McALLEN — After more than three years of waiting, the Weslaco water plant bribery trial at last got started in federal court here this week.
Things got underway with jury selection on Tuesday morning. Immediately following, both the prosecution and defense made their opening statements to the 12 jurors and two alternates who had been selected from a panel of 40.
Those opening statements would set the tone for what was to come over the next four days.
While federal prosecutors have been busy calling witnesses who can reinforce the allegations as outlined in a 70-count superseding indictment against the two defendants, the defense has spent its time not only attempting to impeach the government’s witnesses, but the very government itself.
Two men are on trial for their alleged roles in a bribery scheme that reportedly partnered corrupt public officials with the construction and engineering firms who were tasked with fixing the city of Weslaco’s ailing water and sewer infrastructure.
Both Arturo “A.C.” Cuellar, the one-time Precinct 1 commissioner for Hidalgo County, and Weslaco businessman Ricardo “Rick” Quintanilla are accused of funneling millions of dollars in bribes from the firms to numerous Weslaco elected officials in exchange for their votes.
OPENING ACCUSATIONS
In the government’s opening statements, the jury heard from William J. Gullotta, a trial attorney with the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity Division.
Gullotta weaved a story whereby the defendants and their co-conspirators took advantage of Weslaco’s desperate need to improve its water infrastructure.
After years of neglect and increasingly forceful warnings from state regulators at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Weslaco had to take action immediately or face stiff fines and cessations in its ability to provide water and sewer service to new customers, effectively stifling the city’s growth.
The conspirators used that urgency to declare the state of the city’s water infrastructure a public safety emergency. That designation opened a legal path for the city to circumvent normal procurement methods — including using a bidding process to find contractors who could do the work at the lowest price.
That, in turn, allowed the conspirators to push through votes for their predetermined firms — the very firms that prosecutors say bribed their way to the table.
It was an intricate scheme of “corruption and concealment,” Gullotta told the jury.
But when the defense presented its opening statements, attorneys painted a much different — and more sinister — picture.
Carlos A. Garcia, who is defending A.C. Cuellar, presented three ideas to the jury: that his client is a deeply devoted family man who felt compelled to live up to the legacy of the Cuellar family patriarch, that Cuellar’s actions were on par with that of any shrewd businessman, and that the government itself is corrupt.
Growing up, A.C. had watched as the family patriarch, Dr. Arturo Cuellar, had built a legacy in the city of Weslaco.
The doctor had established a number of medical clinics and had served as the “family doctor” to much of the town. Many Weslaco parents could say that Dr. Cuellar had delivered their children into the world.
Everywhere he went, Dr. Cuellar heard “no charge” from the town’s businesspeople, who couldn’t stand to let the good man — the man who took care of them all — pay.
A.C. had, instead, attempted to follow in Dr. Cuellar’s footsteps. To take care of his family and his community in the same way.
“A.C. paid bribes to no one,” Garcia said.
“Friends, this case is about the generosity of a man and the love of a family,” Garcia told the jury.
GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION
Instead, A.C. had become the victim of a corrupt and relentless government machine — one eager to crush innocent people beneath its boots as its agents gathered feathers for their caps, Garcia said.
The attorney’s comments carried with them a slippery undercurrent of “us vs. them.” Of the outsider vs. the local. Of perhaps more than that.
“The FBI saw this as an opportunity to make a trophy, if you will,” Garcia said.
“Agents come from out-of-town. They come here out of some sort of hardship. … Agents were looking for that trophy… and they saw that opportunity in Weslaco,” he said.
Those agents and the federal prosecutors helping them are all outsiders to this community, save one, Assistant U.S. Attorney Roberto “Bobby” Lopez Jr.
And it was those outsiders who used their might to all but force several of the alleged conspiracy’s participants to cooperate.
“They pled guilty after the government squeezed them like a lemon,” Garcia said before being admonished by the judge.
But the implications of the government’s impropriety didn’t stop there.
During his cross examination of the prosecution’s first witness, Garcia attempted to impeach her integrity by implying she had helped the government in exchange for cash.
Prosecutors called Elizabeth Walker, the former Weslaco city secretary, to the stand to give testimony about more than a dozen public meetings from March 2008 through September 2014, during which the Weslaco City Commission took votes on items related to the water plant project.
Walker’s testimony was detailed and precise. Neither her voice nor her words wavered. And at times, she schooled both the prosecution and the defense on the finer points of municipal minutiae.
However, she wore a mask and used a wheeled walker for assistance each time she walked into the courtroom.
“The government paid you $20,000,” Garcia said as he cross examined her.
“The government gifted me $20,000. I do not consider it payment,” she replied.
Walker went on to explain that investigators had instructed her to remain available after she had compiled a host of Weslaco government records in response to an FBI subpoena and after she gave her grand jury testimony.
She had explained to an FBI agent that that might not always be possible since she had been diagnosed with cancer and had been attending treatment in Houston.
Sometime after that, the agent called her back and told her that the FBI had deposited money in her bank account. She tried to refuse it, but he wouldn’t let her. She didn’t learn of the sum until she called her bank to inquire about the deposit.
Also throughout testimony this week, fellow defense attorney Jaime Peña did his best to disparage the government’s credibility. Peña is representing Rick Quintanilla.
Peña did so most notably with the government’s key witness against his client, former District 4 Weslaco Commissioner Gerardo “Jerry” Tafolla.
Quintanilla had been one of Tafolla’s most devoted friends — so much so that he stepped up to serve as Tafolla’s campaign manager and treasurer when Tafolla first began his political career.
While Lopez, the prosecutor, had spent two hours on Wednesday afternoon examining Tafolla and getting him to recount how Quintanilla allegedly bribed him in $1,000 installments for several years, Peña spent the full day Friday trying to tear that testimony apart.
While he was at it, however, Peña threw in two non sequiturs aimed not only at impeaching Tafolla, but the government, as well.
Each day, the judge allowed the jury three breaks for respite — a lunch break at midday, and 15–20-minute breaks in the morning and afternoon.
Shortly after Friday’s morning break, Peña had been cross examining Tafolla over the banks that Quintanilla had allegedly used to cash bribery checks from former Rio Grande City Municipal Judge Leonel J. “Leo” Lopez Jr.
In the middle of the line of questioning, he asked Tafolla where he had gone during the mid-morning break. Tafolla replied that he had gone to a secluded witness room.
Peña asked Tafolla if anyone from the government had joined him. Tafolla said no.
There was a similar occurrence after lunch during another line of questions about the bank, whose name Tafolla had repeatedly confused.
“At lunch, did you meet with the government?” Peña asked Tafolla.
The man audibly scoffed before quickly replying, “No.”
“You answered that pretty fast. Probably because you knew I was gonna ask about that,” Peña replied before being scolded by the judge.
IMPEACHING THE CASE
Peña’s thinly veiled accusations of unethical government behavior may have seemed bizarre in the moment — especially with the way he asked the questions seemingly out of nowhere — but they may go toward a larger effort to criticize the case against his client.
And perhaps nowhere was that more clear than with one particular set of evidence — a series of audio and video recordings the prosecution introduced Thursday.
The recordings purport to show Quintanilla, Tafolla and Leo Lopez — the so-called “mastermind” of the bribery scheme — having a conversation in a restaurant.
Leo Lopez had turned government informant by that point and was making the recordings in an effort to get Quintanilla and Tafolla to implicate themselves.
But the restaurant was raucous, and the three men’s words in English and Spanish — what Peña called “mocho” — was at times hard to hear. So, the government provided a typewritten transcript of the conversation.
The transcript included attributions of who had said what, including a long portion of dialogue that the government had wholly attributed to Quintanilla.
But Peña and his staff had gone over the recordings and transcripts themselves and made corrections.
As Peña walked through the recordings with Tafolla for a second time, Tafolla admitted that it was he who was speaking during the majority of that portion of the conversation.
OTHER WITNESSES
In total, the prosecution presented 10 witnesses to the jury this week. Along with Elizabeth Walker and Jerry Tafolla, the jury also heard from:
>> Bethena Dasher, senior manager at web.com, which maintains email servers.
>> Fred Reyes, an accountant with the city of Weslaco, who testified that the city had received more than $10,000 in federal funding during each of the years of the alleged conspiracy.
>> Thomas Wayne Petras, director of facilities for Victoria National Bank. Petras testified as to how checks pass through Federal Reserve Bank clearinghouses.
>> Juan E. Gonzalez, currently the Weslaco city attorney. Gonzalez testified that Quintanilla wanted Gonzalez to testify that the pair had a consultant relationship with each other.
>> John F. Cuellar, the former Weslaco mayor pro tem. John Cuellar testified that his cousin, A.C. Cuellar, bribed him with over $405,000 during the scheme, then cut him off and laughed at him after losing his bid for reelection to the Weslaco City Commission.
>> Lucia E. “Lucy” Lozano, who was formerly the 50% owner of Corpus Christi-based concrete company, Quality Ready Mix. Lozano testified how A.C. Cuellar, who owned the other half of the company, wrote and issued $5,000 checks to John Cuellar for allegedly providing legal services.
>> Sonia Hurtado, an IRS criminal investigator. She testified about her examination of the personal tax returns for A.C Cuellar and Rick Quintanilla who both reported “Schedule C” sole proprietorships for consulting.
A.C. Cuellar’s tax returns, in particular included an unnamed “Schedule C” sole proprietorship for “consulting services” whose gross receipts appeared to match the $1.1 million in bribes the government alleges he received from Leo Lopez.
>> Juan Javier Barrios, the chief credit officer at Lone Star National Bank, where Leo Lopez had an account.
The government will call two more witnesses next week before resting its case against the two men.
At that time, Carlos Garcia and Jaime Peña will set to work on presenting their clients’ cases in chief.
PREVIOUS COVERAGE:
>> Day One
>> Day Two
>> Day Three
>> Day Four
