It’s been almost a month since he was arrested and charged with federal bribery and extortion charges, and suspended Miami Lakes Mayor Michael “Muscles” Pizzi has been more chatty than ever about being an innocent bystander in the FBI sting and questioning the motives behind the lobbyist-turned-informant he said poisoned him.
He talked to New Times’ Francisco Alvarado and appeared in a very self-promotional 15-minute interview last week on AmericaTeve’s Maria Laria show. Pizzi even called Ladra back, so you know he’s got a checklist.
Let’s call it the Mike Pizzi Innocence Tour.
Because he said he never took kickbacks, in a peek at what his defense might relay on if he doesn’t cop a plea by Sept. 20 — the definition of his careful chosen words.
“I never accepted a bribe or any inappropriate money at any circumstances,” he said. “If you read the complaint, I said several times, I do not want any money for myself.”
Later he says “Every dollar I received has gone to the people.”
Oh, so the $3,000 he got in the closet from one of the lobbyists appropriate? Or was it for someone else? For your family? Or some charity, maybe? He said that those were details of the case he couldn’t comment on, on advice of his attorney.
But he has talked about almost everything else. And talked. And talked. Not just with me, over the course of two days after his battery died and he called me back to finish his stories. With everyone.
“You’re claiming you are a victim of the FBI. Why,” Maria Laria asked Pizzi on her show, Arrebatados, where his words — in a bizarre twist — were translated by none other than Miami’s own homophobe extraordinaire Eladio Jose Armesto, whose role at the Catholic Family Coalition usually consists of fighting efforts for equal marriage rights and endorse candidates who do the same.
“I didn’t do anything wrong. I was doing a good job as mayor. The people supported me by almost 80 percent,” Pizzi told her, referring to his November re-election. “I am a good lawyer. I have never done anything wrong in my life.
“The point is, if I had been a good mayor, cutting taxes, supporting the elderly, supporting children…why are these people targeting me for no reason? My question is why would people come to my city in a difficult economy and tell me they have a program that could help create jobs in my city?”
Here, Ladra might have guessed that, based on Pizzi’s past history — his about face on Lowell Dunn, who he once targeted but now funds his campaigns, and silly conspiracies with gypsy conartist Vanessa Brito and the rumored $200,000 that was stolen from his office safe and the convenient 2009 overnight fire at his law office that authorities said was intentionally set, perhaps to cover something up — that they saw him as easy pickings.
Pizzi said no mayor in his right mind would say no thanks “if people come to you and say ‘We are going to apply for a grant from the federal government and we may get money to help you create jobs in your city and it is not going to cost you anything.’”
Well, wait a minute. Yeah, they would. In fact, according to the FBI agent’s own sworn affidavit in support of the Aug. 6 arrests of Pizzi and Sweetwater Mayor Manny “Maraña” Maroño, there were several mayors that did not take a bite of this rotten apple.
Pizzi’s case is significantly softer than Maroño’s, as I’ve said before. He actually thanked me for that when we spoke Monday. And he is saying it over and over and over again to anyone who will listen.
“I made it very, very clear. I had two questions. Do you have an opportunity to get monies for my city? And the answer was yes. Also, I asked them, ‘Is it going to cost my city anything?’ They also presented a resolution and they presented respectable people who said that the program had worked in other cities.
“The people who brought this project to me are two respected lobbyists,” said Pizzi, referring to Richard Candia, who was also arrested for his role as bagman and Michael Kesti, who was actually the FBI’s paid secret informant. “It was their job to help the city and like many other companies they brought to us, they verified that they were all legitimate companies.”
Like he did with Alvarado for the New Times piece, Pizzi went off on Kesti with Ladra.
“I hadn’t met Michael Kesti before this case,” Pizzi told Ladra, adding that the lobbyist dropped names and made himself seem like he had done this before.”He hosted fundraisers for the mayors in Cutler Bay and in Palmetto Bay. At one point, he invited me to an event with Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado, the mayor of Miami. I don’t know how much credibility he had, but he had enough to have the mayor of Miami and Gene Flinn and the mayor of Cutler Bay support him.”
“But he was a paid informant. With my prior experience as a parole officer, the really good guys don’t end up doing something like that for so long. I think he has a lot more explaining to do than I do,” Pizzi said.
And Ladra hates to admit this, but he might be right. I have to stand with Muscles on questioning Kesti’s motives and involvement. I mean, this guy who apparently has enough credibility with the FBI for the to launch an expensive two-year investigation that ends in such small fish has his own murky past.
But prior to that, either during or before he was a lobbyist, Kesti was also inexplicably, with no medical experience, the executive director of the Miami Beach Health Foundation. This was the funding branch for the Miami Beach Community Health Center, whose CEO Kathryn Abbate, was senrtenced earlier this year to 32 months for embezzling millions. It was also a funding source for Community Health of South Florida, Inc., the company that gave former Homestead Mayor Steve Bateman a secret lobbying gig to grease the government wheels for its permits and projects. The same job Bateman was arrested for last week on unlawful compensation charges.
“It’s an amazing coincidence that Kesti is involved in all these shady things,” said Pizzi, who had done his own research, adding that at least he had the guts to call me back and face his accusers while Kesti seems to hang up on not just Ladra but everyone who calls him.
“He’s a paid informant. He’s a manipulator, out for his own interests,” Pizzi said. “The real question should be about him. Why is Michael Kesti out to get me? Who is he friends with? Why is he targeting me? How does Michael Kesti become a paid informant and why is he out there targeting people, vouching for the credibility of something that doesn’t exist?”
All good questions, I admit.
But so is this one: What did you do with the money, Muscles? Oh, that’s right, we are waiting for you to explain how it was “appropriate” money. And why did you lie to the auditors when they called you about the grant monies?
While it is true that I’ve said the case against Pizzi — who helped make bogus deals in Miami Lakes and in Medley, where he was town attorney — is weaker, I’ve also said it is because he knows what words to use. He’s an attorney. He can create enough of a hole of doubt with words he said, like,”I can’t do it if it’s bogus” and “I just wanna do the right thing.”
But he also has a problem with other words, like asking Kesti for two more checks for his campaign and then telling auditors when they called about the grant monies — $17,000 was already awarded, and he sounded surprised — he liked and said that the undercovers, operating as Sunshine Universal, were doing a great job. And taking full credit for getting the deal done in Medley, even though the undercovers didn’t show.
It was that important to him.
“I got it passed unanimously on my own,” he tells them. “It passed unanimously because I forced them to do it.
“I did more than my part,” Pizzi is quoted as saying in the arrest affidavit. “I got it on the agenda, I got the votes and then I had to make your presentation for you.”
That does not sound like a guy whose arm is being twisted.
Chatty Michael Pizzi claims innocence, blames Michael Kesti added by Ladra on
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