Judge Says He Lied About Leaking Wiretap Warnings

SAN FRANCISCO —  In an effort to defuse potentially damaging prosecution evidence, U.S. District Judge Robert Aguilar testified Tuesday that he lied when he told a lawyer that he had leaked information about a wiretap.

In his second day of testimony in his own defense, Aguilar also accused a series of prosecution witnesses of lying or being “mistaken” in saying they had held conversations or meetings with him. They included a former secretary, a friend who was secretly cooperating with the FBI and a deputy U.S. marshal.

The judge denied every accusation against him--that he had tried to influence criminal cases by approaching fellow judges, helped his former secretary remain a fugitive, twice disclosed a wiretap to its target, lied to the FBI and told a witness to lie to a grand jury.

He is charged with eight felonies, including a charge that he used his office as a “racketeering enterprise” to obstruct justice, the first such accusation against a federal judge.

In asserting that he had lied in the past, Aguilar was seeking to undercut the impact of a secretly made tape recording of a luncheon meeting in which he said he had relayed word to Abe Chapman, an elderly relative by marriage, that Chapman was being wiretapped.

Aguilar is charged with illegally revealing the tap to Chapman twice, in August, 1987, and February, 1988.

In May, 1988, attorney Ed Solomon, a friend and former classmate of Aguilar, agreed with the FBI to wear a tape recorder to two luncheon meetings with the judge. On one of the tapes, Aguilar said he had relayed word to Chapman about a wiretap so that he would call on pay phones in the future.

That “was not a true statement,” Aguilar testified Tuesday.

“I was bragging to Ed Solomon . . . trying to make him feel better,” the judge said, recalling that Solomon had appeared distraught about an FBI investigation.

Aguilar added, “What I’ve said here under oath was absolutely the truth.”

Aguilar, 58, of San Jose, a judge since 1980, faces a prison sentence of up to 55 years if convicted. He also could be removed from office by Congress regardless of the verdict.