A former New York City Councilman is appealing his Federal conviction on several grounds including

substantial improprieties in the governments tactics during its investigation and the questionable

applications of state and federal laws by the trial Court.

The federal government manufactured both the crime and criminal jurisdiction where there was

none, appellate briefs will contend, which are being prepared now on behalf of Daniel J. Halloran III, a

5th generation Queens native and former prosecutor himself. The 19th District of New York Citys

Councilman for the past 4 years, Halloran will argue that the Government invented a crime and then

intentionally twisted state law to create criminal liability where none existed. Some legal experts see

numerous problems with the government scheme, including its use of a cell phone with a North

Carolina area code by one of their undercover Agents. As it turns out, this out of state phone number

was the sole basis for the Federal government to acquire jurisdiction, and it seems to have been

chosen for just for that purpose. What was clear from the trial record was that nothing is alleged to

have happened outside of New York, begging the question; why was the FBI and Federal Government

involved in such an investigation at all?

The manufacturing of jurisdiction by the Federal government violates the Archer Rule created by

U.S. v. Archer, according to 2nd Circuit Case law. In that case, the federal government attempted to

gain jurisdiction in Queens County by having a local prosecutor, allegedly involved in wrongdoing in

Queens, make a call New Jersey. Upon review, the Second Circuit ruled that in such cases, where the

Federal government fabricates a plan to induce someone to act interstate in order to gain federal

jurisdiction in a matter which takes place otherwise wholly within a state or locality, it would be

barred from being able to prosecute. The parallels to Hallorans case couldnt be clearer despite the

trial judges nearly 200 page decision trying to distinguish the cases and trivialize other legal

arguments.

After a grueling 8 week trial, in July 2014 a jury convicted Halloran of conspiracy to commit bribery,

two counts of wire fraud and two counts of travel violations, a total of five counts. In March Judge

Karas sentenced him to an extraordinary 120 months in prison with restitution of $45,300. That

sentence was well beyond any other similar criminal sentences in any Federal Court related to

political corruption. The sentence for Halloran, with no priors, in a non-violent crime, involving barely

$45,000.00 in alleged money transactions over 9 months, stunned many in the legal community who

expected a 60 month sentence at the outside.

Federal legal practioners could not point to a single similarly harsh sentence, especially one for which

there was no completed crime; and in fact only Assemblyman Brian McLoughlin, convicted of

actually taking over $3.1 million in his many years in office, a 20+ count racketeering indictment, that

included stealing from the local little league, received a comparable sentence of 10 years. NYS

Assemblyman Anthony Seminario, convicted of taking over $400,000.00 received a mere 6 years, and

NYS State Senator Kruger, who accepted and steered over $350,000 in bribes received only 7 years.

The former governor of Virginia, Robert McDonald recently received a 2 year sentence for his part in a

$200,000.00 scheme involving state funds, acting as a state executive. Finally, Bronx born New York

City Council Member Larry Seabrook was convicted just last year and was sentenced to only 4 years,

having diverted over $600,000 in New York City money to not-for profit organizations run by friends

and family, in 9 counts of a 12 count indictment. Halloran is not accused of taking ANY City funds or

causing any to be dispersed unlawfully. The money provided to Halloran came from a wealthy

developer, actually an undercover Federal Agent, and a local real estate speculator turned

government snitch, who was facing his own litany of criminal charges. No city funds were dispersed

and no political favors were ever actually traded in Hallorans case, unlike the many other cases

involving public officials garnering far smaller sentences.

Halloran, who is currently under House Arrest, has a 10 p.m. curfew, and is scheduled to

self-surrender on June 17 unless a federal appeals court grants his application for bail pending the

appeal ruling. Another key issue in his appeal is that the judge gave the jury instructions that would

have been impermissible in state court. His instruction was that even if the alleged scheme could not

happen, impossibility is not a defense in federal court, almost conceding the scheme alleged by the

Government was impossible. However, Hallorans defense team, and some legal experts contend that

the state law bribery charges should have carried with them state law jury charges.

Another significant issue raised both in pretrial motions and now in the appeal is that the federal

government and Court has grossly misinterpreted and misapplied the Wilson Pakula Act of 1947,

calling an otherwise legal transaction a quid pro quo so that prosecutors could obtain a conviction

under federal Honest Services Law. As many attorneys noted, the Federal Honest Services statute has

been under intense judicial scrutiny for being overbroad. In fact the US Supreme Court has already

once ruled the statute Un-Constitutional and Justice Scalia called it a dangerous slippery slope that

could criminalize legal behavior. As Justice Scalia put it in his Skilling dissent, even with the bribery

and kickback limitation the statute does not answer the question What is the criterion of guilt? The

Halloran defense team echoed those sentiments. Halloran claimed to be brokering a legitimate

political horse trade in which Queens State Senator Malcolm Smith, a conservative Democrat would

be eligible to participate in the Republican primary for the 2013 NYC Mayoral race. The interest of the

NYC Republican leaders in just such a cross endorsement, opening up the Republican Party Primary to

several candidates including Senator Smith and former Bronx Borough President, and fellow Democrat

Aldolfo Carrion, in addition to the 4 declared Republicans (Joe Lhota, who eventually won the

designation, John Catsimitidis, Tom Allen, and George McDonald) was widely reported by numerous

news outlets from April to August of 2012. This was long before the FBI and DOJ leadership targeted

Smith and Halloran for prosecution. Under New York law, a Wilson Pakula is an authorization given

by a political party to a candidate for public office which allows a candidate not registered with that

party to petition voters for ballot access in their primary. New York as a fusion state permits a

candidate to have the support of, and run on, more than one party line on a given ballot.

In his appeal, Hallorans lawyers note there are substantial questions of whether the federal Travel

Act can even be applied to money transactions that were intended to secure a Wilson-Pakula

certificate. The Travel Act forbids the use of the U.S. mail, or interstate or foreign travel, for the

purpose of engaging in specified crimes. In fact, in an Amicus Curiae brief, the Queens County

Republican Party said the federal government unlawfully tied the Wilson-Pakula authorization process

to the Travel Act. They specifically pointed out that a Wilson-Pakula authorizations is not a

designation, nomination or appointment, and [therefore] it is not within the reach of the state penal

bribery laws.

When a multimillion dollar swindler-turned government informant, Moses Mark Stern, infiltrated

Hallorans campaign for U.S. Congress in August 2012, Court testimony by FBI Agents confirmed that

Halloran was neither under federal investigation nor a suspect in any crime at that time. Essentially,

the government conceded during trial that Halloran was not under suspicion of any wrong doing

whatsoever when they sent informant Stern to meet with him in 2012. Somehow there were no

tapes of those initial meetings. Some legal experts question how they were able to go forward with

any investigation under those circumstances, as it smacked of entrapment at a minimum.

Halloran lost his 2012 congressional bid to Rep. Grace Meng, whose own father and campaign

manager Jimmy Meng was arrested during the campaign and sentenced in March 2013 to a

one-month jail term on an $80,000.00 felony bribery conviction. There was more of a reason to

investigate Mengs campaign for congress than Hallorans" one political insider noted.

Independent Democrat, Queens State Senator, Malcolm A. Smith, was drawn into negotiations with

Stern to petition the Republican Party primary ballot for the 2013 New York City Mayors race,

meeting with GOP State Chairman Ed Cox, who was not accused of any wrongdoing. They

approached, as an additional intermediary, Halloran, who is also a former law enforcement officer,

because of his connections in New York City Republican circles as one of the few elected Republicans

in the City. Because Smith received neither a promise of appointment to a public office, nor a

designation, nor a nomination, there was no quid pro quo, Appellate briefs contend. If the

Wilson-Pakula Travel Act counts were to fail, the discretionary-fund counts would also be subject to

reversal due to the extensive spill-over of evidence from Travel Act charges. said two prominent

lawyers.

Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Rockland County Times Dylan Skriloff said the governments key

witness is a huge red flag. Stern who lives in Rockland County is a convicted felon who admitted to

illegally bundling hundreds of thousands of dollars to candidates. One such beneficiary of Stern was

NYS Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who was also not accused of any wrong doing by the FBI.

Currently, Stern is facing 490 years in prison on a 24-count federal indictment that includes perjury

charges and a $120 million real estate fraud scheme against Citibank and other local New York

mortgage banks. The reality is Stern needed a scapegoat, said Skriloff.

Wiretaps of Sterns phone calls, produced in late discovery, revealed he was desperately seeking

connections to prominent Republicans and their political campaigns. At trial the names of National

Republican figures like Tim Scott, Allen West, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, and local GOP officials

like State Chair Ed Cox, State Senator Marty Golden and Congressman Peter King were on the list of

those targeted by Stern and his FBI handlers. The Government claimed despite this focus on

Republicans that they were not hunting the GOP. Court transcripts further revealed that those same

wiretaps showed Stern had access to other phones and email accounts which were not monitored or

recorded by the FBI. This window also gave Stern the opportunity to communicate and act without

the oversight of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which he apparently did on several occasions and

was reprimanded by his FBI handlers. Interestingly, these facts were only disclosed after the trial had

started and were discovered by the defense while cross-examining an F.B.I. agent who admitted to

the existence of these previously undisclosed government recordings.

What appeared to be a clear Brady disclosure violation was minimized by the trial judge and no

sanction was given to the government for hiding this material in Hallorans case, although the judge

did grant a mistrial to his co-defendants. Halloran, who is the former NY chairman of the Republican

Liberty Caucus and a veteran criminal defense attorney has tried many felony cases in state court

serving for over 5 years on the 18B Assigned Counsel Felony panel, and explained, Brady material

stems from the U.S. Supreme Court case Brady v. Maryland, in which the Court ruled that suppression

by the prosecution of evidence favorable to a defendant who has requested it, violates due process.

While the Court found the material was Brady, it chose to believe the Government when it claimed its

failure to produce it was an accident and overlooked by the 20+ man prosecution team.

Stern introduced himself as a real estate developer with an interest in the mayoral race, said

Halloran. On a hand-shake I agreed to act as a paid legal consultant. It took nine months of

Stern-churning, before the government accused Halloran of unlawfully taking checks and cash in the

aggregate sum of $45,000, he said, thousands of which simply went into his campaign accounts and

not his pocket the government admitted at trial. Some legal experts noted that the judge appears to

have gone out of his way to excuse several incidents of prosecutorial misconduct; as many as 6,000

calls and 900 hours of recorded conversations were withheld, being the largest example, as well as

the gaping holes in the FBIs handling of Stern as an informant which were only disclosed mid-trial.

During trial, the government also admitted it never scrutinized any collateral sources; such as the

not-for-profits allegedly involved, the City Council funding agency, and that they never even wire

tapped any of the alleged co- conspirators, despite their lengthy nine-month investigation. In fact, the

New York City Council finance office and the board members of all of the NFPs testified on behalf of

Halloran that he never attempted to do any of the things alleged by the government, at any time.

Even the government witnesses, Hallorans alleged co-conspirators who turned states evidence like

the Bronx and Manhattan GOP chairmen tacitly disclosed in cross examination that Halloran never

suggested doing anything illegal to them and that they thought it was strictly legitimate business

dealings at the time. The Bronx Chair Jay Savino struck a plea bargain when it was discovered he had

been also stealing from the Bronx County organization and had committed tax fraud, and the

Manhattan chair Dan Issacs was not charged after Billionaire John Catsimitidis intervened on his

behalf before the arrests arranging meetings for him with federal and state prosecutors. During the

trial Issacs said, if Halloran had even suggested that something illegal was going to happen, I would

never have gone to the meeting in the first place.

Some argue that this was a case of selective prosecution an opportunity for the Democrat appointed

on recommendation of Senator Charles Schumer, a former Schumer staffer, U.S. Attorney Preetinder

Singh Preet Bharara to make a name for himself. Such claims gain more weight when you examine

the recent arrests by the same team of Preet Bharata attorneys using the same vague "honest

services" Federal statute. First the indictment of Dean Skelos, the Republican leader of the NY State

Senate which effectively crippled the GOP in its razor thin margin in controlling that body, and then of

NYS Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver, who was Senator Schumer's sole rival for control of the NY State

Democratic Party machine. Questions now being circulated indicate Governor Cuomo may be Preet's

next target and with him, his relationship to the powerful Independence Party, and particularly the

Wilson Pakula he received from them, along with both their ties to the Real Estate Board of New York.

Some also say they may have targeted the Republican Independent Halloran, who was receiving

significant media attention for bucking the system, weighing in against the NY Democratic machine

and in particular Billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He had become a Fox News staple appearing

almost 100 times over 4 years. In fact, some political pundits mused an investigation into former NY

Mayor Michael P. Bloombergs various campaigns would be more appropriate. Some may recall that

in 2009 it was front page news that Bloomberg bought the Independence Party line by donating $1

million into its housekeeping account and hiring scores of workers. According to NYC and NYS

Campaign Finance filings, the Mayor, having left the GOP in 2005, in order to secure the Republican

Party line in 2009, hired numerous Republican leaders from each county, paid $25 to $50,000 per

county in jobs, and into Housekeeping accounts, and spent tens of thousands of dollars on jobs for

assembly-district level executive committee members of the GOP, to insure their support. This is no

different on the other side of the aisle, where frequently the Democratic machine hires its own in

campaigns for incumbents and to win over third parties like the Working Families party.

Two term democrat Bronx Council Member G. Oliver Koppel, who also served many years in the NYS

Assembly, was Hallorans colleague in the City Council, and said he was very impressed by Hallorans

independence. Although registered as a Republican and elected as a Republican he often split from

Republican orthodoxy particularly on civil liberties and civil rights issues. Halloran was concerned

about government playing an appropriate role in private life, he said. He was a strong believer of

individual rights. I saw that in his voting record and also in his speaking.

Since Halloran is an attorney familiar with both Criminal and Election law, Koppell said it seemed out

of character that he would be involved in legal problems related to campaign law. Looking at the

issue to some extent in the press, in terms of what Halloran did with Smith who wanted to run on the

Republican Party line, I did not see anything wrong with that. Koppel, who has served as the interim

NY Attorney General, said when he was running for state senate last year, he applied to the Working

Families Party for a Wilson-Pakula authorization. If you want to run in the primary you have to get

permission by the party leaders. With five counties in one city, the rule is a three-county majority

makes the final decision, he said. While it would be inappropriate if a party leader demanded dollars

directly in exchange for the party line, he said there is no problem with hiring those same politicians

as consultants with consulting fees. MANY New York City council members, including Mayor Bill de

Blasio, worked for the U.S. senate campaign of Hillary Clinton while they were council members I am

sure it is not illegal.

Dan Halloran was a hands-on council member, said Liza A. Powell, a Bayside resident. He was there

for everything. She described Halloran as unbelievably kind and good. Halloran knew her and many

of his constituents by their first names, she said. As an attorney he offered pro-bono advice he

literally helped people every day. Halloran was made an example of because he was not politically

correct, she said. Somebody did not want him to succeed he was doing the right thing for New

York.

The Second Circuit has set an expedited briefing schedule but it may be delayed as Halloran's

co-defendants Senator Malcolm Smith and Queen GOP Vice Chairman Vincent Tabone or even State

Senator Skelos and Assembly Leader Silver have their cases wind their way up the appellate ladder as

well.