Action Against Donovan Called ‘Phantom Case’ : No Evidence to Support Charges, Attorney for Ex-Cabinet Officer Says

State prosecutors concocted “a phantom case” with “no evidence” to support charges that former U.S. Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan helped steal $7.4 million, Donovan’s lawyer said Thursday.

“They’re going to throw everything against that wall and hope something sticks,” William O. Bittman told the jury in his 35-minute opening argument in a dimly lit courtroom in the Bronx.

Bittman described Donovan, who resigned his Reagan Cabinet post on March 15, 1985, to fight the grand larceny and fraud charges, as a compassionate family man and public servant who gives anonymously to charity and who was targeted for prosecution because of his government position.

First Such Case

“This is the first time in the history of this great country that a sitting Cabinet officer has been indicted,” Bittman said, raising his voice in apparent anger.

“This is the Donovan case, ladies and gentlemen,” he continued. “. . . That’s why we’re here. That’s why the sketch artists are here. That’s why the press is here.”

But Bittman said that the evidence against Donovan was “all gloss” and that his own role will be small even though the trial is expected to last several months.

“My guess is (that) once a week I’ll stand up here and make an objection,” Bittman said. “I don’t know what else I’ll be doing here.”

Donovan, eight other persons and two business firms are charged with defrauding the New York City Transit Authority of $7.4 million between 1978 and 1984 by submitting inflated bills during construction of a $186-million Manhattan subway tunnel.

Subcontractor at Issue

The 137-count indictment, dated Sept. 24, 1984, charges that the Schiavone Construction Co. of Secaucus, N.J., used a fraudulent Bronx subcontractor, Jopel Contracting & Trucking Co., to meet the transit authority’s goal of 10% involvement by “minority business enterprises.”

Donovan was executive vice president of the Schiavone company, in charge of bonding, banking and miscellaneous business ventures, at the time of the alleged scheme. None of the charges concern his role as labor secretary. Six other Schiavone executives and the two owners of Jopel also are defendants.

As Donovan watched intently from an aisle seat in the first row, his hands folded under his chin, Bittman complained to the jury that he is “still waiting” to hear evidence of Donovan’s crime two years after the indictment.

Bittman said that he had bought a large ledger book to take notes during Bronx Assistant Dist. Atty. Stephen Bookin’s three-hour opening argument Tuesday.

Waves Unused Book

“I filled half a page,” Bittman said, waving the book before the six men and six women in the jury box. “I could have used my pocket calender.”

“This is a phantom case,” he continued. “This is a case that only exists in the minds of Mr. Bookin and his associates . . . . I suggest this is a non-case.”

In referring to Bookin’s statements that Donovan co-signed 138 Schiavone checks totaling $4 million in the alleged fraud, Bittman said Donovan in fact had co-signed 5,718 checks totaling $135,351,280 during the disputed East 63rd Street tunnel construction.

“If this were incriminating, we’d just walk in and plead guilty,” Bittman said. “Because he signed the checks, there’s no doubt about it.”

He said also that Bookin will use out-of-context, misleading parts of testimony that Donovan gave to a U.S. Senate panel in confirmation hearings in 1981, to a grand jury called by a special federal prosecutor in 1982 and to the Bronx County grand jury and a State Supreme Court hearing in 1984.

Aided Minority Students

Bittman said that Donovan has anonymously paid for the educations of 60 minority-member students over the last eight years at a private Catholic high school in Newark, N.J.

“This is the measure of the man,” Bittman said.

When asked later for details, Donovan said that most of the school’s students are Black Muslims, not Catholic, but he refused to identify the school.

“Enough has been said,” Donovan said. “When you do something that is good, and you talk about it, you’ve spent it.”