This was the strategy of Adam Skelos’ lawyer on Wednesday: Proving to the jury that he is just as much of a jerk as his low-life client.
After days of damning testimony by Bjornulf White, Adam’s supervisor at an environmental-technology firm called AbTech, young Skelos’ lawyer Christopher Conniff essentially tried to convince the jury that White was a rat trying to chew his way out of a mess.
Conniff couldn’t refute anything White had said. He couldn’t, for instance, get White to say that Adam, son of disgraced ex-Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos, was providing anything useful to AbTech other than his family ties. (Adam was getting $10,000 a month from AbTech, a fake gig arranged by a real-estate lawyer whom Dean Skelos incessantly nagged to send some bu$ine$$ his son’s way.)
White, a baby-faced lawyer who got soiled when the Skeloses came blowing through town like a dirt tornado, said he liked Adam at first, but “I became aware that he wasn’t interested in the substance of what we were doing.”
Ouch.
In a hectoring tone, Conniff fired questions based on White being granted immunity by the government in exchange for his testimony, trying to get the jury to think White would say anything the feds wanted in order to save his hide.
Sure. Could be. Entirely possible. Except: Conniff couldn’t point to anything White had said that was untruthful.
Wasted time? These lawyers get paid by the hour, and Adam is probably too dumb to notice Conniff was padding his bill, meandering from one irrelevance to another. At one point, he asked several questions about how many, and what kind, of drinks Adam and White consumed at one evening meeting. Area men sip alcoholic beverages! Film at eleven!
Here’s an old legal adage, or at least one that’s in the movies: If the law is on your side, argue the law. If the facts are on your side, argue the facts. If neither one is on your side, put somebody other than your client on trial.
Unfortunately for Adam, he probably won’t stop being the sleaziest guy in the room until he gets to prison — or back to the state Capitol.