Prosecutor: Ex-NYC jail union boss cursed during bribery retrial

Former New York City jail union boss Norman Seabrook allegedly muttered a dismissive cuss word during the government’s opening statement at his Manhattan federal court bribery retrial Thursday, triggering a complaint from prosecutors as the corruption case got off to a testy start.

“There was an audible expletive from Mr. Seabrook,” prosecutor Martin Bell objected to U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein after the jury left the courtroom for a break. "Specifically something along the lines of, ‘That’s [expletive].’ I could hear it.”

Hellerstein said he had not heard the barnyard epithet but instructed Seabrook to “be impassive” during the trial. Seabrook and defense lawyer Paul Shechtman later insisted to reporters that the once-powerful head of the Correction Officers Benevolent Association did not break decorum.

“No, he didn’t say it,” said Shechtman, who then deadpanned, “I think he said, ‘I’m surprised by the quality of the opening statement.’"

Seabrook, 58, is accused of taking a $60,000 kickback from one-time fixer and star government informant Jona Rechnitz in return for investing $20 million in union pension money with the Platinum Partners hedge fund. A jury deadlocked on the charges last year.

In her opening, prosecutor Lara Pomerantz denounced Seabrook as a union leader whose duty to his members was “corrupted by greed,” and repeatedly focused on a piece of evidence kept out of the first trial — the eventual loss of most of the union’s money amid Platinum financial struggles.

“That hedge fund today? It is bankrupt,” Pomerantz told the two-man, ten-woman jury. “And when it went bankrupt it still had $19 million of union money in it. $19 million, lost. $19 million owed to the hardworking men and women of COBA, lost. But Norman Seabrook, he got paid.”

Rechnitz, a real estate wheeler-dealer who spent his way into favor with influential figures in law enforcement and politics and became a central figure in corruption scandals involving the NYPD and City Hall, claims he acted as a conduit on behalf of Platinum founder Murray Huberfeld and delivered the bribe to Seabrook in a Ferragamo bag.

But his credibility came under withering attack at the first trial, as he admitted under cross-examination involvement in two different Ponzi schemes and a series of lies to figures ranging from Seabrook to Mayor Bill de Blasio to try to exaggerate his importance and connections.

Defense lawyer Margaret Lynaugh signaled in her opening that Seabrook's strategy would be the same in his retrial, telling jurors that prosecutors had a “one-witness case” and Rechnitz, the man at the center, had set up Seabrook to win leniency and could not be trusted.

“First, Jona Rechnitz is a pathological liar, and second Jona Rechnitz always takes care of Jona Rechnitz,” she said. “He lies about the biggest things, and he lies about the littlest things.”

Pomerantz did not defend Rechnitz, but said his worst qualities were consistent with a man who would be involved in bribery and kickbacks.

“We aren’t asking you to like Jona Rechnitz… or to approve of the way he chose to live his life,” she said. “You shouldn’t.”

Huberfeld pleaded guilty after the first trial to misleading Platinum about the $60,000 payment, and is not being retried. Platinum declared bankruptcy in 2016, and several of its officials face fraud charges in Brooklyn federal court.

Seabrook’s trial is expected to last one to two weeks.