He talked his way out of a prison term, testifying for the prosecution and telling the judge an all-too human impulse to please his wife led him astray. Now Brian Foley’s words are making it hard for that wife, Lisa Wilson-Foley, to avoid going to prison for her role in the botched scheme the couple embarked on with ex-Gov. John G. Rowland.
Wilson-Foley (pictured) pleaded guilty in connection with her role in that scheme, which aimed at helping the Connecticut businesswoman realize her dream of being a U.S. Congresswoman.
Wilson-Foley is to be sentenced in U.S. District Court in New Haven by Judge Janet Bond Arterton. Arterton has temporarily deferred sentencing until an issue in Rowland’s sentencing is worked out. Prosecutors are asking Arterton to send Wilson-Foley to prison for no fewer than 10 months in order to broadcast an “unmistakable message” that stealing an election will not pay.
The same federal prosecutors did not object when Brian Foley, their star witness at Rowland’s trial in September, caught a break and averted prison because of his lengthy cooperation in the criminal investigation that helped convict the former governor — and Foley’s wife.
That all-out assistance culminated in appearances before the jury, in which Foley explained how a $35,000 consulting deal that his nursing home chain gave Rowland was nothing but a sham, a covert way to pay the former politician for services he was actually providing Lisa Wilson-Foley’s campaign in 2011 and 2012.
However, the same team from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Haven, led by Christopher Mattei and Liam Brennan, determined that Lisa Foley-Wilson was of less use to them as a potential witness because of her inability to “candidly and unequivocally” acknowledge her responsibility in the “prolonged and calculated effort to defraud voters.”
Similar frustration led prosecutors to demand that Wilson-Foley plead guilty last March to the same misdemeanor as her husband — conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions — despite earlier signals that Brian Foley’s guilty plea would resolve both spouses’ cases.
Prosecutors Mattei and Brennan have taken just as hard a line in their recommendations on sentencing. Unimpressed with Wilson-Foley’s lawyers’ attempts to characterize her as a political ingénue guilty of nothing more than “record-keeping” violations, prosecutors are subtly pressing the court to consider the risk of letting a wealthy defendant walk. They have peppered their briefs with eye-popping details about the fallen candidate’s net worth of over $23 million and yearly earnings of $872,000 in 2012 and $1,462,000 in 2013.
“When the wealthy and the powerful act as if the rules don’t apply to them, as they did here,” prosecutors warned in a sentencing memo to the judge, “the public must be assured that there are not two criminal justice systems: one for the rich and powerful, and one for everyone else.”
They Had It All
The extended stay behind bars that the prosecutors have in mind for Wilson-Foley is not the end that the self-made, 55-year-old businesswoman envisioned back in 2011 when she joined the crowded field of Republicans jostling to be the next Congressman from northwestern Connecticut.
Living for the most part in Simsbury, Connecticut, she had been one half of an entrepreneurial couple who seemed to have it all: Three children jointly plus four from prior unions, matching degrees from Yale’s School of Public Health, and a business portfolio valued at more than $100 million between 26 nursing homes and a Newport, R.I. nightclub that he owned and half a dozen holdings on her side of the ledger including a golf course, bowling alley and pharmacy.
Now they have top-drawer, his-and-her criminal defense lawyers, too. Brian Foley has Hubert J. Santos, a noted gunslinger, to watch his back. Lisa Wilson-Foley has Craig A. Raabe of Robinson & Cole.
Still, the spouses’ fates may diverge sharply if she ends up going to prison, partly for recalcitrance, while her husband, the co-conspirator who admitted hatching the scheme, is spared.
Wilson-Foley’s sister, Nancy Wilson Brown, alluded to the stress the criminal case has inflicted on her sister’s marriage in a letter to the judge in October. “Her relationship with her husband has been challenged to say the least,’’ the sister wrote, much as the couple, “continue to love and support one another.”
Prosecutors claim they are already giving Wilson-Foley a break by supporting a sentence at the low end of the 10 to 12 months called for under federal sentencing guidelines. That concession, they explained, was granted in recognition of limited, last-minute assistance Wilson-Foley provided the government – after Rowland’s jury was selected.
Only then, prosecutors said, did Foley-Wilson turn over handwritten notes Rowland had given her and her husband at the Farmington Marriott on Sept. 12, 2011. Those talking points outlined reasons Rowland thought he ought to be hired as a paid consultant to the campaign and contained advice for the candidate including instructions that she dress down if she wanted to overcome her “rich, nice, housewife image.” Click here to review the document.
Following that meeting, Foley offered to route Rowland’s payments through the businessman’s private companies to keep voters from souring on his wife if they observed the campaign taking cues from Rowland, a felon who famously served time for corrupt acts he committed while governor.
The scribbled notes, later enshrined as Government Exhibit 3 at trial, helped corroborate Foley’s recollections on the stand that Rowland wanted to be paid from the get-go for any heavy-lifting performed for the campaign.
Rowland’s lawyers have yet to relinquish the point. On Jan. 2, they complained to the court that their client was prejudiced at trial because prosecutors never shared with them remarks Wilson-Foley and her lawyers recall her making before trial, which indicated that she initially thought the deal with the governor was a lawful one.
Prosecutors have said they withheld nothing from the defense and imply that the defense lawyers are bluffing. “It would have been malpractice for defense counsel to call Wilson-Foley as a witness,’’ prosecutors wrote last week, noting that the defense had far more to lose than gain from her testimony.
Perfect Mom?
If the 11th-hour challenge to the conviction falls short, Rowland will face a high likelihood of being returned to prison, given the judge’s pronounced distaste for public corruption. Nonetheless, Wilson-Foley’s lawyers argued in their own sentencing memo there is no need for the judge to incarcerate their client when she has pleaded guilty to the type of “low-level” misdemeanor that warrants 0 to 6 months, at most, by their reading of the guidelines. They said her transgression is being handled as a criminal matter only because of Rowland’s involvement and the “government’s gusto to imprison Rowland,’’ for having the audacity to break the law after getting off lightly for the crimes that drove him from office.
Her lawyers also assert that prosecutors would be hard-pressed to call for a lengthy sentence for Rowland, her partner in crime, if they showed her any leniency.
The defense team has submitted at least a dozen letters to the court from supporters who describe Wilson-Foley as the perfect mom, book club member, mentor, and neighbor — a “model citizen” who serves on community boards even as she “balanced her youngest daughter on her hip.”
There is even a testimonial from William A. Petit, Jr., a widely-respected doctor and crime victim who supported her for public office.
Raabe’s team also complained that prosecutors failed to credit their client properly for assistance she did render. Two examples they cited were her waiver of the marital privilege that ordinarily shields emails between spouses and her turning over Rowland’s talking-point notes to investigators the day she located them “misfiled” among records she has from an unsuccessful run for lieutenant governor in 2010.
Contact Alison Leigh Cowan .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) or follow her on Twitter at @cowannyt.
Previous coverage of these sentencings:
• Tough Judge Lets Rowland Co-Conspirator Off Easy
• Facing Jail, Rowland Co-Conspirator Sends Judge A Bedtime Story