A Secret Service agent who testified for the government in its federal case against Martha Stewart was charged with perjury yesterday by the same prosecutors who convicted the domestic diva.
Red-faced prosecutors said Secret Service Agent Larry Stewart, an inks expert who is not related to Martha, allegedly told repeated lies during his testimony about a notation on a portfolio worksheet.
The government used that worksheet as evidence that Martha’s broker Peter Bacanovic made up a cover story for why she sold ImClone stock. Bacanovic was cleared on the charge, but convicted on four other counts.
David Kelley, the U.S. attorney in Manhattan, insisted that the new charges would have “no impact on the convictions of Martha Stewart and Peter Bacanovic.”
Kelley said that although the testimony was unreliable, the ink tests performed on the worksheet were solid.
But Martha Stewart’s lawyers, Robert Morvillo and John Tigue, quickly seized on the new developments, saying in a statement that the alleged perjury “clearly demonstrates that the trial of Martha Stewart was fatally flawed and unfair.”
Bacanovic’s lawyer, Richard Strassberg, said he will pursue a new trial.
Larry Stewart testified about the notation “@60” that was scribbled across a list of Martha Stewart’s stocks prepared by her broker, Peter Bacanovic.
Martha Stewart and Bacanovic maintained throughout the trial that the notation was an indication of a prearranged deal to sell her ImClone stock when it fell below $60 per share.
Larry Stewart testified that the ink used for the notation was added after the stock was sold. Prosecutors said the agent did not know enough about the worksheet or the ink to give reliable testimony.
“Lying is wrong,” Kelley said. “And both Martha Stewart and the person who lied in her case are both likely to go to jail.”
Martha Stewart and Bacanovic were convicted March 5 of lying to federal authorities about why Stewart sold 3,928 shares of ImClone in December 2001, just before it plunged after the release of a negative government report.
Prosecutors disclosed the perjury charges in a complaint filed in Manhattan federal court and in a letter to U.S. District Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum, who presided over the Martha Stewart trial.
Kelley said Larry Stewart, 46, was consulted only briefly about the worksheet and performed none of the actual work on it, as he had testified.