Hill Questioned on $2,500 Honorarium

A federal prosecutor on Wednesday pressed state Sen. Frank Hill (R-Whittier) to explain why he was paid $2,500 for an informal hourlong session with an FBI undercover agent.

Hill, on trial for alleged corruption, acknowledged that the 1988 honorarium was for the time he spent in the undercover agent’s hotel suite bantering about hunting, air shows and sports.

“Two thousand, five hundred an hour?” Assistant U.S. Atty. John Vincent asked.

“I wasn’t getting paid by the hour,” shot back Hill, who nonetheless called the sum generous.

Vincent asked Hill, who was an assemblyman in 1988 when he received the payment, if he ever had a job that paid $2,500 an hour, and the legislator said no.

The exchange mirrored much of Hill’s second and final day on the stand as Vincent tangled with the normally unflappable lawmaker, who is charged with extortion, conspiracy and money laundering.

After his testimony, Hill’s lawyers rested their case and the jury began hearing the defense of Hill’s co-defendant, former Senate Democratic aide Terry E. Frost. Frost is charged with being part of a conspiracy with Hill.

Both men have pleaded not guilty.

On Wednesday, the trial’s 13th day, Vincent peppered Hill with questions about his truthfulness, especially in statements to the FBI and in the way he listed honorariums on state-required economic disclosure statements.

The day after Hill accepted the $2,500 honorarium check, he received a call from the undercover agent, who was posing as a Southern businessman pushing legislation to help his shrimp business locate near Sacramento. The agent sought to increase Hill’s payment.

Hill said he was surprised and did not want the agent, known as George Miller, “to think there was a connection” between the money and Hill’s help on the legislation.

At one point, Vincent seemed to shake Hill, who acknowledged that perhaps he could have been more explicit. “I wish I had responded in a different way,” Hill said. “But I think I made it clear” that the payment did not need to be increased. There were no additional payments from the undercover agent.

Vincent also took Hill to task for failing to directly answer questions from federal agents when the FBI sting became public at the end of the 1988 legislative session.

The prosecutor said Hill never told the agent that he was the co-author of the shrimp bill. “I don’t believe he asked me,” Hill said.

“And you didn’t tell him,” Vincent said.

In response, Hill cited the hectic events at the end of the legislative session, when lawmakers vote on hundreds of bills.

“Your mind is like mush those last few weeks,” said Hill, the first Republican lawmaker to stand trial in the decade-long federal probe of corruption in the Capitol.

Seeking to further tarnish Hill, Vincent asked whether he failed to properly spell out what he had done to receive thousands of dollars in honorariums in the 1980s.

Hill acknowledged that during 1986 and 1987--before the sting surfaced--he lumped together a broad range of paid activities under the heading “speech” on state-required disclosure forms.

“It’s kind of a generic term that’s wide-ranging,” Hill said, adding he had been paid honorariums for attending a lunch. He maintained that the state Fair Political Practices Commission had never questioned him about the apparent error.

But after he became a target of the corruption probe in 1988, Hill acknowledged that his campaign treasurer changed the description to “honorarium.”

After Hill’s lawyers rested their case, Frost began to mount his defense.

Frost said he turned down a consulting fee to work on the shrimp bill from another Senate Democratic aide, John Shahabian. At the behest of the FBI, Shahabian was acting as a secret informant and taping conversations with Frost and others.

An aide to then-Senate Majority Leader Barry Keene (D-Ukiah), Frost said he complained to other Democratic staffers about Shahabian’s overture and that Shahabian “never ever said another word about consulting dollars.”

However, Frost continued to have a series of conversations with Shahabian about how to move the shrimp bill through the Legislature.

Frost described the measure as completely non-controversial.

“This bill could have sailed through the Legislature,” he testified. “My dog could have lobbied it through.”

The trial resumes today.