With Friends Like These...

My client was drunk, stupid, sleazy—oh, and black, argues Jefferson's lawyer
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 17, 2009 10:48 AM CDT
With Friends Like These...
A reporter with a CBS affiliate station from New Orleans, asks questions of former Louisiana Congressman William Jefferson, as Jefferson enters US District Court with his wife Andrea, June 16, 2009.   (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

What do you say when you’re defending William Jefferson, on trial for allegedly taking $100,000 in bribe money and hiding it in his freezer? Pretty much whatever the heck you can think of, writes Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. The lawyer for the then-Congressman opened his defense yesterday with a crack about “frozen assets” before arguing that his client was sleazy and stupid, but not technically guilty.

The bribes he took from a later-convicted businessman? “Kind of a finder’s fee,” in attorney Robert Trout’s telling. The FBI tape of Jefferson soliciting bribes? He’d had “a lot of wine.” His offer to bribe a Nigerian pol? “Really stupid,” Trout admitted, but a ploy to go along with the FBI informant. And Jefferson’s a self-made family man, and black besides—Trout mentioned race constantly, adding, “He loves Africa.” Especially, it seems, Nigeria. (More William Jefferson stories.)

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