CLOSING ARGUMENTS MADE IN 14-WEEK ‘FAT LEONARD’ TRIAL; CASE GOES TO JURY

Five former Navy officers accused of taking bribes from longtime contractor

The trial of five former Navy officers accused of taking bribes from the former Singapore businessman known as “Fat Leonard” was placed in the hands of a San Diego federal jury Tuesday after 14 weeks of testimony and argument.

Jurors will have to decide if the quintet of officers — who at different times served in the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet as it sailed in Southeast Asia — accepted bribes from Leonard Glenn Francis in exchange for a variety of alleged acts that benefited Francis’ ship-servicing business, Glenn Defense Marine Asia.

The defendants — former Rear Adm. Bruce Loveless; former Capts. David Newland, James Dolan and David Lausman; and former Cmdr. Mario Herrera — decided to go to trial, unlike 29 others charged in the case who pleaded guilty.

The gifts included fancy meals, boxes of cigars, stays at luxury hotels, and for some, the services of prostitutes, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Pletcher told jurors.

In return, the hulking Francis — whose nickname comes from his rotund physique — was given ship schedules, information on internal Navy deliberations, assistance in shepherding payments through the Navy bureaucracy and help running interference against rival contractors, prosecutors said.

The information allowed Francis to defraud the government out of at least $35 million over decades — “practically minting money at the expense of the U.S. Navy,” as Pletcher put it to jurors during closing arguments late last week.

While that is by now a familiar litany of gifts and returns in the years-long Fat Leonard case, defense attorneys for the five men argued in their closings that the government case was a flimsy collection of out-of-context emails, testimony from cooperating witnesses who were motivated by the hope of reducing their own potential sentences, and guilt by association and innuendo.

They also noted the government’s case conspicuously lacked a major piece: testimony from Francis himself, orchestrator of the scheme whose name has become synonymous with corruption. The government decided not to call Francis for what has turned out to

be the only criminal trial in the entire scandal.

“Where is he?” lawyer Joseph Mancano, who represents Newland, asked in his closing argument. All roads lead to Francis, he told the panel, but the jury never heard from him.

There was no explanation from prosecutors when they told U.S. District Court Judge Janis Sammartino weeks ago Francis would not appear. But defense attorneys were eager to provide one over the past two days of arguments.

Francis pleaded guilty in 2015 but has yet to be sentenced, as prosecutors waited until all the criminal cases in which he had pledged to cooperate were resolved.

For several years Francis has been allowed to live at an undisclosed location in San Diego, outside the teeming and periodically COVIDstruck downtown federal jail, while under treatment for a medical condition. During that time, he had enough freedom to record a multipart podcast about his life and the scandal.

Todd Burns, the lawyer for Dolan, played for jurors an outtake from the podcast that he said was all the explanation that was necessary for his absence.

“I can’t say my story,” Francis told an interviewer said in his deep baritone voice, “because if I tell you my story, if I tell them my story, then the government hasn’t got a case against all those other guys.”

In addition to the living arrangements, Burns rattled off other benefits Francis has received, including not being prosecuted after possible child pornography was found on his computer, according to court records. He still owes the government $30 million in fines, Burns said.

A second potential key witness, former Cmdr. Jose Sanchez, had a similar problem: Court records show possible child pornography was found on his computer, too. The government agreed to not charge Sanchez for unspecified “unauthorized files” as part of pleading guilty in the bribery case, according to court records. Prosecutors insisted the files referred to something else, not child porn — an explanation defense attorneys have not bought.

Defense attorneys vigorously complained that the government had not told them of this benefit before trial, and when Sammartino indicated she would issue an instruction to jurors telling them they could assume Sanchez had child porn, prosecutors abruptly scratched him from testifying.

Defense lawyers hammered on those absences and told jurors it showed the weakness of the government case. “The people not put on the witness stand,” Herrera’s attorney Michael Crowley said, “is amazing.”

Much of the testimony jurors heard came from case agents who investigated the alleged bribes and some cooperating witnesses — other Navy officers — who pleaded guilty. Pletcher in his closing remarks urged the panel to focus on the bigger picture of what he contended the testimony and evidence showed — a group of officers who over years betrayed their allegiance to the Navy and country and gave it to Francis, who enriched himself.

“They were the power structure of the Seventh Fleet,” he said, decisionmakers who knew how the fleet operated. It was that power that made them valuable to Francis, he argued.

“If you are trying to buy influence,” he said, “you bribe the town’s mayor. Not the dog catcher.”

But defense attorneys said the officers were neither mayor nor dog-catcher, but dedicated officers working the often complex problems of servicing ships in foreign ports. Moreover, they assailed the government’s case, which requires proof of an agreement between Francis and each individual, that resulted in gifts in exchange for something of value.

There was little evidence of any such agreements, they argued. Thomas O’Brien, a lawyer for Loveless, reminded jurors that an agent had testified that the investigation collected some 14 million documents over time. Loveless, O’Brien said, appears in six emails with Francis, none conspiratorial or providing Francis with inside information.

He said merely attending a dinner paid for by Francis, as Loveless did, is not evidence of a bribe, conspiracy or any agreement that government prosecutors wanted the jury to believe.

Other defense lawyers picked up on that theme of a misplaced and narrow focus. At one point Mancano held up a spyglass to the jury, saying the limited view from the small hand-held telescope captures the government’s case: seeing only one element and lacking a broader context.

Jury deliberations are set to begin today.