By , CT Post Staff Writers:
… Assistant U.S. Attorney David E. Novick began the government’s closing arguments with a simple statement.
“Dennis Bradley lied,” Novick said, spending more than 40 minutes cataloging the evasions and “deceptions” he said Bradley engaged in throughout his campaign to succeed Ed Gomes representing the state Senate 23rd District representing Bridgeport and part of Stratford — beginning with a lavish launch party at Dolphin’s Cove restaurant March 15, 2018.
…Novick said that Bradley wanted a party with the works — “booze, food, DJ, a band, a big event space” — but the $2,000 personal spending limit imposed by the Citizens Election Program he wanted to participate in meant that “he couldn’t do it on the budget he was allowed.”
Despite that, Bradley wrote in an email to SEEC investigators that the party “was in no shape or form a political event,” Novick noted.
The prosecutor said Bradley was guilty of wire fraud because interstate communications were used when he texted plans in furtherance of the scheme to others, filed phony campaign info in the State Elections Enforcement Commission’s electronic Campaign Reporting System, which had a backup server in Massachusetts, and emailed a letter with lies in it to SEEC.
“This case is a story of lies building upon lies,” Novick said, charging that Bradley had chance after chance to come clean and didn’t. “At every opportunity the defendant made the other choice. The defendant went the other way. He chose to lean into his lies.”
…Bradley’s attorney, Darnell Crosland, lampooned the government’s emphasis on Bradley’s party by festooning the lectern with a heart-shaped balloon, tinsel, and tissue paper bunting. He said the government had “weaponized the system” against Bradley.
Full story here
Bradley found quilty of all counts as of 5:00 p.m.