possibility to do something for Roys.
We also began to discuss with Roys that something would have to
happen to the money that the government claimed was socked away. I
think in the process of talking to him, either in Cyprus or by telephone in
the couple of months that ensued, we got pretty much of a handle on how
much money there was. It was over $200 million.
We began to visit with Ray Lohier in the U.S. Attorney’s Office,
who’s now on the Second Circuit. Not too long after this case was over, he
was elevated to the Second Circuit from Assistant U.S. Attorney. Their
opening position was that it was really a pretty open and shut case. They
had Roys kind of in the crosshairs where they wanted him and they were
not in a mood to be generous with him.
The government’s position was pretty draconian in the beginning
with respect to what would have to be a settlement with them or the
outlines of a plea agreement with them. But we worked through a lot of
proposals and counter proposals, and we had the SEC in there as well
because the SEC had this dramatically tough complaint on file.
We ultimately settled with the SEC in a civil settlement and we
worked out a plea agreement where he would plead to one count of
securities fraud. That was a plea that was taken in July of 2010 so this
went on for that long.
MS. FEIGIN: Wow. Eight or nine years.
212
MR. GREEN: There was a superseding indictment filed in June of 2002 and the SEC
entered judgment in April of 2005. These are the negotiations that are
going on. Ultimately Roys had to come back to the country. He was
paroled in for purposes of entering his plea and then I think remaining for
sentencing. Lohier also wanted Roys to cooperate in the government’s
continuing pursuit of Kypriano, the other defendant. So we reached what
you could say amounted to kind of a global settlement with the SEC and
the U.S. Attorney’s office.
The reason that the sentencing was delayed for so long is that the
government was trying to find and get hold of Kyprianou. There were a
number of attempts to apprehend him, but I think Kyprianou was never
apprehended and remains a fugitive today. But ultimately the case had to
be resolved and brought to conclusion. Roys agreed to forfeit or pay $200
million to the United States. That was the largest SEC recovery, certainly
at that time. I don’t know whether it remains the largest SEC recovery, but
it was an enormous disgorgement.
In the process of negotiating that case, we were able to reach
agreement with the government whereby Roys was able to keep a fairly
sizable amount of money himself. Some of that was because we were able
to establish it was unrelated to this larger insider trading and false
statement case and so forth. So he was able certainly to survive
comfortably. He was married to an American woman.
213
It came time for sentencing. I asked that he be placed on probation.
And the judge sentenced him to three years of probation in large part
because of his cooperation, which had been ongoing for a substantial
period of time. He was very, very fortunate. He had to return an enormous
amount of money which was appropriate under the circumstances, but he
never went to jail.
But the story doesn’t end there because Roys was allowed to
remain in the United States. He’s still in the United States, living in New
York. He became a very philanthropic guy. If you’re talking about making
amends for the things you’ve done, he certainly has made amends.
He became involved with the New York University School of
Medicine and he donated at least several millions of dollars to their
Department of Physiology and Neuroscience in support of research. And
he has formed companies to support continuing research.
He established a scholarship fund at the University of Cyprus to
provide scholarships to students who were excelling in economics and
were in need of financial assistance. He’s done a number of things like
that. He’s been a really good citizen. When I say that, I actually don’t
know whether he’s a citizen of the United States yet, but I mean citizen in
the broader sense. He’s just been remarkable in that way.
The interesting thing about Roys Poyiadjis is he was an
extraordinarily talented and well-educated and bright guy, who kind of got
sucked off into this vortex with this guy Kyprianou, who I think for the
214
most part probably is the one who kind of mesmerized Roys. I’ve never
understood exactly how that happened. But Roys ultimately came to
confront it and do the right thing and move through it. I haven’t talked to
him at length in some time but I think he’s getting along fine. And I hope
he’s, knock on wood, here. I hope he’s here in this country for a long time.
So that’s a little bit of the Poyiadjis case.
MS. FEIGIN: I know you’ve said that among your panoply of fascinating cases, one of
the most fascinating was the governor of Puerto Rico. That’s probably not
a case that most people know about because I don’t think he’s a household
name, so could you tell us about him.
MR. GREEN: It was a remarkable case for a number of reasons. Aníbal Acevedo-Vilá
was the Resident Commissioner for Puerto Rico in the early 2000s. The
Resident Commissioner is Puerto Rico’s representative to the U.S.
government. They have an office here in Washington.
He’s a non-voting Representative in the U.S. House of
Representatives, like the District of Columbia has Eleanor Holmes Norton
as a non-voting Representative. He is the figurehead for the
Commonwealth of Puerto Rico in Washington, but unlike other members
of the House, his term is for four years.
Then he was elected governor. In Puerto Rico there are basically
two different parties. At the risk of summarizing too succinctly, one party
advocates statehood status for Puerto Rico and the other party is more
wedded to commonwealth status. The party that Acevedo-Vilá was
215
affiliated with is the party that wants commonwealth status and not
statehood. He became that party’s candidate. The party is, I think, called
the Popular Democratic Party. He became their candidate for governor and
he was elected governor in 2004.
He was elected after a pretty severely contested election. The
results were unknown for a very long period of time while the Elections
Commission went through recounts. But finally, on December 28th of
2004, he’s declared the elected governor of Puerto Rico.
An investigation of the governor starts somewhere around 2006 or
2007. And so again, I’m always just sitting in my office minding my own
business [laughter]. I get a call and it’s from the governor of Puerto Rico; I
thought, that’s kind of interesting.
He was referred to me through some of Puerto Rico’s lobbyists in
Washington. I think Charlie Black in particular and maybe Scott Pastrick.
I think it’s likely that the referral came through them. Charlie Black is a
well-known guy, a very fantastic guy, and Scott Pastrick was a very
talented public relations lobbyist, Democratic operative in Washington. I
think they’re both now essentially retired.
The governor told me about this investigation. And the next thing
you know, Brad and I are down in Puerto Rico talking to the governor. We
spent quite a bit of time familiarizing ourselves with what’s going on.
From what we could determine, the governor was under
investigation both by the U.S. Attorney’s office in San Juan and the Public
216
Integrity section here at DOJ in Washington, for essentially campaign
violations. For a series of transactions where third parties were solicited
one way or another to pay off campaign debt from the governor’s
campaign in ways that were not permitted by Puerto Rican law. When
they look at things like that, they look at money laundering and honest
services fraud and everything else. But it was basically a case that grew
out of campaign violations.
I remember we had a number of meetings at the Department of
Justice to try to talk them out of indicting the governor. I thought we had
compelling arguments to make because essentially the governor’s defense
was honestly, if that happened, in truth, I didn’t know anything about it. I
really didn’t.
In this case, I believed the governor. In all of our investigation and
from everything we could determine, while the Department of Justice was
committed to their theory, their theory was basically predicated — when
you strip everything away and look at what so-called evidence they
actually accumulated — really they were relying on the old adage he had to
know, how could he not know? All this is going on around him. This
elaborate scheme. His closest advisors are engaged in it. How could he not
know? And again, in simplification a bit, our proposition was that’s sweet,
that’s great you want to say that, but you can’t win on that theory. You’re
going to have to back that up.
217
So he’s ultimately indicted. He actually was indicted twice. The
first indictment was in March of 2008. The governor was running for
reelection through this entire investigation and the pages were filled with
stories about the investigation in Puerto Rico. Page after page after page.
Everyone in that geographic area knew there was a huge investigation
going on.
The election was going to be in the fall of 2008. I told the
Department of Justice, among the arguments I was making, that you
should not indict a sitting public official so close to an election. There is
an unwritten rule, maybe it’s even written. It could be in the U.S.
Attorney’s Manual, I don’t know. But there’s a rule of which we were all
familiar that it’s too close to an election. They just ignored that and they
went ahead and indicted him.
But to make matters worse, they indicted him again. They added
some more counts to the indictment which were related to this scheme.
They charged honest services fraud and so forth. They added five counts
in August of 2008, even closer to the election. And of course I was just
furious about that.
Certainly during our conversations with the judge I brought all this
up, but the judge was unwilling to do anything about it. All the judges in
Puerto Rico recused themselves from this case, every single judge. So they
brought down Judge Barbadoro from New Hampshire. And I will say this
about Judge Barbadoro, he was a tough cookie. I don’t say this lightly, and
218
I’m sure if he were ever to read this he might not be real happy with me.
But I believe that he believed that the governor was guilty. He was going
to give him a fair trial, but I think he believed the governor was guilty. At
least that’s my opinion. And Judge Barbadoro, if you’re reading this and
I’ve offended you, I apologize.
So we’re faced with going to trial. Interestingly, a couple of things
happened before trial. When you add up the counts from the early
indictment and then the later indictment, Judge Barbadoro did consolidate
them into one trial. So they effectively became like one indictment. We
probably requested that. We didn’t want to have two trials. The factual
underpinning of all these charges was the same universe of fact. How was
this money actually raised to pay off the campaign debt? Who knew? Who
did it? Did the governor know about it? That’s kind of the core framework
for this whole controversy.
I think when you get both cases together, he’s ultimately charged
with like 19 counts of misconduct. Campaign violations, some IRS
charges that he took some of this campaign money and spent it on himself
without declaring it. Silly charges, but they were there, honest services
fraud. We filed a motion to dismiss a lot of the counts. A substantial
number of the counts were predicated on violations of local electoral law,
Puerto Rico law.
And now I’ll give Judge Barbadoro credit because Brad Berenson
thought up the theory as to why all of those counts predicated on Puerto
219
Rico electoral law were baloney. He crafted a beautiful and compelling
motion and he argued it, and Judge Barbadoro threw out all those counts.
You could say on a technicality, but nevertheless, they were thrown out.
So in the final analysis, the governor is going to go to trial only on nine
counts.
What’s interesting here is that 13 people were indicted. The
governor was indicted and a woman by the name of Louisa Inclan. Louisa
Inclan was a big part of his campaign. She was a legal advisor for the
governor’s San Juan office and volunteered in his 2004 gubernatorial
campaign’s finance department. So that’s two of the 13. All of the others
are basically businessmen or campaign officials who were charged with
helping to raise these funds to pay off this debt.
A number of the defendants were related to the campaign, the
campaign’s finance department or finance director in the political party.
They were kind of local political officials and businessmen in this alleged
massive conspiracy which was count one. The rest of the counts were a lot
of individual violations.
Of the 13, eight pled guilty before trial. And three, essentially
businessmen from Philadelphia, where much of this money was raised,
were severed. Their cases were transferred to the U.S. district court in
Philadelphia. They ultimately pled guilty as well. Some of those pleas, I
think, were taken after the governor’s trial concluded.
220
One of those three was a gentleman by the name of Candido
Negron Mella. We believed that he would provide exculpatory testimony,
notwithstanding he was a co-defendant. So we went to the court and we
basically said unless you sever him from this trial, he won’t be able to
provide that exculpatory testimony. The judge took that under advisement
and again, I’ll give Judge Barbadoro a shout out. He agreed with us that
the equities were more on our side than on the government’s side, and he
granted a severance which resulted in a delayed trial which allowed
Negron Mella to come to court in Puerto Rico and testify on behalf of the
governor and not be reticent in invoking the Fifth. So we did get his
testimony ultimately.
In discovery, we were able to ascertain the government’s likely
witnesses. Part of the scheme that they charged the governor with was that
in return for these political contributions, the governor facilitated certain
meetings between the indicted businessmen and officials in the Puerto
Rican government. It was alleged that he facilitated these meetings
between those parties to help or assist the businessmen to obtain contracts
with the Puerto Rican government.
So we had access to everyone who was indicted with our client.
Our co-defendants were happy to talk to us, lawyers for the governor,
because we’re going to represent the lead defendant in the trial. And it
would only inure to their advantage if we could bang on the government’s
case. But equally important in discovery, we were able to identify who the
221
government would likely call to testify at trial. Some of it was very
explicit because you could just read the FBI interviews and so forth. Some
of it was just through intuition and educated guesses. They ended up
calling 30 witnesses at trial. We may have missed one, but I think we
either talked to 29 or all 30.
So let’s assume there’s 30; 28 talked to us. For instance, I would
go to the director of the Department of Health, or whatever, because some
of these businessmen were trying to sell medical insurance to Puerto Rican
citizens and they had to be licensed to do that and so forth. So I would go
to the director of the Department of Health and I would say, just as an
example, “Did you have a meeting with Candido Negron?” “Yeah, I did.”
“And why did you meet with him?” “Well, he wanted to meet with me to
try to interest me in their medical insurance product for Puerto Rico.”
“And you met with him?” “Yes.” “And did you ultimately contract with
him to provide insurance?” “ No we didn’t.” And I said, “More
importantly, did the governor ever call up and beseech you to meet with
Negron? Did he ask you?” “No. I never, never, never heard from the
governor.”
That’s kind of a fair representation of what we were hearing. And
we’re down there, we’re living in Puerto Rico for a substantial period of
time. The whole thing just didn’t make sense to us. But in cruising around
to speak to everybody, two prospective witnesses refused to talk to us.
Which was, under the circumstances, kind of remarkable because
222
everybody was trying to be helpful. They had lawyers and their lawyers
would not let me talk to them.
What do I take from that? What I take from that is that they have
evidence that is potentially hurtful to the governor. I don’t know what it is
because their lawyers aren’t going to tell me and they’re not telling me. Or
it’s evidence that they think is hurtful or whatever, but that they’re
cooperating with the prosecutors and for that reason they don’t want to
talk to me. All right, they don’t want to talk to me.
So now we go to trial. And the trial is going, I would say,
relatively comfortably. Although there’s a lot of witnesses, after crossexamination, we’re able to neutralize essentially every one of them.
These two guys that didn’t talk to me, they’re not called by the
government. As the case is progressing, I’m working with the governor at
night to get him ready to testify. And we are really putting in a lot of hours
because the governor needs a lot of hours to get ready to testify.
At some point, as we got closer and closer to the end of the case, I
began to believe that the better tactic would be to leave the governor off
the stand. I rarely have done that in a public corruption case. In almost
every public corruption case I’ve ever tried, I put the public official on the
stand because juries expect an explanation. They want to hear from the
public official. They don’t want the public official remaining silent in the
face of serious accusations; that’s like a death blow. So absent the most
remarkable of circumstances, I would put a public official on the stand
223
unless they can’t even pronounce their name and remember the days of the
week.
So we get down towards the end of the trial and the government
rests. Now by this time, I pretty much figured out what’s happening
because of an additional fact. As the trial was coming to a close, one
member of the prosecution team every day would come over to my table
and ask me “Is the governor going to testify?” on the pretext that they
want to make sure they’re prepared if he’s going to testify. And I would
say, on every occasion, “Of course he’s going to testify. And when he
does, he’s going to blow a hole the size of Yankee Stadium through your
case, and you better be ready for him because he’s coming.”
The next day another guy would guy walk over. “Is the governor
going to testify?” I said “Goddamn right he’s going to testify, and he’s
getting ready and he’s going to blow your case to bits.” This went on for
about five days. And it’s very clear to me – and this is almost right at the
end of the trial – what’s happening here. They are believing me that the
governor is going to testify. And so they are holding those two witnesses
back for rebuttal. They never should have exposed their tactics like that.
But it’s clear to me that that’s exactly what they’re doing.
So in those waning days I go to the governor and say “Governor,
you’re not going to testify.” He was disappointed because he had worked
like a dog to get ready. He asked why and I explained to him. He still
thought he should testify. I said “You can’t testify. We’re going to cut
224
those guys off at the knees.” Because if he doesn’t testify, they have no
rebuttal.
So we’re getting down to the end of the trial and the government
rests. And then the chief trial lawyer for the government, Maria
Dominguez, stands up and says “I want to keep the record open Your
Honor because we may want to put in some documents. We just want to
run a checklist, put some documents in.”
I get up. I say “No deal. I’m not moving forward until the
government rests” because I didn’t want to take a chance that anything
was going to unravel. Judge Barbadoro now is getting progressively more
unhappy with me in the trial because I am who I am. He’s losing his
patience with me. I’ve lost mine with him days ago, but he’s losing his
patience with me.
He said “I’m going to let them.” I said “I am not going to start my
case until the government rests. Under the rules, I’m not obliged to move
forward with my defense till the government rests. Now we can take five
days and sit around on the beach while they go through their documents
and decide if there’s anything else they want to put into evidence. But I
want to know the totality of their case before my case starts.” And he
knew I was right. So back and forth conversation with the prosecutor.
Finally I think they tendered one other document to the court. Then they
rest.
225
I had played some more charades by this time. Judge Barbadoro
made me give the prosecutors my witness list days before they rested. I
structured the witness list so that the first three guys on the witness list
were really good buddies of the governor. We’re in heavy gamesmanship
right here. I call those three guys up. I say “Look, I need you guys to do
me a favor. You need to come to the courthouse. The government’s case is
not over yet and it won’t be over for maybe three days. I need you to sit in
the witness room for three days. You understand? Will you do it?” “Yes
sir. We’ll do it.”
They come down. I put them in the witness room. I leave the door
of the witness room open with a little doorstop. I explained to them what
we’re doing, I said “I want this door open so that every time anyone from
the prosecution team walks down this hall, they pass this door and they see
you three characters in here waiting to testify. You understand that?”
MS. FEIGIN: [laughter]
MR. GREEN: They said “Yes, okay.” “Just bring a book. Bring newspapers, whatever
you need.” They do it. They sit right there. Meanwhile, back in the
courtroom, finally the government rests. And Barbadoro says to me, “Mr.
Green, call your first witness.” So I gathered up all my books and went to
the podium. Then I went back and got more books to put on the side table.
The courtroom is in a hush. It’s just in a hush. And I’m moving the papers
here, adjusting them here. And then I look up, and I look right at
Barbadoro and I say “The defense rests.”
226
MS. FEIGIN: [laughter]
MR. GREEN: He went batshit. Can’t use those terms, you know, taking an oral history
but he says “Come to the bench.”
As we’re going up to the bench, one of the lawyers on the
prosecution team sidles up to me. And he says “Boy you’ve got big balls.”
I said “Big balls? I’m just doing my job.”
MS. FEIGIN: [laughter]
MR. GREEN: We get up to the bench and Barbadoro has about had it with me. “Why
didn’t you tell me you were going to rest your case?” and da, da, da, da. I
said “Judge, I didn’t know whether I was going to rest my case until I
could evaluate the entirety of the prosecution’s case. That’s why I wanted
to know when their case was over. That’s when I made my assessment.
And Your Honor, you have called us back to chambers every day
after trial” – which he did – “to discuss with us the next day’s
proceedings, and you have asked me more than once, many more times
than once, whether I was going to put on a defense in this case. And I told
you each time that I’m considering all my options. I said that to you not
once, but probably a dozen times. Every time you asked, I said I’m
considering all my options. I’ve been totally candid with you.” I was
considering all my options right up to the end. And that was that.
He said “All right, we’ll adjourn for a day and a half” — whatever
– “to get jury instructions and all that.” So we got the jury instructions
done. We came back and we argued the case. I argued for a couple of
227
hours. Government argued a couple of hours. Then we left the courthouse
because it was kind of late in the afternoon. I never could imagine that
there’d be a verdict, and we got in our car. We had a car or a small van to
take the whole crew back to the hotel. Halfway back to the hotel, my
phone rings and the clerk says “Mr. Green, where are you? We have a
verdict.” I said “We are on our way back to the hotel.” And the clerk said
“Can you turn around and come back to the courthouse?”
MS. FEIGIN: How long had the trial taken?
MR. GREEN: A little over a month, I think.
MS. FEIGIN: What did you think such a speedy verdict indicated?
MR. GREEN: Normally that would not be a propitious sign. I think most quick verdicts
are verdicts of guilty. Most. I mean, generalizing. But I kind of had a
feeling we were making pretty good points. I had a pretty good record to
play with in closing argument because nothing really bad had come in on
the governor. Almost every single witness said I never talked to him, he
didn’t know anything.
So we come back and the jury comes in not guilty. And the
courtroom just erupts. It also erupted when I said I rest. Barbadoro’s
pounding his gavel. But it really erupted when the jury said not guilty.
There’s a film of the crowd outside the courthouse, and then when I come
out to get into our car they’re chanting “Green, Green, Green.” It’s crazy
to look at. And that’s basically most of the story about Governor Acevedo
Vilá’s case.
228
MS. FEIGIN: Was that was the end of his political career?
MR. GREEN: It was. I think he tried a comeback, to be Resident Commissioner again,
and was defeated. He’s a good guy. His wife was a wonderful lady. She
contracted cancer I think sometime after the trial and she passed away a
couple of years ago, lovely woman. I think he’s doing okay. Every once in
a while I show up in Puerto Rico and we visit. It was an amazing trial.
MS. FEIGIN: I read that he was an Obama supporter and Obama tried to distance
himself.
MR. GREEN: I don’t know. I don’t remember that. But I’ve always admired him. I think
he’s a really good guy. I was very happy I was able to help him survive
through this.
MS. FEIGIN: That is quite dramatic. Let’s talk about one more dramatic case, Dennis
Hastert.
MR. GREEN: Dennis Hastert is a sad episode. Dennis was Speaker of the House of
Representatives. When he resigned, he was at that time the longest-serving
Republican Speaker ever. I think he probably still is.
Then he joined Dickstein Shapiro as kind of a lobbyist or
rainmaker. There were some newspaper articles that reported on his
success and that he was making a nice living. I don’t know whether the
amounts of money he was making were actually specified or not. But as a
result, he gets a call from a guy who claims that he was abused by Dennis
when he was a younger boy, young man. And he threatens to expose that
unless Dennis pays him. I think he demanded about $3 million. You can
229
probably imagine the emotions that run through Dennis at that moment in
time. I’m guessing this is around 2010.
MS. FEIGIN: The abuse allegedly had occurred how long ago? Decades?
MR. GREEN: Decades, yes. Hastert was a high school teacher and wrestling coach
beginning in I think around 1965 and that continued through to 1981. 1981
is when he was first elected as a public official, as a Representative from
Illinois. So this stuff is probably late ’60s, early ’70s. And the call is
coming in 2010, more than 30 years later.
Hastert is overwrought and extremely upset at all this and he
essentially agrees to begin to pay this guy. He ends up paying him almost
$2 million. But he had to get the money. He had to get the cash to pay this
guy. So he began a series of cash withdrawals from his bank, first without
regard to the so-called currency transaction reporting, the $10,000 limit.
He starts taking like tranches of $50,000 out of the bank. And the bank
begins to ask a series of questions as to what’s going on. Why are you
taking this money out? And of course he’s not forthcoming with respect to
why he is actually taking the money out. I don’t know what he told them
but it wasn’t true.
I think he even took withdrawals of maybe $100,000 out initially.
So the bank has questions. I can’t recall whether the bank alerted the FBI
or they came onto it through some other way. But I think that $1.7 million
was paid over the period of 2010 to 2014. In 2013 the FBI starts an
investigation into whether there’s possible structuring of currency
230
transactions to evade the reporting requirements. They go to interview
Hastert and they show up at his house wearing a wire. They give Hastert a
story that they want to know whether he’s okay. They’re there on a pretext
of trying to protect him and Hastert talks to them without a lawyer. He
tells them that he’s using the money for investments and he denies that
he’s being harassed or extorted and so forth.
Sometime around this time, I get a call from a really good friend of
mine by the name of Barry Levine over at Dickstein Shapiro, who has
been representing Hastert. The firm developed a conflict with another
client and he asked me if I would be willing to talk to Dennis. So I go over
to Dickstein Shapiro and have an initial conversation with him. And then
we had a couple of more conversations. I don’t want to get into what those
conversations were. But I’ll leave it at this, I told Hastert that I needed to
know the truth. And I embarked on the representation so probably one
could infer I got the truth, whatever that may be.
We made a presentation at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago. I
thought we had made a good presentation. The allegations were clearly
unattractive. But even taking the allegations in their most incriminating
interpretation, whatever happened stopped also. It occurred many years
ago but stopped many years ago. And then he went on to have a
remarkably productive life in which you could argue credibly that he
contributed much to this country’s success.
231
By all accounts he was a respected Speaker of the House and a guy
of many accomplishments. He was the recipient of many awards and other
honors — buildings named for him and so forth. He was by all appearances
a really respected and responsible individual.
We were unable to persuade the Department to make any kind of
pre-indictment settlement. They were determined to bring this case. I don’t
want to be overly critical, but sometimes when lawyers in the U.S.
Attorney’s office come across what is a high-profile case, it just kind of
takes on a life of its own and the ability to reason with them or to
effectuate some kind of accommodation which takes everyone’s interests
into account – they don’t want that. They prefer to make a splash of sorts.
This might not have been the case where from the government’s
perspective a settlement would have been appropriate. I understand that
from their perspective. But anyway, he’s indicted on May 28, 2015. And I
will say one thing to the credit of the prosecutors. In the indictment they
did avoid getting horribly specific about any of the background or
backdrop to this. He was actually indicted for currency violations for the
way he took the money out of the bank and for lying to the FBI. The
statute of limitations had long expired on any offenses associated with
molestation or anything like that. So this was strictly a financial crimes
case, if you want to call it that. They did not lard it up with a lot of the
background information.
232
So we were left to try this case, and I had long talks with Dennis
Hastert, long, long talks. I’m not trying to state anything other than the
obvious. This would have been a horrible case to try even though I suspect
that some of the alleged victims would not be that comfortable coming to
the courtroom.
MS. FEIGIN: So there was more than one victim?
MR. GREEN: There were allegations of more than one victim, yes. There was only one,
so far as I understand the facts, that’s alleged to have tried to extort him.
So we had to work out some kind of deal here and then hope that
we could put together a compelling presentation when it came to
sentencing. During the negotiations with the prosecutors I insisted that I
had a meritorious motion to dismiss the case because of the way the FBI
had come and interviewed Dennis on a pretext, which really wasn’t a
completely candid statement on the FBI’s part. Also they talked to him
without a lawyer and there was enough that I could make a fair amount of
noise with a motion. I told the government that I would file the motion
unless the government agreed to a plea to one count and a
recommendation of no jail time.
I didn’t get everything I wanted but they agreed that he could plead
guilty to a two-count indictment and they would recommend a guideline
calculation of zero to six months and would ask for a sentence within that
guideline range. So that became the basis of Dennis’s plea which occurred
on October 28, 2015. Then in the first week of November, the week after
233
entering his plea, Denis suffered a stroke with serious complications. He
was hospitalized until January of 2016. And then I think there appeared in
print unattractive statements from one of his victims and the sister of
another victim who I believe had passed away. When we got to sentencing
on April 27, 2016, those two individuals appeared and addressed the court.
I had written a long presentation on Hastert’s behalf in which I
essentially implored the court to take into consideration the entirety of his
life, the good as well as the bad, and to balance them. And in so doing, I
felt that because of Hastert’s admissions of misconduct and the passage of
time and all of the things he did on the plus side of the scale, he was
deserving of a sentence of probation.
The Judge, Thomas Durkin, not only ignored the plea deal and the
guidelines calculation, but during the sentencing proceeding read from
what appeared to be maybe as many as 30 pages that he had put together
to explain an upward departure sentence of 15 months. He really took after
Dennis and forcefully questioned him about whether or not he had
molested this victim or that victim, labeled him a predator and serial child
molester several times. He was just wound up on this. I don’t know where
all that came from, let me put it that way.
It was unexpected. And I know I was very uncomfortable while he
was on the bench. I don’t know exactly what words to use, but there was
no mistaking his disgust at what went on without any inkling of credit for
any part of Dennis’s life. He just focused on what was really unfortunate,
234
and I thought he was unnecessarily aggressive with his remarks. But Judge
Durkin did allow Hastert to serve his fifteen-month sentence at the federal
medical facility attached to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota
because Dennis was quite frail at that time. He came to the sentencing in a
wheelchair. That was not a charade; he was in poor health.
In addition to the sentence of fifteen months in a prison medical
facility, Judge Durkin sentenced Dennis to two years supervised release
and a $250,000 fine. Hastert was released after serving 13 months. Highest
ranking elected official in U.S. history to serve a prison sentence.
So that ended the saga. But it was sad. It was a sad experience. But
Dennis made it through his sentence and to the best of my knowledge he’s
still living in Illinois.
MS. FEIGIN: That’s all quite dramatic. There were some cases, I believe, following the
criminal case. Civil lawsuits by some alleged victims and also a question
about his eligibility to continue to receive retirement funds from his
teaching job. Did you represent him in any of those cases?
MR. GREEN: I did not.
MS. FEIGIN: Did you stay in touch with him?
MR. GREEN: A little bit for a little while, but I haven’t stayed in touch with him after
that.
MS. FEIGIN: We’ve covered a lot of important cases and probably next time we’ll
finish up. I really appreciate the time you spent today. Thank you.