Frank Carone, former top aide to ex-Mayor Eric Adams who was indicted last week over allegedly taking bribes to manipulate a city contract, said on Wednesday he wants a trial as quickly as possible.
Carone pushed for an Aug. 24 trial start date — a position the federal judge presiding over his case found hard to believe would be carried out.
It’s an uncommon position for someone in Carone’s position to take. While U.S. gives law a person the right to a trial within 70 days of their arrest, when cases are high-profile and complicated like this one, attorneys and judges will typically agree it’s in everyone’s best interest to pause that speedy trial clock so both sides can properly obtain and agree on what evidence will be used and show up prepared.
Government prosecutors allege Carone used the city’s 2022 migrant crisis to enrich himself by working with his brother, attorney Andrew Carone, to accept $120,000 in bribes from a Queens hotel owner and employee in exchange for pushing the then-mayor to award them a nearly $7 million city contract to house migrants. That hotel, called Microtel in Long Island City, had been consistently turned down by City Hall for the contract, as officials repeatedly determined the hotel’s size and location were not suitable for that purpose.
Frank Carone, Anthony Carone, and the Microtel owner and staffer Yan Po Zhu and Crystal Chen, who had befriended Carone, were all arrested, indicted, and pleaded not guilty last Wednesday on bribery, money laundering, and wire fraud charges.
Attorneys for the Carones surprised U.S. District Judge Kiyo Matsumoto this Wednesday by saying they wanted the trial to start as soon as possible.
“I don’t think that’s a real date,” Matsumoto told Carone’s attorneys after they affirmed they wanted an Aug. 24 trial.
They assured her it was, alleging that, because the government has been investigating the Carones for over two years and they had been in communication with prosecutors during that investigation, they said they did not think it should take as long to prepare as a typical case would.
However, attorneys for Chen and Zhu did not share the same desire for an August trial. Attorneys for the Queens pair, who just joined the legal defense a week ago, said they did not experience the same circumstances that the Carones had prior to their arrest.
With the Carones, Chen and Zhu seeking trials at different times, Matsumoto would have three tricky choices: Either to force Zhu and Chen’s attorneys to move forward even if they say they’re not ready; order the Carones to push the trial back by declaring it a complex case, which mandates excluding time from the speedy trial clock; or sever the Carones’ case from Zhu and Chen’s, an unpopular option for the court and government.
“Severing is not favored when defendants are indicted together,” Matsumoto said. “I’d appreciate it if we could all be on the same page.”
Government prosecutor Sara Winik said she thought the speedy trial clock should be paused because the process of getting into over a dozen electronic devices and going through what she expects to be four terabytes worth of digital evidence in the case could take months. Winik added that she would also need to turn all that evidence over to the defense to review.
Even so, she said the government would be ready to proceed in August, if necessary. Matsumoto, on the other hand, expressed serious doubts.
“It doesn’t seem too logical to me to think about waiving speedy trial when you don’t have all the documents,” Matsumoto told the defense, though she scheduled the trial, which is expected to last eight weeks, for Aug. 24.
The parties are due back in court on July 27 to confer over their preparation.
Frank Carone’s attorney insists government’s case has ‘major holes’
Attorneys for the Carones said last week they believe the government’s indictment has “major holes,” alleging it would be torn apart in court. They picked that argument back up in court on Wednesday, continuing to question the indictment’s legitimacy and saying the government didn’t provide enough details on when and where the alleged bribery took place.
“What is the official act our client is alleged to have done?” Frank Carone attorney Andrew Goldstein asked.
Matsumoto told the government to show the defense where that information appears in the indictment or to answer their questions directly.
Charging documents show dated September and October 2022 texts between Zhu and Frank Carone where Zhu repeatedly requests Carone ask city officials about awarding a contract to his hotel, Carone saying he’d see what he could, and Zhu writing back, “thank you my big guy.”
They also show dated texts from those same months between Frank Carone and unnamed city officials, where the officials tell Carone Microtel isn’t an approved hotel for a migrant housing contract and that they’ve “taken this as far as it could go” so they are “not clear what else you want me to do here.”
Later messages in the indictment between those city officials, allegedly after Carone continued pushing for the contract, say Microtel “had come directly from the top” and they should “assume it is approved.”
High-profile defense attorney Marc Agniflio, who represented the Alexander brothers in their federal sex trafficking case and Luigi Mangione in his state and federal murder trials, appeared in the courtroom gallery and with Carone’s attorneys outside the courthouse.
Court documents don’t yet indicate whether he’s been added to their legal team.
All four defendants have been offered and accepted bail packages, though it appeared Zhu was still ironing out how he would secure the $8 million bond on his head.
