Pellicano drops bid for hearing on misconduct claim

Indicted private eye Anthony Pellicano on Monday abruptly dropped his request for a hearing into alleged government misconduct as a federal judge brushed aside eleventh-hour bids to postpone next month’s wiretapping trial of Pellicano and five co-defendants.

The surprise move by Pellicano came at the outset of a hearing before U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer, who two months ago agreed that Pellicano was entitled to an evidentiary hearing over allegations that the FBI and federal prosecutors violated his constitutional rights by using his ex-girlfriend to elicit confidential information.

The accusation was a cornerstone of the defense under Pellicano’s previous attorneys, and Fischer’s agreement to grant a hearing was a rare courtroom victory for the former private investigator’s legal team.

But at Monday’s hearing, the first since he decided to represent himself at trial, Pellicano told the judge he was withdrawing his request.

“I don’t believe I have any chance of prevailing,” Pellicano said.

Though attorneys in the case declined to comment, Thom Mrozek, spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles, expressed satisfaction with the development.

“We have always believed that the motion was unfounded,” Mrozek said.

Fischer then pushed forward with plans to begin the long-awaited trial Feb. 27. It is expected to last eight to 10 weeks.

In doing so, the judge again rejected requests by attorneys for entertainment attorney Terry Christensen, a co-defendant, that the trial be delayed.

For some time, Christensen’s defense team has argued that the trial should not begin before appeals courts have ruled on the admissibility of evidence, including tape recordings, that they believe should not be entered at trial.

On Monday, Chicago defense attorney Dan Webb added a personal request for a delay in the trial’s start date. The former U.S. attorney in Chicago said he had long been retained to head Christensen’s defense team at trial but now has a scheduling conflict with a case in New York City set to begin March 3.

Fischer rejected requests to postpone the case pending the appeals. And she said she was not persuaded by Webb’s request, noting that Christensen had plenty of other well-qualified attorneys.

Attorneys for Christensen said that in the coming days they would make an emergency request to delay the case and ask that Christensen be tried separately. Christensen was indicted after the original group of defendants. His attorneys have long argued that his alleged pact with Pellicano to illegally wiretap the ex-wife of his client, billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, is not only unsubstantiated but has no connection to the long-running conspiracy that authorities have attributed to Pellicano and the other co-defendants.

Before Monday’s court session ended, in response to a question from Pellicano, Fischer disclosed in court that federal authorities were no longer investigating the leak of sealed court documents in the case to the New York Times nearly two years ago.

“They haven’t found anything. They are not indicting anyone, as far as I know,” Fischer said.

The leak investigation, conducted by the U.S. attorney’s office and FBI in San Diego, was viewed for a time as an important component of the case because each side was accusing the other of dispensing the documents and tapes to smear prominent attorneys and celebrities who had not been charged with crimes.

But the details and pace of the probe were always in question for various reasons, including that under U.S. Justice Department policy, journalists cannot be subpoenaed to testify before a federal grand jury without the approval of the attorney general.

And although such subpoenas have been issued in high-profile cases involving national security and other significant scandals, many observers of the Pellicano case said it did not seem to rise to the level of importance that would lead the U.S. attorney general to issue them.

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greg.krikorian@latimes.com