The right to remain silent has never occurred to Dick Grasso, Ken Langone or Maurice “Hank” Greenberg – the most celebrated and outspoken defendants ever to appear in an Attorney General Eliot Spitzer lawsuit.
In fact, instead of quietly huddling with lawyers to prepare for their upcoming courtroom showdowns – like most defendants, from mobsters to other business titans – the trio has become as outspoken and brash as, well, Spitzer himself.
“I think the case against me is a hollow one, and I’ve never been reluctant to say that,” Grasso, the former head of the New York Stock Exchange, told The Post.
Grasso, almost from the day he was forced out in 2003 over charges he accepted an excessive pay package of $140 million, has lobbed bricks at Spitzer.
Ditto Langone, the NYSE board member charged with facilitating Grasso’s huge pay package. “It is important to get out there and build a case in the public,” said Langone spokesman Jim McCarthy. “Ken’s making his stand so public for reasons of integrity based on the sound business decisions he’s made.”
Greenberg, the former chairman of AIG charged with creating a sham insurance transaction and hiding underwriting losses, has, ironically, been speaking up more since the May 25, 2005, charges were leveled against him than before.
But is defiance the right note to strike?
“It is increasingly the case that subjects of government investigations are taking advantage of pre-trial opportunities to get their version of events out into the court of public opinion,” said Seth Rodner, a former federal prosecutor and current white-collar criminal defense attorney with Fowler, White, Boggs & Banker.
Rodner said the defiant tack “has great potential to backfire.” It can also inadvertently tip off prosecutors to the defense team’s trial strategy, he said.
“Greenberg, in particular, is out there making statements in writing that will be memorialized for all time and that he will never be able to run away from,” Rodner continued.
No Greenberg trial date has been set.
For Grasso and codefendant Langone – who are set for an Oct. 16 trial – the stakes are even higher and, as a result, the vitriol is that much more intense.
According to Fordham law professor Jill Fisch, Spitzer is trying to use Grasso’s $140 million compensation package to illustrate an insatiable level of greed on the part of corporate executives and to bring Grasso down to the level of disgraced HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy, Tyco CEO Dennis Koslowski and others.
“Grasso has to counter that by making sure the public knows that those executives did horrible things to their companies while he was just the opposite,” Fisch said.
“He has to show that if he wasn’t a hero, then at the very least he was a highly effective leader,” she said. “That’s a key part of his p.r. strategy.”
A call to Spitzer’s office for comment was not returned.