Rezko lawyer goes after witness

CHICAGO (AP) — The government’s star witness at political fundraiser Antoin “Tony” Rezko’s fraud trial gave a personally embarrassing, detailed account yesterday of how he gorged on powerful drugs in his office, aboard chartered planes and in all-night sessions with male companions in luxury hotels.

Attorney Stuart P. Levine, the political insider who asserts that he and Mr. Rezko schemed to squeeze more than $7 million in kickbacks from companies seeking business from the state of Illinois, said he sometimes went to his office after all-night drug parties and continued snorting crystal methamphetamine and other powerful narcotics behind closed doors.

The testimony marked the latest effort by Rezko attorney Joseph J. Duffy to wreck Levine’s credibility in the eyes of the jury.

Mr. Rezko, 52, is charged with scheming with Levine to get kickbacks from money-management firms that wanted to invest assets of the $40 billion fund that pays the pensions of retired downstate and suburban teachers.

Mr. Rezko also is charged with scheming with Levine to split a $1 million bribe from a contractor who wanted to build a hospital in Crystal Lake, Ill.

Levine sat on the two state boards with control over such matters. But prosecutors say it was the more than $1 million Mr. Rezko raised for Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich’s campaign fund that gave him the clout to start the schemes. Mr. Blagojevich has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

Mr. Rezko denies he took part in any such schemes. Levine has pleaded guilty and is testifying as the government’s key witness in hopes of getting a lenient 67-month federal prison term.

Mr. Duffy maintains that Levine’s brain was so dulled by years of taking various powerful drugs that he doesn’t recall what happened.

Mr. Duffy is allowed to ask Levine about his drug use, but is barred by a court order from asking about what prosecutors call Levine’s “personal social life” and what defense attorneys have been describing to jurors as his “secret life.”

U.S. District Judge Amy J. St. Eve ruled that telling jurors exactly what that life consisted of would be too prejudicial to the government’s case.

But Mr. Duffy repeatedly got Levine to admit that he took part in all-night drug sessions with male companions at various hotels, sometimes in groups and sometimes one on one.

Levine also was required to give the names of his companions and tell how he paid for their drugs and took them on out-of-town flights aboard chartered planes. Sometimes, he testified, they started taking drugs as soon as they got aboard the airplanes.

Levine again testified that his favorite drugs before March 2004, when FBI agents knocked on his door and his life abruptly changed, were crystal methamphetamine and ketamine, a tranquilizer known to users as Special K.

He said he sometimes took as many as 10 lines of each drug at a party.