Jury picked in bribery retrial of former NYC jail boss Norman Seabrook

Jury selection was completed Wednesday in former New York City jail boss Norman Seabrook’s bribery retrial, setting the stage for opening statements Thursday morning in a case expected to feature damaging evidence that jurors who deadlocked at his first trial last year didn’t learn about.

Seabrook, accused of taking a $60,000 bribe from one-time fixer and star government witness Jona Rechnitz to invest $20 million in union pension money with a hedge fund, was able to keep the outcome of the investment out of the Manhattan federal court trial that ended in a hung jury last November.

But U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who did not preside at the first trial, has ruled he will let prosecutors tell the new jury that financial struggles at the hedge fund Platinum Partners led to a loss of $19 million of the $20 million investment Seabrook engineered.

“I believe the outcome of dishonesty is relevant,” said the judge, telling lawyers at a pretrial hearing late last month that the eventual loss provided context for allegations that Seabrook misled the union’s board. “This is the outcome of dishonesty.”

Seabrook, 58, was tried last year with Platinum founder Murray Huberfeld, who allegedly used Rechnitz as a conduit to pay Seabrook to invest Correction Officers Benevolent Association pension money. Huberfeld has since pleaded guilty to misleading Platinum about the $60,000, but not bribery.

Last year’s trial marked the first public testimony from Rechnitz, a one-time real-estate wheeler-dealer and political donor raised in Los Angeles who became a central figure in corruption probes that enveloped Mayor Bill de Blasio, City Hall and the NYPD.

In addition to describing how he wined and dined Seabrook and took him on vacations as part of a campaign to wield influence with top figures in law enforcement and politics, Rechnitz laid out how raising money for the mayor bought him favored treatment and access at City Hall.

The retrial, likely to last one to two weeks, is expected to reprise that testimony, as well as an extended cross-examination in which Rechnitz admitted links to two different Ponzi schemes, engaging in racially offensive behavior by dressing up in blackface, and lying repeatedly to get perks – from a gun license to a police chaplaincy – and exaggerate his importance to associates.

Defense lawyers contend that Rechnitz framed Seabrook in hopes of getting lenient treatment for other wrongdoing, but they fear arguments that Seabrook properly vetted the investment with Platinum and thought it was a good fund will be undercut when jurors learn the losses.

“The fate of this investment is not part of this case,” defense lawyer Paul Shechtman told the judge at the recent hearing. “The question is whether there was a bribe."

Platinum filed for bankruptcy protection in 2016, and several officials of the hedge fund were indicted for fraud in Brooklyn federal court that year.