Thursday, March 19, 2015

Hartford Radio: Former WTIC Talker John Rowland Gets 30-Months

John Rowland
John G. Rowland, Connecticut's brash ex-governor turned WTIC 1080 AM radio host, stood again Wednesday in front of a packed Hartford courtroom and, for the second time in ten years, was sentenced to prison for low-rent political crimes, this time for 30 months.

According to The Harford Courant, U.S. District Judge Janet Bond Arterton said that Rowland showed a striking disregard for clean election laws while trying to conceal his role as a paid consultant to Lisa Wilson-Foley's 2012 congressional campaign.

Rowland turned down an opportunity to speak. He is planning to appeal and insists that he is innocent.

His defense lawyer, Reid Weingarten, complained at length that Rowland was overcharged and selectively prosecuted by federal authorities, who are convinced that he escaped too easily from his first conviction for corruption in 2004, when he served about ten months in prison for bribery.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Liam Brennan said that, if anything, Rowland should be punished more harshly, saying Rowland corrupted Wilson-Foley and "tried to tempt Mark Greenberg down the same dark path." There was evidence at Rowland's trial in September that he tried to collect a secret consulting fee from Greenberg, who ran for Congress two years before Wilson-Foley, in 2010.

Rowland was sentenced for seven crimes — five of them felonies — associated with a conspiracy to break federal campaign law promoting open elections by requiring public reports on all campaign expenditures. Rowland was charged for his attempted involvement or involvement in the Greenberg and Wilson-Foley campaigns, while concealing his salary.

Rowland's wife Patty told Brennan  to "burn in hell," when she encountered him at the door while leaving the courtroom.

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