Carmony Defense to Commence Today

The defense begins its case today in the Rhonda Carmony election fraud trial, with Jeff Flint, a top aide to GOP Assembly Minority Leader Curt Pringle (R-Garden Grove), among those on the witness list.

Carmony defense lawyer Creighton Laz has said that Flint orchestrated the GOP scheme to place a decoy candidate on the ballot to dilute the Democratic vote in a 1995 special election. Flint, who declined to appear before a grand jury, has said that he did nothing illegal.

Flint was named on a short witness list Laz filed with the court Tuesday. Also scheduled to testify are James Righeimer, a key advisor to Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach); and Assemblyman Dick Ackerman (R-Fullerton).

Carmony, 27, is charged with three felonies--making a false nomination paper, filing a false nomination paper and conspiracy to file a false nomination paper. She is Rohrabacher’s campaign director and fiancee.

Prosecutors allege that Carmony and other GOP aides circulated petitions for Laurie Campbell, a spoiler candidate. To conceal their link to her candidacy, prosecutors said, they had Campbell falsely sign the petitions as their circulator.

Also Tuesday, Superior Court Judge Francisco P. Briseno denied a defense motion to dismiss the charges outright. Briseno said the district attorney’s office had met the relatively modest burden of proof required for the trial to continue.

Earlier, Briseno had indicated that he was concerned whether there was sufficient evidence on the conspiracy count to show that there was an agreement among the alleged accomplices to falsify the nominating papers.

However, noting that at this stage of the trial evidence must be “applied in the most favorable interpretation” to the prosecution, Briseno said “there is enough testimony to show an agreement” among Carmony, Campbell and GOP aide Jeff Gibson to prepare and file false election petitions.