Corruption Trial Attorneys Clash on Limits for Accepting Donations : Courts: Prosecutor says in summation that two political aides committed extortion. Defense asserts money, politics are unavoidably linked.

Clashing sharply over what kinds of political payments are lawful, attorneys in the federal corruption trial of two former legislative aides made their final arguments to the jury Friday.

There was general agreement between the two sides over what was said by defendants Tyrone Netters and Darryl Freeman, because the prosecution in the seven-week trial relied heavily on secretly recorded videotapes and audiotapes.

But lawyers on opposing sides tried to put their own interpretations on those conversations and on the $54,000 in payments made to the defendants by undercover FBI agents and informants. They were part of an elaborate Capitol sting operation that has so far netted two legislators and two aides, all of them convicted of or pleading guilty to various political corruption charges.

U.S. Atty. George O’Connell charged that Netters and Freeman had crossed “far over the line” that separates proper solicitation of campaign contributions and consultants’ payments from flat-out extortion.

“A public official cannot agree to exchange money in any form in return for official conduct,” O’Connell told the jurors. “That is the line. It is a common sense line that we all understand. And in this case the defendants were far over that line.”

O’Connell contended that the many tapes showed that Freeman and Netters, “in brutally explicit conversations,” had worked together to extort money during the course of the sting, at times bartering with informants to extract even higher payments for their support of legislation to help a phony FBI business establish a shrimp processing plant.

However, the defense attorneys contended that money and politics are unavoidably linked, and that two men had acted legally.

Soliciting campaign contributions “is not illegal in and of itself,” said Netters’ attorney, George Walker. It was, he said, simply part of the “rough and tumble world of the Legislature.”

“The saddest thing about this trial is the reality of the world we live in,” said Freeman’s attorney, E. Richard Walker.

Both defense attorneys argued that the government’s undercover operatives kept “pushing and pushing and pushing” money at the two defendants in the form of campaign contribution checks, consulting fees and even cash payments.

George Walker referred to a $1,000 cash contribution, delivered by undercover FBI Agent John Brennan to the home of an aide to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) in 1986 against the advice of defendant Freeman. The payment was returned because cash donations are illegal, and Brennan sent a cashier’s check instead.

“That’s typical of what the FBI is trying to do in this case, trying to make criminals out of people,” Walker said.

However, throughout the trial and his closing argument, prosecutor O’Connell contended that Netters, with Freeman’s help, continually “set a price on his actions and returned again and again and again to the theme that he wanted more money.”

Netters, 36, has been charged with nine counts of extortion, racketeering, conspiracy, money laundering and income tax evasion in 1986 and 1988, when he was an aide to Assemblywoman Gwen Moore (D-Los Angeles). Both Netters and Moore saw their offices searched by the FBI three years ago when the sting first came to light. However, the U.S. attorney’s office announced earlier this year that there was not enough evidence against Moore and that she would not be charged.

Freeman, 44, is charged with two counts--conspiracy and aiding and abetting extortion while he was a lobbyist in 1986.

Testifying in his own defense, Netters said that he was only doing Moore’s bidding when he helped win legislative approval of two special-interest bills that were in fact being pushed by FBI agents, acting as Southern businessmen as part of the sting. Accepting political campaign contributions for Moore and for his own campaign for a seat on a local utility district board had no effect on the passage of bills, he testified.

And Freeman testified that he often appeared to play along with the undercover agents, but in reality he was being overly talkative, just “blowing smoke,” he said.

Yet O’Connell, in his closing statement, made much of a conversation taped in 1988, when Netters told an undercover informant how much money he wanted for himself from a pot of payments set aside to move the legislation. “If we do 25 (thousand dollars), I want eight (thousand) out of it . . . if we do 35 (thousand dollars), I want 10,” said Netters.

In dispute is a separate $500 cash payment that Brennan handed to Freeman to give to Netters, who was about to head off on vacation.

Netters testified that he never received the cash, and said that when Brennan started discussing payments in a Capitol office he tossed him out. Netters and his attorney charge that the crucial tape of that incident was either missing or had been deliberately erased--an allegation that prosecutor O’Connell has branded as “absolute, total nonsense.”

And U.S. District Judge Lawrence K. Karlton late this week denied a defense motion to dismiss the case because of alleged prosecutorial misconduct.

Had the prosecutor proved that Netters took the $500 in under-the-table cash, his attorney told the jurors, “you ought to stand up right now because the case is closed.”

The jury is scheduled to begin its deliberations on Tuesday.