Carson Bribery Detailed at Trial

It took only a few minutes Wednesday for three former Carson City Council members to describe how a U.S. congresswoman’s son paid them thousands of dollars in exchange for their votes.

Manuel Ontal, Darryl Sweeney and then-Mayor Pete Fajardo testified Wednesday that R. Keith McDonald, who is charged with bribery, extortion and money laundering, gave them envelopes stuffed with $5,000 in cash for their votes.

“I voted because I was asked by Mr. McDonald and I was promised money,” Fajardo said.

McDonald’s attorneys attacked the former council members’ credibility, describing the three as corrupt politicians who saw most contracts as a potential source of income.

McDonald, the son of Rep. Juanita Millender-McDonald (D-Carson), is accused by federal prosecutors of having paid $5,000 to the three council members for their vote in awarding a bus-service contract to Transportation Concepts, an Irvine company whose work had been criticized by Carson’s staff in two audits.

McDonald, an elected official on a regional water board, also is accused of soliciting money to secure approval of a pipeline builder’s contract and threatening to nullify the contracts of two companies that refused to contribute at least $25,000 to his failed campaign for Assembly.

Federal prosecutors are trying the case in U.S. District Court in Santa Ana. McDonald faces a nine- or 10-year prison term if convicted of the multiple felony counts.

On Wednesday, the fifth day of the trial, prosecutors played for the jury a July 2001 conversation that Ontal recorded with McDonald after the councilman became a government witness. He pleaded guilty to two felonies.

On it, Ontal asks McDonald why he gave the councilmen such a small amount when Transportation Concepts had pledged to pay him $120,000.

McDonald tells Ontal the council members need to find more “opportunities” to make money rather than getting more money out of the occasional payout. “You’re never going to get rich on one deal,” McDonald was recorded saying.

“Opportunities,” Ontal had testified earlier, “were the lingo [council members] used when talking about a company or a contract where we could make bribe money.”

McDonald, then president of the West Basin Municipal Water District, denied giving money to Ontal or Sweeney. But he also said that with the money he earned from the Transportation Concepts lobbying deal, he “helped everybody out.”

“This is what I do for a living,” McDonald was recorded saying.

Ontal testified that in three years on the council he traded votes for tens of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions, plane tickets and cash.

When the bus contract was up for renewal, Ontal said, Sweeney and McDonald approached him about the chance to profit from the deal. City staff had recommended hiring another company, but the five-member council unanimously selected Transportation Concepts.