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Judge allows damaging secret tape recordings at Cisneros trialTed Barrett/CNN
July 26, 1999 WASHINGTON (AllPolitics, July 26) -- Most of the secret tape recordings of phone conversations between former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros and his ex-mistress, Linda Medlar, will be allowed as evidence against Cisneros at his upcoming conspiracy trial, a federal judge ruled Monday. U.S. District Judge Stanley Sporkin refused to allow four of the tapes because Medlar admitted that she edited large portions of them.
But he allowed the remaining 22 tapes -- copies of the originals which Medlar had since discarded -- over defense objections the tapes are unreliable. "Based on its assessment of the tapes, transcripts and the entire record made in this case, the court finds that the vast majority of the tapes contain reliable and accurate representations of the conversations that occurred between (Ms. Jones) and Cisneros between April 1990 and December 1993," the judge wrote. The tapes, which Medlar says she recorded in the early 1990's to document Cisneros's promise to support her financially, were the subject of an exhaustive three-week hearing on the admissability of the recordings. The tapes could prove legally damaging and personally embarrassing to Cisneros. The former HUD secretary faces trial in September on 18 counts of lying about the amount of money he was paying Medlar in 1992, when he was nominated to be HUD secretary. Cisneros told the FBI and other officials he never paid Medlar more than $10,000 a year. The indictment alleges and Medlar has testified that he paid her more than $264,000 between 1990 and 1993. In court arguments, Cisneros's attorneys, Brendan Sullivan and Barry Simon, argued the tapes were not admissible because they were made in an illegal attempt to extort money from Cisneros. Sporkin rejected that argument, writing in his opinion that Cisneros failed to prove that extortion was Medlar's motivation. Sullivan and Simon also argued the authenticity of the tapes was in doubt because the original tapes were destroyed and Medlar admitted to editing out portions that she felt portrayed her in a bad light. "Tapes, as we all know, are very powerful evidence," Sullivan said. "Tapes that are altered are powerfully misleading." Sporkin rejected most of that argument, writing that "Cisneros has presented no direct evidence that the voice on the tapes is not his, nor that the statements attributed to him are inaccurate." In deciding to throw out the four altered tapes, Sporkin wrote that Independent Counsel David Barrett "does not take into consideration fully the likelihood that certain of the redactions may have contained exculpatory statements by the defendant." Cisneros and Medlar began an affair in the late 1980s while Cisneros was the popular mayor of San Antonio, Texas, and both were married to other people. Medlar testified that, after the affair was made public in 1988, she divorced her husband and was unable to keep a job. She says Cisneros then agreed to pay $4,000 a month to support her and her young daughter until her daughter finished college. Medlar testified she began recording Cisneros in 1990 out of fear that Cisneros, who was going through an on-again, off-again reconciliation with his wife, would stop the payments. Cisneros told the White House and FBI about the affair and payments when he was nominated to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1992. |
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MORE STORIES:Monday, July 26, 1999
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