By Dan Christensen, FloridaBulldog.org
One of the Justice Department’s biggest political bribery cases, set to go to trial in August, is being short-circuited by prosecutors who gave an exceedingly sweet deal to the three defendants they once declared had struck “a blow to the heart of our democracy.”
Billionaire Italian-Venezuelan international banker Julio Herrera Velutini, former FBI agent Mark Rossini and Wanda Vazquez Garced, a former governor of Puerto Rico, each faced up to 20 years in prison following their 42-page indictment in 2022 on seven felony counts of bribery, conspiracy and honest services fraud.
Court records state that under the government’s new deal, which U.S. District Judge Silvia L. Carreno-Coll must approve, each defendant will plead guilty to a single misdemeanor violation involving an illegal contribution made by a foreign national, Herrera Velutini. Each will face a fine and/or imprisonment for not more than a year. The felony charges will be dropped and the new misdemeanor charge will be filed separately by information, court records say.
The two sides informed the court the plea deal had been reached on June 16, 11 days after the judge denied Herrera Velutini’s and Rossini’s motion to dismiss the case against them.
In court filings, the trio told the court “they are all available on June 30, 2025 and July 1” to enter their pleas, and have asked to be able to do it via Zoom.
John Keller, the former acting head of the Department of Justice’s public corruption unit, called the government’s decision to accept misdemeanor pleas in the case “unusual.”
Keller was one of four Justice Department officials who resigned in February rather than comply with an order from Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove to dismiss corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
“I don’t have any information on the recent misdemeanor plea agreements. Misdemeanor pleas in a case like this would be unusual,” Keller told Florida Bulldog.
ENTER TRUMP LAWYER CHRIS KISE
The government’s sharp change of direction in its conspiracy case against the trio follows the recent appearance in the case by President Trump’s former defense attorney, Christopher Kise, on behalf of Herrera Velutini.
The indictment alleges that beginning in 2019, while Herrera Velutini’s bank was being examined by Puerto Rico’s Office of the Commissioner of Financial Institutions (OCIF), he and former FBI agent Mark Rossini, through intermediaries, promised to help fund Vazquez Garced’s 2020 gubernatorial election in exchange for Vazquez Garced terminating the OCIF commissioner and replacing him with a commissioner of Herrera Velutini’s choosing.
The indictment also alleges Vazquez Garced accepted the bribe offer and in February 2020 took official action to demand the resignation of the OCIF chief and, three months later, appointed his replacement, a former consultant for Herrera Velutini’s bank. In return, Herrera Velutini and Rossini, a consultant to Herrera Velutini, allegedly paid more than $300,000 to political consultants in support of Vazquez Garced’s campaign.
Herrera Velutini’s bank is not named in the indictment but is clearly identifiable as Bancredito International Bank & Trust, whose license was revoked in 2023 after it was put into receivership. The bank was also fined $15 million by the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) after it admitted violations of anti-money laundering rules of the Bank Secrecy Act, according to Compliance Week.
Herrera Velutini, 53, is based in the United Kingdom. In 2021, he founded the Britannia Financial Group. In 2014, Forbes estimated his family’s fortune at $1.8 billion.
Kise represented Trump when he was under indictment in South Florida in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case as well as in New York when the state attorney general sued Trump for civil fraud regarding his valuation of the Trump Organization.
Reuters reported June 11 that a trio of its sources said Kise had recently “sought to convince the Justice Department [DOJ] to dismiss or reduce the charges though the outcome of such efforts is unclear…Kise did not return requests for comment, and Reuters could not determine what arguments he has made to the department about the case.”
Kise likewise did not return a phone message from Florida Bulldog seeking comment. A request for comment from Stephen Muldrow, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Puerto Rico, was also met by silence.
ROSSINI: FROM 9/11 TO CRIME
Former FBI agent Rossini is represented by Miami attorney Michael Nadler, a former federal prosecutor. Nadler did not return a phone call Tuesday seeking comment.
Rossini’s name is familiar to those who have followed the disturbing saga of 9/11. For several years before the September 11, 2001 al Qaeda terrorist attacks on New York and Washington FBI agent Rossini was one of two bureau agents assigned as liaisons to the CIA unit tracking al Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. The unit’s informal name was Alec Station.
Rossini and others have said that while at Alec Station it was learned that future 9/11 hijackers Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi were heading to the U.S. after attending a terrorist summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But the CIA kept it a secret from the FBI, which could have prevented them from entering the country in January 2000. Why the CIA kept it a secret is not fully known.
Rossini, an agent since the early 1990s, resigned from the FBI in 2008 after pleading guilty to five felony counts of illegally accessing an FBI database for personal purposes. Authorities said many of Rossini’s improper searches related to the criminal case of Anthony Pellicano, a Los Angeles private investigator whose clients included Hollywood celebrities.
As described in the indictment, Rossini was deeply enmeshed in the scheme to bribe then-sitting governor of Puerto Rico Vazquez Garced by helping to steer “thousands of dollars” of Herrera Velutini’s money to support her election campaign. The indictment cites Rossini’s text messages to Herrera Velutini and others about the scheme, including an exchange with an unnamed partner in “an international consulting firm” who was in on the scheme:
“Rossini wrote, in part, that ‘the Governor wants [the International Consulting firm] and that Herrera would pay for it: ‘Some campaign finances will pay for your services. The bulk will be paid by Julio.’”
Kise would appear to have ready access to U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s ear. Both long have traveled in the same professional and political circles in Florida. Both are Republicans. Bondi was Florida’s attorney general from 2011-2019. Kise was Florida’s solicitor general from 2003-2006.
Both were also part of Trump’s legal team, with Bondi defending Trump during his first impeachment trial in February 2020 on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. Trump was acquitted.
Kise works out of the Miami and Tallahassee offices of Continental Attorneys at Law, an affiliate of the powerhouse lobbying firm Continental Strategy. Both were founded and are led by 42-year-old Carlos Trujillo, a former state legislator who served as Trump’s ambassador to the Organization of American States during his first term and more recently was a key advisor to Trump during the 2024 campaign.
WHO AUTHORIZED REDUCED CHARGES?
Whoever at DOJ authorized the reduction in charges for Herrera Velutini, Rossini and Vazquez Garced may be in breach of Attorney General Bondi’s Feb. 5 memorandum setting the “General Policy Regarding Charging, Plea Negotiations, and Sentencing.”
“Specifically, in the absence of unusual facts, prosecutors should charge and pursue the most serious, readily provable offenses,” the memo says. “It bears repeating that the core principle applies in the absence of unusual facts. Thus, there may be circumstances in which good judgment would lead a prosecutor to conclude that a strict application of this policy is not warranted or would be inconsistent with the investigative and charging priorities of the Department. However, any decision to vary from the core principle of this policy must be approved by a United States Attorney or Assistant Attorney General, or a supervisor designated by [them] and the reasons must be documented in the file.”
Further, prosecutors may not “abandon pending charges to achieve a plea bargain that is inconsistent with the prosecutor’s assessment of the seriousness of the defendant’s conduct at the time the charges were filed. For example, absent significant mitigating or intervening circumstances, it will rarely be appropriate for a prosecutor to seek racketeering or terrorism charges at the outset of a case but abandon those charges in connection with a plea deal,” the memo says.
When the indictment was announced on Aug. 4, 2022, the DOJ issued a press release that included this statement from Assistant Attorney General Kenneth Polite Jr.: “The alleged bribery scheme rose to the highest levels of Puerto Rican government, threatening public trust in our electoral processes and institutions of governance. The Department of Justice is committed to holding accountable those who wrongly believe there is one rule of law for the powerful and another for the powerless. No one is above the rule of law.”
Polite did not return email and phone messages before deadline.
U.S. Attorney Stephen Muldrow for the District of Puerto Rico had this to say then: “The criminal actions of the defendants in this case strike a blow to the heart of our democracy and further erode the confidence of our citizens in their institutions of governance. Our resolve to bring to justice those entrusted by the public to serve with integrity and who violate that trust remains steadfast. Equally steadfast is our resolve to prosecute those who seek to use their wealth and power to enrich themselves at the expense of honest government.”
Muldrow could not be reached for comment before deadline.
The DOJ press release says that when Gov. Vazquez Garced lost her primary election in August 2020, “Herrera Velutini sought to bribe her successor,” identified in the indictment only as Public Official A. In fact, Public Official A was Pedro Pierluisi, who went on to win the general election and was in office from January 2021 until January of this year.
The alleged bribe offered to Pierluisi was “funding in support of [his] campaign in exchange for [his] ending OCIF’s audit of Herrera Velutini’s bank on terms favorable to Herrera Velutini,” the press release says.
From April through August 2021, Herrera Velutini allegedly “used intermediaries to convey his offer of a bribe to a witness who held himself out as a representative of [Pierluisi], but who was in fact acting at the direction of the FBI…In August 2021, Herrera Velutini allegedly directed a $25,000 payment to a political action committee associated with [Pierluisi], with the understanding and expectation that [Pierluisi] would resolve OCIF’s audit of Herrera Velutini’s bank in the manner requested by Herrera Velutini.”
No charges have been filed against Pierluisi.
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