As John Gotti, called Junior in the media but not by anyone who knows better, sits for his fourth trial because the last three have failed to prove the government right, his latest accuser is singing his heart out. This one, John Alite, who went by the name Aletto before because it sounded much more Italian, is singing for his life.
One might wonder where this “witness” was in the last three trials, being a good citizen and all, and just trying to tell the truth because he’s a truth-telling kinda guy. But we know that he’s not singing because he wants to tell the truth, but wants to please his masters by doing what his predecessors were unable to do. Nail John Gotti.
Alite’s song includes new lyrics that no one has heard before, including names like the goofy self-promoter, Bo Dietl, who wrote a book claiming to have single-handedly saved New York from crime, much to the surprise of the rest of the NYPD. Alite says Dietl fed information to the Gambinos. Dietl says he can’t even spell Gambinos. Having read his book, I side with Dietl.
But Alite’s latest accusation is one that is so ludicrous that any lingering doubt that he’s up on the stand lying his heart out is dispelled. From Newsday, Alite testified:
Alite, the star informant who was a former top deputy to Gotti, described how he, Gotti and another man were arrested for [?] after a bar rumble outside a Long Island nightclub in 1989. Gotti, he said, assured him that the Gambino family was going to “take care of it, make sure nobody comes to court.”
That’s just what happened. Alite said he didn’t know the details, but “it got thrown out.”
All three of them, he said, were represented by a lawyer named Richard Rehbock, whom Alite described as the lawyer Gotti required him to use to make sure he didn’t step out of line.
Together, Alite said, he and Gotti visited Rehbock’s office “dozens of times,” and Gotti was given access to all the lawyer’s client files – including not only those of Gambino family members, but also of members of other families.
“John Gotti Jr. would go into all of Richard Rehbock’s files and read the cases of all the mob guys,” Alite testified. “. . . He was looking to see who was a rat and who wasn’t.”
I’ve known Richie Rehbock for a long time, and have no doubt whatsoever that Richie wouldn’t let anyone rifle through his files. And appropriately, Richie responded to this ridiculous claim by saying as much:
Rehbock, reached at his office in Jericho, said in a phone interview that Alite’s words were a total fabrication.
“John Alite’s making all this up,” Rehbock said. “John Alite is lying. I take great offense. I have great concern in abiding by ethical rules.”
He said Alite was a former client and that he had represented Alite and Gotti at arraignment on the assault case, but Gotti had only been in his office “one or two times.”
“That’s absolutely not true,” Rehbock said of Gotti reading other case files. “It never happened. I never, ever share with any client another client’s matters. Never in a million years. I wouldn’t do it.”
Why do you think Richie was one of the go-to lawyers? It wasn’t just his skill as an advocate, which was extraordinary, but his reputation as a stand-up lawyer. Get Richie talking about cooperation, and his face contorts, he starts spitting, and you’ve just lost an hour of your life listening to Richie rant about its evils and the complicity of the criminal defense bar in the ruination of the criminal justice system.
And the government knows this very well. They know that Richie Rehbock never walked anybody through the doors of 1 St. Andrews Plaza. They know that Richie Rehbock never sat across the conference table from them as lies were spewed. They know.
The idea that Gotti would come to Richie’s office “dozens of times” to look through files is crazy. Even if Richie would do such a thing, and by definition it could only happen once, nobody would be able to find evidence of it in his files. But then, nobody would be so foolish as to waste their time trying, and certainly Gotti wouldn’t spend his time going through Richie’s files.
In a blurb in the New York Law Journal, the story gets even crazier.
[D]uring the 1990s attorney Richard Rehbock of Jericho, N.Y., allowed Mr. Gotti to look at files of the competition—members of the Lucchese crime family who had also retained Mr. Rehbock.While Richie would no more represent a rat from the Lucchese’s than the Gambino’s, and everybody knew that to be the case, no lawyer would allow one group to know about another. That would have been begging for trouble, and no legal fee would have been sufficient to make it worthwhile, if you get my drift. These are things that would simply never happen, no matter whether the lawyer had the strong ethics of a Richie Rehbock or no ethics at all. This is just more crazy talk.
I can’t speak to the many, and I mean many, allegations of crime that have come from Alite’s testimony, but if there’s any vitality to the doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, his credibility is shot. This testimony about Richie Rehbock is just plain ludicrous, and it’s impossible to believe that the government doesn’t know it. But that hasn’t made anyone jump up and, in all candor, inform the Court that this government rat is lying on the stand.
Some say that there are no more “men of honor,” as mobsters once called themselves. The question now is whether there are any Assistant United States Attorneys of honor who will concede that their star witness, John Alite, is lying on the witness stand about Richie Rehbock. And I have no doubt but that this testimony about Richie Rehbock is a lie.
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Does the doctrine that AUSA’s must correct false testimony by their witnesses exist any more, or am I just fantasizing that it ever did? Maybe like Richard Rehbock or you should send a report to the disciplinary committee? Or are they just immune to committing frauds on the court?
When is the last time anyone heard of a prosecutor being “grieved” in NY? Over the last 15 years I know of 2 in Queens and 1 in Bronx. No AUSA’s as far as I know.