Union Official Guilty of Embezzling Funds

Former top Teamsters official William Hamilton Jr. was convicted of charges he embezzled $885,000 of union funds to help get Ron Carey reelected as union president.

The verdict by a federal jury in New York on Friday came on the second day of deliberations in the three-week trial. The jury convicted Hamilton on all counts including fraud, perjury, embezzlement, conspiracy and making false statements to the union election officer.

The jury concluded that Hamilton, former political director of the nation’s second-largest labor union, demanded that recipients of Teamsters’ campaign donations in 1996 kick back part of the money to Carey’s reelection drive. Labor laws prohibit spending union money--which belongs to dues-paying members--to aid individual candidates in union elections.

The trial featured testimony from a former Democratic Party official who asserted that Terence McAuliffe, President Clinton’s chief fund-raiser, had urged other Democratic fund-raisers in 1996 to find a wealthy donor willing to give up to $100,000 to Carey’s campaign. In return, the Teamsters would donate at least $500,000 to various Democratic federal and state committees, the official testified. McAuliffe has denied the charge.

The alleged funds swap with the Democratic Party never occurred because Democrats could not find a donor for the Teamsters. But the U.S. attorney’s office presented evidence of four other occasions in which the Teamsters made donations to liberal-leaning groups that, in turn, made large gifts to the Carey campaign.

The defense argued that Hamilton did not participate in crimes plotted by other Carey aides.

Hamilton faces up to five years’ imprisonment on each count and a fine. He may be ordered to pay restitution to the union. U.S. District Judge Thomas Griesa released Hamilton pending sentencing.