Brooks threatened with contempt in e-mail issue

A federal judge threatened Monday to hold David Brooks in contempt of court if his attorneys do not turn over the computer history of an e-mail being used to question the credibility of a key government witness at Brooks' fraud trial in Central Islip.

The witness, Dawn Schlegel, once chief financial officer of Brooks' former Westbury-based body-armor company DHB Industries, and federal prosecutors have suggested the e-mail was forged to undermine the credibility of Schlegel's overall testimony against Brooks.

Brooks' defense attorneys maintain the e-mail shows Schlegel engaged in one more instance of marital infidelity than the single one-night stand to which she has admitted.

U.S. District Judge Joanna Seybert had ordered Brooks' defense team last week to turn over to her by last Friday the metadata history of the e-mail. That history would show when the e-mail was created and any subsequent alterations or versions.

Seybert acted after Schlegel testified that an e-mail she had sent to a male colleague had been altered to falsely include the material about a sexual encounter, and federal prosecutors said the e-mail version Brooks was trying to use was not in any of the documents the government and defense attorneys had obtained from company computers.

Defense attorneys said they would comply in secret, since they argued that the government was not entitled to the history information.

But Monday, Seybert issued a second order for the production of the e-mail history, saying the defense had not complied with her initial order and now claimed the information was protected by a Fifth Amendment privilege, allowing a defendant to keep from producing documents that might tend to incriminate him or her.

Defense attorneys also recommended in secret another method of determining the history of the e-mail without having to produce the metadata, Seybert said in her court order. That method was not revealed in Seybert's order, but she clearly felt it was inadequate.

"Essentially, Brooks misunderstands the nature of a court order, and instead of fulfilling his obligation tells the court to " 'Go Fish,' " Seybert wrote.

She said the law requires a judge to examine questionable documents to determine whether they are genuine before they should be admitted in a trial.

"A defendant has no Fifth Amendment privilege that would enable him to shield documents from a court in camera review," Seybert wrote.

Seybert said if the metadata history isn't produced by Tuesday she will hold contempt hearings at the conclusion of Brooks' trial, where he is charged in a $190-million fraud, including having DHB illegally pay millions of dollars in personal expenses to support his lifestyle.

Richard Levitt, one of Brooks' attorneys, said Monday he had no comment and any reply to the judge's order would be done in court papers.