Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Lawyers: Galardi testimony wavers

SAN DIEGO -- The government's star witness in the federal corruption trial of a former Clark County commissioner and three San Diego City Councilmen came under fire Wednesday for a series of alleged inconsistencies.

Government witness Michael Galardi once owned three strip clubs in Las Vegas and still operates one in San Diego, and defense attorneys questioned the consistency of statements he made two years ago and those he made during trial.

Over the last week Galardi has testified that former Clark County Commissioner Lance Malone, who worked as a lobbyist for the strip club owner, delivered thousands in illegal campaign contributions to San Diego city councilmen and council candidates and knew about the effort to bribe a San Diego police officer. On Tuesday Galardi upped the ante, charging that Malone was the bag man for more than $18,000 in cash bribes to the same politicians.

Galardi was trying to get a "no touch" ordinance that outlawed contact between a topless dancer and a customer removed.

Galardi's charges were immediately and vehemently rejected by lawyers defending San Diego City Councilmen Ralph Inzunza and Michael Zucchet, who have been charged with political corruption along with Malone and San Diego council aide David Cowan.

Galardi has pleaded guilty to racketeering in Las Vegas and to wire fraud in San Diego and is cooperating with federal prosecutors in exchange for a sentence of 5 years or less.

Galardi, though, didn't have many explanations for defense attorneys, who continued to ask him about various statements he made.

Galardi's response to the cross-examination by attorneys Dominic Gentile, representing Malone, and Michael Pancer, representing Inzunza, repeatedly has been "I don't recall."

Many of those lapses in memory have to do with statements Galardi made to the government in July, August and October 2003, three years after the FBI launched an investigation into the strip club empire.

"You believe you can corrupt people, some people, with money, and you have plenty of it?" Pancer asked Galardi, eliciting a reluctant "yes" from Galardi.

During a break for the jury, U.S. District Court Judge Jeffrey Miller chastised the prosecutors for Galardi's "unresponsive" and "argumentative" responses to defense attorneys.

"The court is just about to admonish the witness in front of the jury," Miller said, explaining that he would like to avoid doing that. He asked the government prosecutors to instruct their witness "not to argue with counsel and not offer responses that have no relation to the questions asked."

Gentile and Pancer pressed Galardi on his reasons for working with the government.

Galardi admitted that he wanted a deal that would protect his financial assets, which under questioning by Gentile came to a total of more than $50 million. Galardi also said he was hoping to keep any prison time in his sentence to a minimum.

"It can't hurt to ask, right?" he told Pancer.

In his discussions with the government investigators, many of whom have been in the courtroom since the trial began in April, Galardi provided information that is not always consistent with either the trial testimony or the thousands of wiretaps that form the backbone of the government's case -- but which Galardi did not know existed when he initially tried to broker a deal with the federal prosecutors.

"There are enormous differences" between the accounts on the table now and the earlier versions of events offered by Galardi, Pancer said.

Among the issues that were included in the government's reports of information provided by Galardi, but that the strip club kingpin said he cannot recall providing, were:

Gentile noted, and Galardi agreed, that some of the difficulty remembering might be due to the stress of the federal investigation and ultimate indictments. Galardi said he started drinking heavily for the first time in his life and sought psychiatric assistance, including a prescription for Zoloft, a drug used to control depression and anxiety.

Gentile also probed the relationship between Galardi, Montagna, Malone and Russ Bristol, a San Diego police officer assigned to the vice squad.

He has consistently said that Malone did not know that Galardi was paying $2,000 a month for early warning of vice raids or surveillance of his San Diego clubs, and that Malone did not believe the claim of the payoffs when it came from Montagna.

Bristol was in fact working with the FBI. Galardi admitted Wednesday that he was not happy that Montagna told Malone that Bristol was getting paid.

"You're pretty much a need-to-know guy. It's how you were raised," Gentile, who has worked for Galardi's father in other cases, said to Galardi, and Galardi agreed.

Gentile also probed Galardi's account of a meeting that brought Malone together with two men who were then deputies in the Clark County District Attorney's Office. Gary Guymon has since gone to the public defender's office while Craig Hendricks, whose name came up for the first time in the trial Wednesday, is now chief deputy district attorney.

Galardi has testified that at the meeting, which would have occurred while Malone was still serving as a county commissioner, Malone demanded a larger cut of operations from the strip club business in Las Vegas.

The testimony sets the stage for Gentile to later call the attorneys to potentially dispute the account of the meeting, which Malone has denied.

Pancer continued the examination of Galardi's statements. He noted that Galardi told FBI agents that San Diego police would write citations for dancers touching customers on the shoulder, a statement Galardi has since contradicted. Citations, which could lead to the San Diego Cheetahs being closed, came for dancers providing illegal lap dances.

"I was being sarcastic," Galardi told Pancer.

Pancer also raised the issue of Eric Johnson, an Assistant U.S. Attorney in Las Vegas. Galardi has alleged that the federal prosecutor took free drinks and lap dances at Jaguars, the club he once owned in Las Vegas.

Johnson was once the lead prosecutor on the case, but was taken off after the allegation emerged. Johnson denied the allegation and a federal investigation found his denial to be "credible."

Galardi, Pancer noted, claimed that he had Johnson's business card on his Rolodex, but that card -- indeed, all of Galardi's business cards -- have disappeared since the May 2003 raids on the clubs.

Galardi said he was "100 percent sure" that Johnson frequented Jaguars.

"I'm still 100 percent sure," he told the court.

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