Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey advertise their product
as the Greatest Show on Earth. But for my money that designation is
better applied to the show going on right now in a federal
courtroom in Cleveland, where nine-term Rep. Jim Traficant (D-OH)
is fighting to stay out of jail. Traficant is charged with assorted
offenses involving accepting bribes, filing false tax returns, and
taking cash kickbacks from the salaries paid to his congressional
staffers.
Traficant is the closest thing there is to a C-SPAN-created
star. In an institution — Congress — filled with the most vanilla
people imaginable, Traficant has long stood out for his tremendous
lack of sartorial splendor (the worst haircut and wardrobe on
Capitol Hill), his ornery populism, and the trademark phrase he
utters when wrapping up a speech on the House floor: “Mr. Speaker,
Beam Me Up!”
For nearly two months Traficant’s act has been playing before a
judge and jury. And what an act it’s been, largely because of his
insistence on representing himself, though not a lawyer by
training. Plenty of people, including the judge in this case, have
reminded Traficant of the old dictum that a lawyer who represents
himself has a fool for a client. There is no surer route to
conviction than to take your case in your own hands.
The Gentleman from Ohio might be excused for dismissing that
notion. In 1983 Traficant did the unthinkable — he beat the rap on
federal bribery and racketeering charges while serving as his own
counsel.
At the time Traficant was the newly elected sheriff of
Youngstown, Ohio, a mobbed-up cesspool of corruption wonderfully
captured in a 2000 New Republic feature entitled
“Crimetown USA.” Traficant was in thick with the various Mafiosi,
and was caught on tape accepting bribes from Charlie “The Crab”
Carrabia and his brother Orlie (also “The Crab”).
Faced with the overwhelming evidence, Traficant offered a novel
defense: He was conducting an unorthodox sting operation to break
the Cosa Nostra influence in Ohio’s Mahoning Valley. “The point I
want to make is this. I got inside the mob. I F—-ED the mob.” This
despite the fact the tapes showed Traficant explaining to the Crabs
that if they were to get caught, Traficant would rely on exactly
that defense.
Traficant was acquitted, and won election to Congress a year
later.
The likelihood of lightning striking twice for Traficant is
slim, but probably shouldn’t be discounted entirely. Still, it’s an
uphill fight. The prosecution has produced over 50 witnesses
swearing to all sorts of improprieties. Traficant routinely traded
official favors for free contracting work or envelopes full of
cash. He helped strong-arm one bank into giving $900,000 in loans
to a friend who had originally been denied the money. The friend
defaulted the next year. Staffers were required to kick back large
portions of their taxpayer-financed congressional paychecks. On one
occasion, under the guise of office “team-building,” Traficant had
his Washington staff out to his houseboat on the Potomac River.
They ended up scraping, painting, and making repairs. Perhaps worse
than the sundry illegalities, the testimony so far has shown
Traficant to be a skinflint.
Traficant’s performance this go-round may not keep him out of
prison (a maximum of 63 years for the 10 charges), but it has
provided nonstop levity. Like a Seinfeld character, he refers to
himself in the third person. He routinely cracks up the courtroom
with offhand remarks, as when he muttered, “I could sit there and
pass gas, quite frankly” after another of the routine admonitions
leveled at him by the judge.
His relationship with U.S. District Judge Lesley Wells has been
adversarial, to say the least. “You are now part of a RICO!” he
yelled at her after a ruling he didn’t particularly care for.
“You’re out to screw a targeted member of Congress!” Accusing Judge
Wells of corruption is all in a day’s work for Traficant (“I have
decided you are completely with the prosecution”), whose
cross-examination of witnesses has been marked by allegations of
conspiracy and bouts of yelling. News accounts of him examining one
of the prosecution’s star witnesses had Traficant hysterically
screaming, “You are a liar!…You are lying under oath!”
Is it working? Probably not. The evidence against him is strong,
unlike his accusations of conspiracy. And too many of Traficant’s
own witnesses have boomeranged, providing further evidence of
wrongdoing. The thinking is that Traficant is toast. A former
staffer told the Cleveland Plain Dealer, “It’s almost obscene the
way he’s beckoning a conviction. Maybe he hopes to win an appeal.
Maybe his whole strategy is to do such a horrible job that on
appeal he can argue bad representation.”
Even if Traficant beats these charges — which is unlikely —
he’s probably out of a job, anyway. The Ohio legislature carved up
his congressional district in redistricting this year. Traficant
will run in a new district, but it won’t have much of the base of
voters who have forgiven him all sorts of past transgressions.
Defeat seems likely, assuming he’s free to run. So farewell, Jim
Traficant, you will be sorely missed by C-SPAN audiences starved
for entertainment.
Beam me up.
