Defense challenges FBI claim that Kenyatta Johnson’s wife was paid $67K for less than 40 hours of work

Defense lawyers in the federal bribery trial of Kenyatta Johnson and Dawn Chavous had their first opportunity Wednesday to grill the FBI agent whose probe resulted in the indictment of the Philadelphia city councilmember and his wife.

And the testimony quickly grew testy.

They focused their fire on an estimate Special Agent Richard Haag had offered from the witness stand a day before: that Chavous — a charter schools advocate and politically connected consultant — had done less than 40 hours of work over 16 months for a South Philadelphia affordable housing and charter schools nonprofit that paid her $67,000 as part of what prosecutors say was a sham consulting contract intended as a payoff for her husband.

“But that’s just your opinion,” Chavous’ lawyer Barry Gross challenged the agent at one point. “You’ve never worked as a consultant? And you’ve never worked in the charter school area? And your degree is not in organizational dynamics from Penn? And you don’t have a certificate in charter schools from Harvard?”

Haag, who has worked for the FBI for nearly 17 years, acknowledged all of those things were true. But when asked whether he still felt qualified to assess how much time Chavous would have spent on any of the tasks in the itemized invoices she periodically sent to Universal Companies, the nonprofit at the heart of the case, he didn’t hesitate in responding.

His answer? An unequivocal yes. “There was not a lot of work product,” Haag said.

» READ MORE: As it happened: Trial of Philly councilmember and his wife resumes with more questions for FBI agent

For the better part of three hours, Gross read out email after email Chavous had sent or received tied to Universal business between 2013 and 2014. With each new message, the lawyer inquired whether Haag had included it in his earlier calculations.

Each time, Haag responded that he had, noting that several of those messages were written by other people and there was no indication Chavous had done anything in response.

What about the roughly 30 text messages she’d received from Universal’s then-CEO Rahim Islam during one month of her contract? Gross continued. Had Haag bothered to consider the time it took to read those, too?

“Maybe it’s because I’m old,” the gray-haired defense lawyer said. “But when someone texts you, it interrupts what you’re doing, and you have to stop your work, look at it and take time to decide what to do, correct?”

Deadpan, the younger Haag shot back: “I’d agree that’s because you’re old.”

Gross grew so frustrated at one point by Haag’s attempts to challenge the premise of his questions and correct what he felt were attempts by the defense to manipulate evidence that he broke from his rat-a-tat cross-examination.

“Can I ask you a question?” Gross asked. “FBI stands for Federal Bureau of Investigation. It’s not Federal Bureau of Prosecution, is it?”

» READ MORE: Kenyatta Johnson trial: Day-by-day updates for federal bribery case

Their contentious back-and-forth dominated the eighth day of the trial and threatened at times to overshadow a few palpable blows the defense struck against the narrative Haag had presented over his previous 2½ days under government questioning.

If the defense can convince jurors that Chavous legitimately earned the money Universal paid her, it would undercut prosecutors’ portrayal of her work as a “low-show” job meant to disguise what they say was a payoff aimed at buying Johnson’s protection for the nonprofit’s troubled real estate assets in his district.

As part of that effort, Gross highlighted Wednesday that Chavous’ contracts with Universal stipulated she was to receive a flat monthly fee of between $3,500 and $4,500 — in no way contingent upon any results she may or may not have achieved.

During the time she worked for the nonprofit, she set up conversations with various lawmakers, attended meetings as a Universal representative, and even began planning a 2013 party with a headliner like Bill Cosby or Will Smith to celebrate the nonprofit’s 20th anniversary, Gross said.

Haag noted that despite her planning, work on the party never moved beyond the proposal stage.

» READ MORE: Kenyatta Johnson and Dawn Chavous bribery trial: What you need to know

And while prosecutors have portrayed Johnson and Chavous as financially struggling — living beyond their means, buried under $40,000 of credit card debt and two mortgages — making them more susceptible to bribery, Johnson’s lawyer, Patrick Egan, pushed back.

Using bank records to show that despite the councilmember’s debts, he and his wife almost always made their payments on time and had tens of thousands of dollars in their separate bank accounts, Egan noted that Chavous even paid extra on one of their mortgage bills in some months.

“So, during this entire period of time where we heard about this alleged financial turmoil, Councilman Johnson had a significant amount of money in his personal bank accounts, and he was current on all of his bills?” Egan asked at one point. Haag confirmed he was correct.

Picking up that thread, Gross did a line-by-line reading of the expenses Chavous had charged to her credit cards — noting that thousands of dollars of them, including frequent trips to Harrisburg, were actually business expenses incurred on behalf of consulting clients who would later reimburse her.

“All credit to the people of Harrisburg,” Gross said. “But that’s generally not considered a vacation destination.”

Other expenses fell into that category, too. Amtrak tickets for business travel. Software she bought for work. And a number of entries tied to a fish fry she organized for one of her other clients, State Sen. Anthony Hardy Williams.

Prosecutors, Gross noted, hadn’t bothered to ask Haag about any of those.

“You can only answer the questions you were asked, of course,” the lawyer said.

On that, he and the agent could agree.

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