Michael Sessa and Victor Orena were convicted on charges like racketeering and conspiracy to murder in 1992 as part of their alleged association in the Colombo crime family, but a top civil rights attorney is arguing that Sessa and Orena were victims of prosecutorial overreach from a high-level deep state enforcer in the coup to oust President Donald Trump over bogus claims of Russian collusion.
Civil rights attorney David Schoen, who represented President Trump during his second impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate, pointed to Andrew Weissman’s role as prosecutor in the cases of Sessa and Orena. Weissman was a lead prosecutor in the Mueller investigation and was personally responsible for fabricating the case against long-time Trump confidant Roger Stone, which included the infamous pre-dawn raid arranged for the CNN cameras designed to humiliate Stone and his family.
“Of all the lives Weissmann unfairly ruined through his career of misconduct, the irretrievable harm he did to Sessa and Orena and their families stands alone,” Schoen wrote in a letter urging President Trump to grant clemency to Sessa and Orena. “He took away 33 years of their lives for crimes they did not commit and withheld the evidence demonstrating they were not guilty.”
Schoen noted that he took this case completely pro bono because he believes so strongly that Weissman acted unethically.
In his letter Schoen describes an illicit deal between Colombo family mobster Gregory Scarpa and corrupt FBI agent Lindley DeVecchio that fabricated a mob war allowing Scarpa and his friends to gain control over the Colombo crime family. In the midst of doing so, Sessa and Orena were arranged as the fall guys while Scarpa committed federally-sanctioned murders and other crimes – similar to what the Feds did with Whitey Bulger in Boston.
“Andrew Weissmann knowingly and intentionally withheld all evidence of the corrupt relationship between Scarpa and DeVecchio and essentially gave them a license to kill,” Schoen said.
“The prosecution of the so-called Colombo War cases has been exposed as the single most corrupt prosecution in the history of our criminal justice system. Court opinions, articles, books and documentaries have been written and made about the corruption and ethical violations that marked the prosecution in this case and all related cases,” he continued.
Eventually, DeVecchio would be indicted for his role in multiple murders related to the Colombo family cases. Judge Edward Korman accused Weissman and other FBI agents of “making a deal with the devil” by shielding “Scarpa from prosecution for his own crimes” and “also actively recruit[ing] him to participate in crimes under their direction.”
In the case of Sessa, Weissman charged him for a murder that a government informant had already confessed to committing. The witnesses against Sessa at trial were either paid off by the government directly or later acknowledged that they had been coached by Weissmann to lie to the jury.
In Orena’s case, he is 90-years old and terminally ill, posing no risk of violence or injury to the public. Additionally, confidential informant Frank Sparaco, also given free reign by Weissmann to commit murders and other crimes with federal protection, stated that it was John Gotti who ordered the hit of Thomas Ocera, for which Orena was later wrongfully convicted.
“Sentences imposed on these men for lesser charges they were convicted of at trial through the prosecutors’ misconduct have al been fully served already,” Schoen wrote to close his letter. “But the life sentences for murders that Weissmann and his team knew these men did not commit and withheld evidence from them that would have let to their acquittals remain.”
“Mr. President, I ask you most respectfully to grant a full pardon to Michael Sessa and Victor Orena or, at a minimum to commute their sentences to time served after more than 33 years in prison,” Schoen concluded.
