Issa was charged in San Jose car theft
Lance Williams and Carla Marinucci,
San Fransisco Chronicle staff writers
Wednesday, June 25, 2003
Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, the
driving force behind the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis, was prosecuted with
his brother in San Jose in 1980 for allegedly faking the theft of Issa's
Mercedes Benz sedan and selling it to a car dealer for $16,000, according to
court records.
Issa, in a phone interview with The
Chronicle Tuesday, blamed his brother for the car theft, which was detailed in
documents on file in Santa Clara County Superior Court and which has never been
made public.
"I do not steal," Issa said.
The second-term San Diego area
congressman has pumped $1 million into the campaign to recall Davis and has
declared he will run for governor should the recall qualify for the ballot this
year. Issa's previous political campaigns have been roiled by allegations that
twice -- once while a student in his hometown of Cleveland and once while a
soldier in Pennsylvania -- he also was involved in car thefts.
In the San Jose case, Issa, who at the
time was a 27-year-old U.S. Army officer, and William Issa, 29, were arrested
by San Jose police on a felony auto-theft charge in February 1980.
They were accused of a scheme in which
Issa's brother allegedly sold Issa's cherry-red Mercedes 240 to Smythe European
Motors in San Jose for $13,000 cash and three $1,000 traveler's checks. Within
hours, Issa reported the car stolen from a lot at the Monterey airport, near
his Army post at Fort Ord.
Issa and his brother pleaded not
guilty. A judge ordered them to stand trial on felony charges, saying he had a
"strong suspicion" that the men had committed the crime, according to
the records.
CASE DISMISSED
But in August 1980, a prosecutor
dismissed the case for lack of evidence. The men later were charged with
misdemeanors, but that case was not pursued, said retired police detective
Richard Christiansen, lead investigator in the case.
Issa, 49, became a multimillionaire
manufacturer of electronic auto alarms, including the popular "Viper"
anti-theft device. "When people ask me why I got into the car alarm
business, I tell them the truth," he said in a statement to The Chronicle.
"It was because my brother was a car thief."
He was elected to Congress in 2000 from
the San Diego County town of Vista after losing a bruising, high-profile
campaign for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1998.
In those campaigns, Issa denied
allegations of car theft and sought to blame political opponents, including
U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) for planting news stories about the
allegations to discredit him.
"They can't beat us on a good
stand-up-for-families, stand-up-for-law-and-order type agenda," he told
the Riverside Press Enterprise during his 1998 Senate Race. "They have to
do it with lies in the last minute of the campaign."
THE BEARDED LIEUTENANT CAPER
The San Jose case began on Dec. 28,
1979, when a bearded man identifying himself as "Lt. Darrell Issa"
and using Darrell Issa's Ohio driver's license for identification drove up to
Smythe European Motors on Stevens Creek Boulevard in a new Mercedes and said he
wanted to sell it.
In a preliminary hearing, salesman
Norris Poulsen testified that the driver -- police contended it was Issa's
brother, using Darrell Issa's driver's license for identification -- agreed to
take $16,000 for the car. Then he asked for a ride to a nearby Bank of America
branch.
There, the driver obtained $13,000 cash
and three $1,000 travelers' checks, said teller Marcela Lawrence.
Meanwhile, according to the records,
Darrell Issa had called police, saying that upon his return from a Christmas
vacation in Ohio he had discovered his Mercedes was missing from the parking
lot at the Monterey airport. The car's pink slip had been locked in the trunk,
Issa told police.
Police investigated the case for two
months, records show. Detective Christiansen testified that he repeatedly had
interviewed Issa by phone and had even driven with him from Monterey to the old
Fort Hunter Liggett Army base south of Big Sur to distribute a police sketch of
the person who had sold the Mercedes.
The detective said he suspected William
Issa was the man who had sold the car because he closely resembled the sketch
of the suspect. He began to suspect Darrell Issa also was involved because some
of his statements seemed unbelievable or inconsistent, he said.
Christiansen said that at first,
Darrell Issa had denied he had recently gotten a new driver's license. But
later, the detective said Issa acknowledged that while in Ohio he had obtained
two new driver's licenses -- one a renewal, the second to replace the first
because he didn't like the photo on it.
Issa also said he didn't recognize the
composite sketch but wanted to send a copy of it to his mother to see if she
knew the man. Christiansen said he found that unbelievable. The sketch was
"absolutely dead right on the brother, and how anyone in the family could
fail to recognize him I couldn't understand," he said in a phone
interview.
In legal papers, prosecutor Donald
Mulvey contended that "Darrell falsely reported the theft of his vehicle
at a time when he was aware that (William) had sold the vehicle to the
dealership." The prosecutor also said Darrell Issa had tried to mislead
police about his brother's role in the theft.
BROTHER NOT REACHED
Efforts to reach William Issa Tuesday
were unsuccessful.
Issa told The Chronicle that he
believed police had targeted him because "they always thought I was not
coming clean enough essentially to (help them) prosecute my brother." He
blamed his brother for the San Jose arrest.
He said he couldn't answer every
question about the case because "it's been enough years that I don't
remember any level of details like that." But he denied complicity in the
crime, saying, "It is impossible to believe that anyone would be stupid
enough to steal a car and sell it under their own name."
Issa said he never tried to conceal his
San Jose arrest. He said his campaign managers had advised him not to discuss
it unless he was asked about it.
The Cleveland arrest "came out in
the first election, and I asked my own people, 'Should we tell them about the
other one?' " Issa said. "They said, 'No, they'll bring it out.'
"
In court, defense lawyer William
McCrone argued that Issa's statements to police should be thrown out because he
hadn't been given a Miranda warning.
The lawyer also wanted the case
dismissed because he said Issa's right to a speedy trial had been violated. He
said that while the case was stalled, Issa had left the Army and obtained a job
with a "major oil company," which fired him when it learned of the
theft allegation.
William Issa's attorney contended that
no crime had been committed because Darrell Issa had offered to buy the
Mercedes back from the dealership for more than the amount it had paid.
The court rejected the arguments. But
in August 1980, when the case was called for trial, the DA's office chose not
to proceed, Christiansen said .
"Most auto thefts are fairly easy,
but this one is obviously a lot more involved," he said. He said he had
persuaded the district attorney's office to re-file the case as a misdemeanor,
but it was never prosecuted.
ANOTHER CASE IN '72
The San Jose case was the second time
that Issa and his brother were allegedly involved in car theft.
In 1972 Issa, then 19, was indicted
with his brother William on a charge of felony grand theft for allegedly
stealing a red Maserati sports car from a car dealership in Cleveland, court
records show.
The case was dropped. When the Los
Angeles Times reported on it in a 1998 story, Issa told the newspaper he had
been wrongly implicated because his brother William had an arrest record.
"I was exonerated of all
wrongdoing. My brother went on to have a long and sordid career," he told
the Times. "I am not my brother. I am not my brother's keeper."
In the third incident, a retired Army
sergeant claimed that in 1971 Issa, then an enlisted man, had stolen a Dodge
sedan from an Army post near Pittsburgh. The allegation was published in a 1998
story in the San Francisco Examiner. It quoted the retired sergeant as saying
he had recovered the car after confronting Issa and threatening him. Issa
denied the allegation, calling it reckless, the newspaper reported. No charges
were filed.
When his opponent in the 2000 campaign
for Congress raised the same auto-theft allegations, Issa denounced them as
lies, according to press accounts.
Issa, who was re-elected to Congress
last year, has emerged as a major player in state politics by becoming the main
financial backer of the drive to recall Davis.
Issa founded Rescue California, a
pro-recall organization, and has donated $1 million of his own money through
Greene Properties, a real estate firm he owns with his wife.
The funds pay for a statewide network
of professionals who aim to gather the needed 900,000 valid signatures to put
the recall on the ballot.
Issa has launched his own campaign for
governor and is campaigning around the state, while insisting the required
number of signatures will be submitted to county registrars by mid-July.
If he makes his goal, the matter could
go before the voters later this year.
But Issa said Tuesday he believed the
accusations, though in the public record, had surfaced as an attempt to derail
his political plans.
"I don't think this was fair
game" on the part of his political opponents, he said, adding they were
"looking for things other than legitimate policy issues to go after."
No comments:
Post a Comment