Carona jurors again hear tapes of talk with Haidl

Before beginning deliberations Thursday, jurors in the corruption trial of former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona listened one last time to undercover tapes that prosecutors say capture him plotting to cover up a trail of cash and gifts from Newport Beach millionaire Don Haidl.

Assistant U.S. Atty. Brett Sagel told the 11-man, one-woman panel that Carona implicates himself in the secretly recorded tapes as he talks with Haidl at the Bayside restaurant in Newport Beach about a federal grand jury investigation into the sheriff’s administration.

To underscore his argument, Sagel played several portions of the tapes of the late-night meeting between Carona and Haidl that was arranged through intermediaries because Carona thought federal investigators might be tapping his phones. Haidl had brought a fake subpoena attachment with him, to help convince Carona to open up.

Sagel said Carona never got up and left the table or told Haidl he “didn’t have a clue” what he was talking about, instead sticking around more than three hours as the two men allegedly went over how to cover up a stream of cash and gifts from Haidl, including monthly payments of $1,000.

Haidl: “As long as our stories are straight, I’m OK, as long as I know there’s no trail anywhere.”

Carona: “No trail anywhere. . . . Period.”

Haidl: “OK.”

Carona: “Period. Period. In fact, not even close to being a trail.”

Sagel picked up when the tape stopped: “You have been here since October. You’ve seen and heard the evidence and testimony. You’ve listened to the tapes. There is a trail. Period. The evidence. The testimony. The tapes. What you’ve seen and heard since October is the trail. Period.”

Carona is the highest-ranking law enforcement officer to be prosecuted in Orange County. He was indicted in 2007, resigned a year ago and went on trial in October on charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and witness tampering.

Prosecutors say that he traded the powers of the sheriff’s office in pursuit of hundreds of thousands in cash and gifts, and that he later tried to get Haidl to lie to investigators as they were closing in.

Defense attorneys have tried to show that the government’s case is built on lies by Haidl and other former associates of Carona, including former Assistant Sheriff George Jaramillo. Carona’s lawyers said Haidl and Jaramillo were motivated by their own greed and are trying to win leniency in their own criminal cases. The defense team told jurors that the tapes actually show the former sheriff is innocent.

Jurors heard from 58 witnesses during the trial and listened to hour after hour of the recordings, captured on a hidden microphone in a fake cellphone that Haidl carried with him to three meetings with Carona in the summer of 2007.

The tapes are crucial to a key element of the case: whether Carona took $1,000 monthly cash bribes from Haidl. Haidl testified that he made the payments to both Carona and Jaramillo, beginning after the first election and continuing until 2002.

Initially, the money was handed over in envelopes to the two men near the beginning of each month, usually at Haidl’s home, according to Haidl. Eventually, Haidl testified, he made quarterly payments of $3,000 as it became harder to get cash so regularly.

During a seven-hour closing argument, Carona attorney Jeffrey Rawitz told jurors that Carona never took the bribes and that the two men never discuss any such cash transactions on the tapes. Instead, Rawitz said, Haidl deliberately blurs his language so it seems that way. The lawyer said they are actually talking about a separate transaction related to a small powerboat that Haidl gave Carona as a birthday gift.

On Thursday, Sagel singled out parts of the tapes he said clearly show Carona and Haidl talking about the cash bribes.

In one segment, Haidl reassures Carona that the IRS won’t pursue a criminal investigation for tax evasion for amounts of less than $40,000. He tells Carona that from his calculations, the payments he made to Carona from 1999 to 2002 fell below that threshold.

“You heard [Carona] talk about those same amounts on the tapes without a hiccup . . . without a pause. Without a ‘What are you talking about?’ ” Sagel told the jurors. “If it didn’t happen . . . you get up and leave. You say, ‘What are you talking about?’ The sheriff of Orange County stayed.”

Further, Sagel said, when Haidl lets Carona know that he is willing to lie and say he never gave the sheriff any cash, Carona goes along with it and continues to stick around.

“He orders more drinks. He orders more carpaccios,” Sagel said. “He stays . . . because that’s what they were there for, to talk about how they were going to lie.”

christine.hanley@latimes.com