OFF THE WIRE
http://www.buffalonews.com/city/police-courts/courts/article453127.ece
Depew motorcycle club’s lawyers to press rare case against FBI
By Dan Herbeck
NEWS STAFF REPORTER
Defense attorneys for the Chosen Few motorcycle club will resume their attack this week on the FBI for its handling of an informant who went undercover against his biker associates.
A highly unusual hearing on accusations of “outrageous governmental conduct” in the Chosen Few case started last month and will resume Wednesday before U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeremiah J. McCarthy.
And defense lawyers plan to focus on an interoffice Buffalo FBI document that describes statements the informant, David Ignasiak, allegedly made.
The document, dated April 22, quotes Ignasiak as stating that FBI agents who were handling him had to be aware that he was planning to take part in an assault on someone from the rival Kingsmen motorcycle club in August 2008.
“The FBI knew that a bunch of [Chosen Few] guys were going out to look for [Kingsmen]. What did they think was going to happen?” agents quoted Ignasiak as saying. “Everyone knew that this was going to happen.”
Federal prosecutors said Ignasiak and several other Chosen Few bikers went out in cars on the night of Aug. 20, 2008, looking for Kingsmen to assault. They said Ignasiak was with a Chosen Few assault team that beat Eugene Siminski, a Kingsmen member, after dragging him off his Harley-Davidson motorcycle on Buffalo’s East Side.
Defense lawyers said that they believe Ignasiak took part in the beating and that the FBI knew about it. FBI agents deny that.
Attorney Paul J. Cambria, who represents jailed Chosen Few president Alex Koschtschuk, said he considers the FBI document “very significant” because it indicates that FBI agents knew about Ignasiak’s involvement in criminal activity. For months after the assault, Cambria said, the FBI still allowed Ignasiak to function as an informant.
Ignasiak testified in the hearing last month that, in fact, FBI agents had told him not to commit crimes while working as an informant for them. He also invoked the Fifth Amendment and repeatedly declined to answer questions about the Siminski assault.
Defense attorneys also claim that Ignasiak committed an act of vandalism in June 2008, sneaking into a park to hack up a Chosen Few tent at a blues festival. Ignasiak took the Fifth Amendment when asked whether he did that.
Ignasiak wanted to start a war of violence between the Chosen Few and the Kingsmen so he could report on what was happening and make himself a more valuable informant, alleged another defense attorney in the case, Angelo Musitano.
Another Chosen Few attorney, Joseph M. LaTona, claims FBI agents knowingly gave false information to U. S. District Judge William M. Skretny when they persuaded Skretny to sign an order authorizing the planting of listening devices in the Chosen Few clubhouse in Depew.
FBI agents and federal prosecutors insist there was no wrongdoing by agents who gathered information for racketeering charges filed against 20 Chosen Few members and associates in May 2009.
McCarthy’s hearing is believed to be the first conducted about alleged “outrageous government conduct” in at least 35 years. According to First Assistant U.S. Attorney James P. Kennedy, only one case in the nation has been dismissed due to an outrageous conduct complaint since 1976.
“It’s not outrageous for the government to infiltrate an ongoing criminal enterprise,” Kennedy said in court last month.
