For a brief moment this week, it looked as if federal prosecutors were about to yank away the plea deal they’d extended to corrupt former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced, who faced years in prison for bribery.
Prosecutors told a federal judge they were appalled that, since the plea deal, Vázquez Garced shrugged off all responsibility, blamed her advisers and told reporters “none of that happened,” despite the mountain of evidence that documented how billionaire Italian-Venezuelan banker Julio Herrera Velutini deployed his riches to help the gubernatorial candidate on the condition she’d replace a bank regulator who worried him.
The sudden aggressive turn from federal prosecutors seemed odd, given that the case was already on a path toward fading away ever since President Donald Trump’s one-time personal defense lawyer, Chris Kise, got involved last year on the banker’s behalf. Further helping Vázquez Garced, according to sources familiar with the investigation who spoke to NOTUS on condition of anonymity, Kise initiated pressure from DOJ brass on line prosecutors. One of them, a member of the DOJ’s severely shrunken public integrity unit, recently quit the department.