Judge Denies Corruption Counts : Court: Robert Aguilar testifies that innocent efforts to offer advice led to the case against him. He is the first federal judge ever charged with racketeering.

Testifying in his own defense Monday, U.S. District Judge Robert P. Aguilar said the activities that led to his indictment on racketeering and corruption charges were actually innocent efforts to help friends, relatives and acquaintances.

Aguilar, the first federal judge ever charged with racketeering, said he had a long historyof offering advice to anyone who asked for it, including law students he hardly knew. He said that this helpfulness, not any criminal intent, is behind his problems.

Aguilar, 58, is charged in an eight-count indictment with helping a former secretary who fled the country after being convicted of tax evasion, tipping a relative alleged to be a former mobster about an FBI wiretap on his home and attempting to influence another federal judge in favor of a longtime friend convicted of bank fraud.

Also named in the indictment are Abe Chapman, 83, the alleged former mobster once known as “The Trigger” who is related to Aguilar by marriage, and Michael Rudy Tham, 66, a friend of Chapman and a former Teamsters official convicted in 1980 of embezzling $2,000 from the local union.

Typical of his testimony, which is scheduled to conclude today, Aguilar said that when Chapman and two lawyers came to his house to discuss Tham’s case, he only supplied them with the same procedural advice he often gave others.

“I was not interested in the facts of the case,” he said. “I never knew Mr. Tham and I didn’t care about him.”

Prosecutors allege that Aguilar, a San Jose resident, tipped Chapman about an FBI wiretap on his phone and tried to influence a fellow judge who was hearing a legal motion in Tham’s attempt to overturn his conviction. In exchange, prosecutors allege that Chapman and Tham located a job for Aguilar’s alcoholic brother, Louis.

Aguilar conceded that Chapman offered to help his brother, but he said he doubted how much it was worth. “I thought Abe Chapman was an old, ill alcoholic . . . a puff of smoke,” Aguilar said, later referring to Chapman as a “kook-a-roonie.”

Earlier, Aguilar conceded that he bought a house in San Jose from a former secretary, Vera Hoff, and that he knew that she had moved to Mexico while continuing to maintain the appearance of a law practice in her U.S. house. But he said he was unaware she had illegally fled the country before being sentenced for tax evasion.

He said that he was unaware of this even after having visited her twice in Mexico in the early 1980s. He said he learned she was a federal fugitive only when that fact was mentioned in a 1988 newspaper story about a palimony suit filed against him.

Visiting U.S. District Judge Louis Bechtle of Philadelphia barred an attempt by Aguilar’s lead attorney, Patrick Hallinan of San Francisco, to ask Aguilar if he had made controversial rulings that were unpopular with the government. Aguilar’s defense revolves around a claim that he was targeted by the FBI and prosecutors who disapproved of his liberal views and rulings.

In a loud and firm voice, Aguilar recounted details of his childhood as one of 11 children. Led by Hallinan, Aguilar described himself as a hard-working and studious youth who gave all the money earned in menial jobs to his mother to help support the family.

Aguilar, named to the federal bench in 1980, recalled that “one of the happiest days” of his life came when he administered the citizenship oath to his father, an immigrant from Mexico.

Aguilar is to be the sole defense witness. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 55 years in prison and $2 million in fines, along with impeachment by Congress.