Defense rests in political insider's criminal trial {Julie Lee - Schmelleygate }

Sacramento Bee ^ | 7/10/8 | Denny Walsh

[SmithL]

The defense's case in the Sacramento trial of San Francisco political power broker Julie Lee was short and sensational Wednesday.

The only witness called was Willie Brown, an icon of California politics, Assembly speaker longer than any other person and two-term mayor of San Francisco.

Brown, nattily dressed as always in a gray suit and dark shirt and tie, had high praise for Lee as a grass-roots activist who shared his goal while mayor to build a community center for families and youths in the heavily Chinese American Sunset district on the city's west side.

"It was something that everybody dreamed about," he said.

"I know Julie Lee. I worked with Julie Lee. She worked with me," Brown told the federal court jury.

Lee is charged with misappropriating $125,000 of state grant money by laundering it through intermediaries into the 2002 campaign of Kevin Shelley for secretary of state. Shelley, while a Democratic assemblyman from San Francisco, arranged the $500,000 state grant, but there is no evidence he had any knowledge of the allegedly diverted funds.

Brown testified that Lee's nonprofit San Francisco Neighbors Resource Center received a number of grants from various city agencies while he was mayor.

...Brown was vigorously cross- examined by Assistant U.S. Attorney John Vincent, but he took every question as an opportunity to heap more praise on Lee.

Vincent kept returning to the subject of the state grant, but Brown said he knew nothing about it "except what I read in the newspaper." He conceded the community center was never built.

As mayor, Brown appointed Lee to the city's Housing Authority, and she has donated thousands of dollars and raised thousands more for his campaigns and causes.

[NormsRevenge]

Willie Brown,, a character witness?

ROTFLOL