Testimony getting underway in the Joe Bruno trial today - with potentially damaging evidence taking center stage.The government offering up checks and documents related to one outside business interest they say show the former Senate majority leader was trying to hide something.
The defense trying to poke holes in that theory.
First on the stand, lobbyist and lawyer James Featherstonhaugh, who recounted his business and personal dealings with Joe Bruno, from talking with him about pending legislation to partnering in a Rensselaer County land deal that went south.
Featherstonhaugh says most of his lobbying relative to Bruno was done with staff, rarely with Bruno directly, and their social conversations focused on golf and skiing.
James Featherstonhaugh/Lobbyist: "I accurately described the number of issues the leader would actually play an active role in in our legislative process and how that role is playing out, which is really as much through the senior staff as it is through the individual leaders."
Featherstonhaugh discussed setting up a meeting between Bruno and investment banker Tim McGinn with the aim of Bruno joining the firm of McGinn, Smith to drum up business.
McGinn later testified - under heavy direct and cross-examination - that Bruno brought in a couple of labor unions for pension fund investments and about $400,000 in revenue.
Prosecutors used paychecks and document of payments to Bruno and his company Business Consultants to indicate an alleged pattern of Bruno trying to hide payments for his work, but McGinn testified that everyone knew that Bruno and Biz Consultants were one and the same, and that he believed Bruno had gotten clearance from the Legislative Ethics Committee for his outside business activities.
Bruno himself downplayed the testimony and again said he's done nothing wrong.
Joseph Bruno/Former Senate Majority Leader: "I'm a businessman. I had a perfect right to be in business, just like lawyers have a perfect right to be lawyers, just as insurance agents, farmers in the Legislature have a perfect right to do what they do."
Also on the stand, former Senate Executive Counsel and now state judge Francis "Tim" Collins, who testified that he made recommended changes to some of Bruno's business contracts in an effort to avoid any potential conflicts of interest, but that he had no other part in his outside business dealings.
