Wakes are good places “to get a lot of business done,” Adam Skelos told his supervisor after the funeral for hero cop Wenjian Liu.
In a wiretapped phone conversation with AbTech vice-president Bjornulf White, the state senator’s son can be heard claiming he spoke to Nassau Country Executive Edward Mangano at the service about speeding up the county’s payment’s to AbTech.
“I saw Ed Mangano with my dad at this wake,” Adam Skelos told White in the Jan. 2015 call. He said Mangano assured him another big buck county project “is not going to effect anything we’re doing with stormwater.”
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The political scion also griped that he’d been going to “a ridiculous amount of funerals lately,” including the “two cops who died, the firefighter who died and the governor’s father.”
“Do you find that at wakes and funerals, people tend to get a lot of business done?” he asked White.
Liu and his partner Rafael Ramos were gunned down in Brooklyn last December by a cop-hating madman.
In reality, Adam Skelos wasn’t at the Liu funeral — but his state Senate Majority Leader dad was.
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Dean Skelos had called Mangano the day before, complaining about the slow pace of payments on the county’s $12 million contract with AbTech. “Somebody feels like they’re just getting jerked around the last two years,” Skelos said in the wiretapped call.
Mangano told him he’d find out what was going on and discuss it with him en route to the funeral the next day. “I’ll fill you in,” Mangano said.
Dean called his son from the ceremony the next day.
“All claims that are in will be taken care of and I’ll discuss with you later,” the dad said in the brief call.
The father and son soon had bigger problems — at the end of January, media reports surfaced saying that Dean Skelos was being investigated by the feds. AbTech’s lobbying firm, Capitol Group, dropped the storm water purification company as a client almost immediately. Adam was kept in the dark about the move, and was slow on the uptake.
He called lobbyist Nick Barrella to strategize about AbTech friendly legislation they’d been trying to push in Albany a few days later.
“I really can’t talk to you . . . We no longer work together,” Barrella told him.
“Really?” a befuddled sounding Adam asked.
A frustrated Barrella then said, “Adam, you read the newspapers? We have to protect me and you. Got it?”
But Adam, apparently still determined to get his sales commission money, pressed ahead, setting up meetings with state senators about helping AbTech. Aware he was under scrutiny, he also started using a “burner” cellphone, which he told White he was using for sensitive topics.
Dean Skelos cancelled one of the meetings his son arranged after finding out about it. “We’re in a dangerous time,” he told his son.
The father and son continued plotting about the legislation, wiretaps played in court Tuesday showed. They came up with ways to communicate that were harder for the feds to trace. That included Adam, 33, encouraging his 67-year-old father to talk to him via Facetime.
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“I’m going to Facetime you. I’ll explain why,” Adam told his dad in one tapped phone conversation.
“Can you see me?” Dean Skelos then asked.
“No dad,” the exasperated son said. “Just hang up.”
By March, the pressure was getting to Adam, who bemoaned not being able to have a regular conversation with his father on the phone. He said he was having problems paying his bills, and “I can’t have a conversation with you.”
“Dad’s here to help, just remember. Don’t freak out,” Dean Skelos told his son.
“It’s like f—ing Preet Bharara is listening to every f—ing phone call,” Adam groused, referring to the Manhattan U.S. Attorney who’d eventually indict the pair on corruption charges.
