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Defense: Fed vendetta against Fumo

The defense attorney for Ruth Arnao, co-defendant of Vince Fumo and former executive director of a nonprofit he created, charged during his closing argument yesterday that the government had a vendetta against his client and the former state senator.

The defense attorney for Ruth Arnao, co-defendant of Vince Fumo and former executive director of a nonprofit he created, charged during his closing argument yesterday that the government had a vendetta against his client and the former state senator.

Ed Jacobs Jr. said that FBI agents had resorted to "voodoo accounting" to build the federal fraud case, which alleges that Arnao and Fumo looted Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods of $1.4 million.

Jacobs said that the feds were motivated by "venom and vitriol" for Fumo, and had a "zeal to criminalize every blessed thing" that the South Philadelphia Democrat had gotten from the charity he founded in 1991 to provide city services in his district.

Jacobs said that the feds either presented only one side of many Citizens Alliance transactions or they inflated expenditures - "putting the numbers on steroids," in Jacobs' words - to paint a misleading picture.

He charged that the government's explanations for Citizens Alliance's alleged fraudulent expenditures were "radical" and insisted that the defense's were "rational."

The government has alleged that Citizens Alliance paid $225,000 to provide Fumo with posh Senate and campaign office space at 1208 Tasker Street at below-market rents.

Jacobs said that the transaction was a "prudent real-estate investment" and that any benefits that Fumo received were justified. "Yeah, Sen. Fumo got some cheap space, but it's not a crime," Jacobs said, "it's a consideration and a courtesy."

A real-estate appraiser called as a defense witness said that the Tasker Street property and adjacent parking lot were valued at more than $1 million in 2007.

The feds alleged that Citizens Alliance squandered $150,000 for a maritime painting that Fumo wanted that would then be loaned to the Independence Seaport Museum. The purchase agreement also licensed Citizens Alliance to exclusively sell prints of the painting but, Jacobs said, none has been sold because the federal probe spooked potential buyers.

Jacobs said that the purchase was also made to promote maritime art in Philadelphia.

"If anybody else did it, they would be called a genius," Jacobs said. "Anybody else did it, they get a pat on the back. Sen. Fumo does it and he gets an indictment."

Jacobs suggested to the jury that Fumo was entitled to the $63,000 in "perks and gifts" that he admitted to receiving from Citizens Alliance - tools, barbecue grills and other goods - because he was Citizens Alliance's benefactor.

"Anything we gave him, we gave out of gratitude," Jacobs said. (Peco Energy agreed to donate $17 million to the Citizens Alliance to settle a legal dispute with Fumo when electricity was deregulated in Pennsylvania in the late 1990s.)

Wrapping up his closing argument to jurors, Jacobs scolded the feds for pursuing "an overblown, overreaching prosecution that should have never got this far," adding: "This case should have been an IRS conference and nothing else."

Fumo lawyer Dennis Cogan sums up the case for Fumo's innocence on Monday, followed by the government's rebuttal. The case is expected to go to the jury Tuesday, more than four months after it began. *