The trial of suspended Levy County Commissioners Sammy Yearty and Tony Parker is slowly working its way through the jagged bits and pieces of video and audio tapes as the government tries to prove the two men solicited and split a $10,000 bribe from an undercover FBI agent posing as a developer.

Yearty also faces an additional charge of lying to federal agents for saying he had not accepted a lunch, dinner or bribe in return for his vote.

After two days of testimony by two FBI agents and the playing of video and audio recordings, there was no evidence of money changing hands or votes being promised.

The heart of the federal case, a trip to New York City in December 2007, showed Yearty paid for the airplane tickets for himself and Parker, and the undercover agent impersonating as a developer paid for their $700 a day hotel rooms  for the four-day stay, a boat tour to the Statue of Liberty, tickets to the Empire State Building and reservations for dinner and lunch.

The case being heard by an all-white jury in federal court in Gainesville opened Monday with one piece of good news for the two men: Assistant U.S. Attorney Greg McMahon told Chief District Judge Stephan P. Mickle that it would not be pursuing the forfeiture of any property gleaned as a result of cash paid to the two men.

The 12 jurors and two alternates were chosen in less than 90 minutes from a pool of 44 individuals, including only four African Americans. It consists of six men — all of whom sport facial hair from mustaches to beards — and eight women. Most are from Gainesville and their jobs range from working at a Subway sandwich shop to an environmental researcher.

“This is a political corruption case,” said McMahon in his opening statement to the jurors. “People get money.     People get rewards for their position.

“Are they influenced by the receipt of the funds?”

McMahon promised that the video would show money changing hands. “You get to watch as Sammy Yearty and Tony Parker talk about the trip,” he said. “And you get to watch as he (the agent) counts out $10,000 in cash. You will see 10 stacks of $1,000 each, as he counts, 1,2,3,4,5,6.”

And he said jurors would see as the agent also found an additional $200. “Sammy Yearty takes this,” the prosecutor said.

    “They were bought,” McMahon said as he ended his opening.

    Attorney Gloria Fletcher, Parker's attorney, portrayed him as a man who earned a living with his hands clearing and improving land so people could put homes on it. She said he just wanted to make things better for Levy County — to bring infrastructure and services to the rural county that people in places like Gainesville routinely enjoy.

    Fletcher said Quinn is a highly trained agent hired to run the ruses he uses in corruption investigations.

    “He does this cold call,” she said referring to Quinn's initial meeting with the two commissioners in the fall of 2006. “This was not a cold call. He went to Levy County with a purpose, with a mission.” She said until the two meet again on Dec. 5, 2007, Quinn does not contact Parker, does not do lunch with him, does not do meetings.

    “He has nothing pending before the Levy County Commission,” Fletcher reminded the jury.

    Rod Smith, Yearty's attorney, also reminds the jury that nothing was coming to the county commission. He told the jury that the county's comprehensive land use and development plan will not allow high density housing of the type the faux developer said his company wants to build.

    Quinn tells everyone he meets that his company has built homes for people who have equity in them and with the rising housing market they can leverage that equity to buy townhomes and condos in Levy County. And depending on when he tells the story, these New Jersey people will want them for winter homes or summer homes.

    Smith tells the jurors that much of the county is set aside and cannot be developed, and the state must approve changes in the comprehensive plans. He says approval is unlikely because the county does not have the infrastructure of water and sewer to support high density housing. Yearty's attorney says you cannot operate fire sprinklers in a high-rise condo development off well water. He said the only place that can happen is in municipalities where they have water and sewer systems.

    “The county plays no role in a municipality,” Smith said.

    And he said Yearty knew the rules on taking gifts from developers. “He (Sammy) said the only reason we can go on this trip is you have nothing pending,” Smith said.

    The prosecutor said the case began when FBI Agent Sean Quinn of Newark, N.J., came to Florida in 2006 posing as developer Sean Michaels working for Gideon Development Co. with offices in Fort Lauderdale and Newark. McMahon said the agent came to work a corruption probe in Dixie County that has resulted in the convictions of four present and former public officials.

    The probe expanded to Levy in the fall of 2006 when Michaels is told by former Dixie Commissioner Alton Land that he has “some aces in the hole” on handling development, and names Yearty.

    McMahon warned the jurors they would be seeing audio and video recordings of Parker, Yearty and the undercover agent who went by the alias Sean Michaels: “There are hours and hours and hours of them.”

    “You will get to see five or six hours of them.”

    By Tuesday afternoon, the jury had heard more than three hours of recordings — including some containing the F-word, remarks that Levy deputies working the county courthouse security detail are “stupid” and an upside-down restaurant  breadbasket, and read over the transcripts.

    Money had yet to change hands, even though Quinn testified that when he met Yearty for a day-long tour of Levy County on Nov. 14, 2007, “I fully expected to be asked for a bribe.”

    Instead he got a tour of Blue Springs, Manatee Springs — where he got to see manatees — and Fanning Springs. And he was taken to lunch at the Lighthouse Restaurant in Fanning Springs where he placed his concealed video recorder upside down by a red breadbasket. While the recording captures two people talking, the only image the jury could see was of the breadbasket, from the bottom down. It was also at that time that Yearty mentioned taking Quinn on a tour of the Waccassa area to see country that is like the ancient Nile River with alligators, snakes and wild areas.

    After two days of testimony by FBI Agent Jeff Thornburg, who was in charge of the investigation, and Quinn, there was no sign of cash changing hands, and no discussion of buying or selling votes.

    The only monetary evidence was when Michaels donated $500 cash to the Enterprise Zone Development Agency  at an Oct. 24, 2007 banquet.  It was at that banquet that the agent's photo was taken and later published in the Chiefland Citizen as he handed the cash to EZDA Chair Skipper Henderson.

    Thornburg testified that Quinn called him from the banquet saying other builders and developers were making gifts and asking to donate $500. Thornburg got permission from a higher person in the FBI and the $500 was handed over.

    Quinn also mailed a $100 Bonefish Grill gift card to Yearty as a thank-you after sitting with him at the banquet held at Usher Community Center in Chiefland.

    The agent first said he wanted to get cigars or liquor for Yearty in a conversation with Chiefland Realtor Doug King.  It was an example of how little the agent knew about his target.

    “As far as Sammy goes, I wouldn't do that. He's a deacon in the Baptist church,” King tells Quinn. “Sean, I wouldn't do that.”

    King, who is a distant relative of Yearty and a close friend, later says, “Sammy's just an old country boy.” And he recommends a restaurant gift certificate so the commissioner can take his wife out to dinner.

    At the same time, the jury heard Michaels testify that he carried around $8,000 to $10,000 each time he visited Levy County in $100, $50 and $20 bills — including the Nov. 14 trip where he expected, but was not asked for, a bribe.

    And while they heard the details of a Gainesville hotel bill for a three-day stay in Suite 707 at the Gainesville Hilton where Quinn ordered every appetizer on the menu, several meal-size salads, and the entrees for himself, Parker and Yearty, they did not hear the total was about $5,000.

    When Quinn asks what the men want to drink with dinner, they say a Coke and a Diet Coke, so Quinn orders eight Cokes, four waters and four diet Cokes. And he orders a bottle of Coppola wine.

    When the fake developer asks them about dessert, Parker and Yearty decline, but Quinn orders one of each dessert on the menu.

    “How many people are you expecting?” the stunned waitress asks the trio in the hotel suite.

    “Oh, just us,” Quinn says. “We can feed the homeless.”

    On Monday Agent Thornburg, Quinn's supervisor on the case, detailed how the FBI was paying $100 a week for a cell phone company to record and provide the recordings of Quinn's cell phone calls. He said it was decided after a time to cut the expense and run the calls through the FBI office in Jacksonville. But that setup only allowed recording of Quinn's outgoing calls.

    No incoming calls could be recorded, so Quinn would send incoming calls to voice mail and return the call in order to record it.

    Thornburg described one frustrating day when Quinn and Yearty played phone tag missing each others calls and getting nothing but voice mail.

    It was not the only thing that failed to go right for the FBI.

    One Sunday Yearty kept calling the agent who was at home in New Jersey. He did not have a recording device for the call, so after he took Yearty's call, he wrote a report about it — form FD302.

    In the initial meeting with Parker and Yearty in 2006, Michaels went into the Levy County Courthouse where he was faced with a security checkpoint while wearing a recording device on his person. He said he was not able to turn back and go outside because the deputies at the screening station had spotted him, so he went through. While he was worried about the device being detected he was allowed through. Agent Thornburg, who accompanied him and was also wearing a device, did not go through the checkpoint.

    And after investing time in meeting Yearty, Parker and King, Quinn was pulled out of Florida for six months to attend to his own work in the Newark office where he was still working cases. Thornburg said the problem was with Quinn's Newark supervisor who thought the agent had been on the case too long. But he returned to Florida in fall 2007.

    And by December, when Quinn had his last meeting with Parker and Yearty, the two agents knew their investigation was ending because it had not won approval for another six months from higher ups in the agency.

    At one point the jury chuckled as Michaels was frustrated in trying to arrange for a car to pick Yearty and Parker up at the airport in Newark, N.J., and take them to their hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn on Times Square in New York City.

    He calls the car service and when the operator says he cannot put the ride on his credit card because he won't be in the car, he says the men can pay cash. And when the operator asks for the street address of the hotel, Quinn says it's in Times Square and adds “it's only one block.”

    “It's Times Square. You can put them out in the middle of Times Square.

    “I didn't know it was so difficult to get a taxi in New York.

    “You can put them out in the middle of the street in Times Square. They're visitors.

    “This is New York attitude here. This is why it's so bad.

    “I'm going to get a different car service. If you can't take a phone number how can I know your car is going to be there?”

    At other times, jurors were rocking to stay awake, two played with their hair and one appeared to be bored and drifting off. Some were taking notes, while others doodled on their notepads.

    It was late Tuesday afternoon before the word “votes” was mentioned and it came during a 2? hour marathon of listening to the men plan their trip to New York over the Dec. 5 dinner in the Hilton.

    Michaels, who is flying to Newark with Yearty and Parker the next day, says he cannot spend time with them on the trip because another deal has run into problems.

    “I just hate it for you after going to all the expense too,” Yearty says. “They don't mind you spending this kind of money?”

    Quinn says, “What everybody's expecting is when we go down there, when it comes down to votes and support it will get done. Everybody's happy as a clam.”

    Shortly after, Quinn says, “All I wanna know is if something comes down the pike to vote you are going to be with us.”

    Yearty replies: “As long as you do things right and get the proper zoning.”

    The commissioner goes on: “We're limited like I told you. We're rural but we're progressive.  But the infrastructure is not there for high density. Tony and I can tell you where some places are.”

    He goes on to say while some folks think of real estate people as being like used car salesmen, “If it's not right Doug King won't do it.”

    At press time, the trial continued in Gainesville.