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Lawyer: Copycat feds violated Milt's rights

T. Milton Street's lawyer filed court papers yesterday accusing federal prosecutors of violating his civil and constitutional rights. Street, the mayor's older brother, was indicted by a federal grand jury in November on fraud and tax charges. He's to stand trial on the charges in October.

T. Milton Street is charged with fraud and tax violations. His lawyer says prosecutors "spied" on his defense work.
T. Milton Street is charged with fraud and tax violations. His lawyer says prosecutors "spied" on his defense work.Read more

T. Milton Street's lawyer filed court papers yesterday accusing federal prosecutors of violating his civil and constitutional rights.

Street, the mayor's older brother, was indicted by a federal grand jury in November on fraud and tax charges. He's to stand trial on the charges in October.

Jeremy H. G. Ibrahim, Street's court-appointed lawyer, charged that the feds were trying to grab "an unfair tactical advantage" against Street.

At issue is an arrangement by which Street and Ibrahim are permitted to review and copy documents from the 100 boxes of material the feds gathered in their probe of Street.

Street and Ibrahim sit in a conference room at the U.S. attorney's office under the watchful eye of FBI agents and review documents. If they want a document copied, they give it to the feds and copies are made.

But Ibrahim said he learned on May 16 that the feds had been "surreptitiously" making two copies of all documents he requested - one for Street and one for themselves.

"We felt like we were being spied on," Ibrahim said.

Ibrahim said he has already requested and received hundreds of pages of copied documents but doesn't know how many of those the feds also copied for themselves.

A prosecutor spoke to Ibrahim on May 21 and admitted that the government had made duplicate copies for itself but would stop the practice and destroy all its copies, the court filing said.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Anthony Wzorek, one of the prosecutors, declined to comment yesterday.

Ibrahim also informed prosecutors on Monday that he and Street would not review any more documents at the U.S. attorney's office without direction from U.S. District Judge Legrome D. Davis.

Ibrahim wants Davis to order the U.S. attorney to copy all the documents in each of the 100 boxes. Ibrahim also wants the document review and copying to be done at his office or for other "procedures and safeguards" to be established to protect his client's constitutional rights. *