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Case still not over Feds to appeal dismissal of Olympic charges
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) -- Federal prosecutors served noticed Monday they may appeal U.S. District Judge David Sam's dismissal of the most serious charges in the Olympic corruption case. The notice preserves the government's right to file an appeal seeking to reinstate four travel-in-aid-of-racketeering charges, but doesn't say whether prosecutors will try. In a previous filing, Justice Department trial attorneys Richard Wiedis and John Scott said they might be satisfied trying Salt Lake's bid leaders on the remaining charges of fraud and conspiracy if Sam does no further damage to the case. Still, prosecutors think Sam's abrupt racketeering dismissal is vulnerable on appeal, based on a series of opinions by a federal magistrate who upheld all of the Olympic charges. Sam did not follow Magistrate Ronald Boyce's recommendations. Sam ruled last Thursday that Olympic lobbying isn't organized crime and that prosecutors can't use a state commercial bribery law to leverage felony racketeering charges. Sam said it would be absurd to conclude the Utah Legislature intended to criminalize the gifts and favors that Salt Lake bid chief Tom Welch and deputy Dave Johnson showered on IOC members. In his 29-page memorandum, Sam condemned the U.S. Justice Department for "co-opting" Utah law enforcement, which launched its own, hesitant Olympic investigation that was quickly overtaken by the federal probe. Sam said state prosecutors chose not to file charges against Welch and Johnson, although Utah officials insist they simply put the case on hold until the federal prosecution is resolved. "The state of Utah has chosen not to prosecute defendants for violation of any Utah law. Nevertheless, under the guise of aiding Utah with its law enforcement, federal prosecutors have co-opted an obscure Utah misdemeanor bribery statute of uncertain and improbable application as the only basis for charging defendants with four Travel Act felonies," Sam wrote in his decision. Utah's commercial bribery law prohibits classic business kickback schemes. Sam next will turn his attention to the remaining 10 fraud counts and a single conspiracy charge, deciding whether those should stand. The judge already has put the bid leaders' trial on indefinite hold and his review could take months. Welch, 55, was president of the Salt Lake bid and organizing committees, and Johnson, 41, was vice president. After spurning plea offers to a felony tax charge, both were indicted last summer on charges of plying IOC members with cash and gifts, their children with U.S. jobs and scholarships and their families with travel, medical care and expenses-paid vacations. All told, Welch and Johnson spent $1 million wooing IOC delegates who voted in 1995 to award Salt Lake the 2002 Winter Games. The fraud case accuses Welch and Johnson of hiding or disguising their dealings with IOC members from their own board of trustees. Prosecutors planned to call trustees such as Utah Gov. Mike Leavitt and Salt Lake banker Spence Eccles to testify they didn't know about the bid committee's questionable inducements and wouldn't have approved.
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