On Last Day of Sen. Stevens Testimony, Allegations of Re-Gifting

[WSJ Law Blog]

[FONT=Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif]Top row, from left are: Defense attorney Brendan Sullivan, prosecutor Brenda Morris, Judge Emmet Sullivan, at the bench, and Stevens on the witness stand. At bottom, from left are: Robert Cary, FBI Special Agent Mary Beth Kepner, Joe Terry, Nicholas Marsh, Joe Bottini, and Grace Williams, Oct. 20, 2008, at U.S. District Court in Washington. (AP/Dana Verkouteren)[/FONT]

In a trial that’s featured Mustangs, Land Rovers and gas grills, a $2,700 Brookstone massage chair took center stage today, the third and final day of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens’s testimony. Stevens, 84, faces charges that he accepted and failed to report more than $250,000 in gifts. Here are stories from the NYT and the LAT.

When prosecutor Brenda Morris asked Stevens about the chair, which was delivered to his home in 2001, he said it was a loan from a friend, while acknowledging that it remains in his home.
“How is that not a gift?” Morris asked.

“We have lots of things in our house that don’t belong to us, ma’am,” Stevens replied, such as items owned by his daughter and friends of his wife.

Stevens, according to the NYT, said a friend, Bob Persons, “bought the chair as a gift but I refused it as a gift.”

“So, if you say it’s not a gift, it’s not a gift?” Morris asked. She then reportedly confronted Stevens with a note he wrote to Persons thanking him for the chair, saying how much he loved using the chair and even sometimes fell asleep in it.

Morris also reportedly challenged testimony by both Stevens and his wife, Catherine, a Mayer Brown partner, that furniture placed in their Girdwood, Alaska, home by VECO founder Bill Allen was of little value because it was used and damaged. Morris noted that the Stevenses had wanted to give it to a recently married son to furnish his new home.

“Aren’t you trying to regift to your son the furniture you found so hideous?” she asked.