Leveraging Trump’s Lingering Fury At The Mueller Investigation, Lawyer Seeks Pardons For Two Colombo Mobsters Serving Life Sentences
David Schoen, one of the attorneys who helped President Donald Trump win an acquittal following his second impeachment trial—for inciting an insurrection at the Capitol on January 6—is representing, pro bono, former Colombo mobsters Michael Sessa and Victor (Little Vic) Orena, who have been sitting in prison cells for more than three decades thanks to crimes committed during the third Colombo war, which left 12 dead and dozens wounded in the early 1990s.
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| Vic Orena, former Colombo acting boss. |
Schoen wrote a letter seeking pardons or commuted sentences for Orena and Sessa, which he sent to Trump on Christmas Eve. So far, the President hasn’t responded.
Orena, 91, the former Colombo acting boss who had visions of making his position official and who is today wheelchair-bound and suffering from dementia, among other ailments, was convicted in 1992 of nine counts, including the murder of Thomas Ocera and conspiracy to murder members of the “Persico faction” of the Colombo family. He received multiple life sentences.
Sessa, 67, an acting capo, also was convicted in 1992 of various crimes, including the murder of Anthony Coluccio and conspiracy to murder members of the “Orena faction.” (Sessa and Orena may be on the same side today, but they most definitely were not during the war years.) He also was sentenced to life in prison.
Trump has granted clemency to more than 1,600 people so far during his second term. He recently pardoned former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted last year of conspiring to smuggle over 400 tons of cocaine into the United States after Trump political adviser Roger Stone convinced him that Hernández had been unfairly targeted by President Joe Biden. (Schoen, who practices law in Montgomery, Alabama, represented Stone during an appeal of Stone’s convictions on charges brought during the Mueller investigation.)
Like Stone, Schoen’s argument for clemency also includes a well-known Trump nemesis, the lawyer Andrew Weissmann. Weissmann has been in Trump’s crosshairs ever since he served as lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel’s office investigating Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory. Trump—who has repeatedly called Weissmann a “slimeball” —has signed executive orders stripping Weissmann of his security clearance and targeting Jenner & Block, Weissmann’s white-shoe law firm.
Orena, 91, the former Colombo acting boss who had visions of making his position official and who is today wheelchair-bound and suffering from dementia, among other ailments, was convicted in 1992 of nine counts, including the murder of Thomas Ocera and conspiracy to murder members of the “Persico faction” of the Colombo family. He received multiple life sentences.
Sessa, 67, an acting capo, also was convicted in 1992 of various crimes, including the murder of Anthony Coluccio and conspiracy to murder members of the “Orena faction.” (Sessa and Orena may be on the same side today, but they most definitely were not during the war years.) He also was sentenced to life in prison.
Trump has granted clemency to more than 1,600 people so far during his second term. He recently pardoned former Honduras president Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted last year of conspiring to smuggle over 400 tons of cocaine into the United States after Trump political adviser Roger Stone convinced him that Hernández had been unfairly targeted by President Joe Biden. (Schoen, who practices law in Montgomery, Alabama, represented Stone during an appeal of Stone’s convictions on charges brought during the Mueller investigation.)
Like Stone, Schoen’s argument for clemency also includes a well-known Trump nemesis, the lawyer Andrew Weissmann. Weissmann has been in Trump’s crosshairs ever since he served as lead prosecutor in Robert Mueller’s special counsel’s office investigating Russian interference in Trump’s 2016 election victory. Trump—who has repeatedly called Weissmann a “slimeball” —has signed executive orders stripping Weissmann of his security clearance and targeting Jenner & Block, Weissmann’s white-shoe law firm.
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| Michael Sessa, middle, alleged former acting Colombo capo. |
Weissmann’s many public service roles included a 15-year stint as a Federal prosecutor in the Eastern District of New York, where he prosecuted multiple Mafia cases, including the cases against Sessa and Orena, which Schoen has called “the most outrageous government misconduct I ever have encountered in 40 years of practicing law.”
“Without a grant of clemency, Mr. President, these two men will remain in prison for the rest of their lives as a direct consequence of Andrew Weissmann’s outrageous misconduct,” Schoen noted in his letter to Trump.
The letter, which also has been published on Roger Stone’s website, argues that:
“Thirty-five years ago, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn alleged that a “war” broke out within an Italian organized crime enterprise known as the Colombo Family. We know today from evidence that has come to light, but that was withheld at the time, that in truth, a brutal mob killer and underboss of the Colombo Family named Gregory Scarpa, working with a corrupt FBI agent named Lindley De Vecchio, fomented the “war” to enable Scarpa and his friends to gain control of the Family. Much of what we now know comes from Scarpa’s son, who committed crimes with and for his father and from other Top Echelon Confidential Informants and indisputable documentary evidence.
“Andrew Weissmann knowingly and intentionally withheld all evidence of the corrupt relationship between Scarpa and Devecchio and essentially gave them license to kill, according to a Top Echelon Confidential Informant working for them, who admitted committing 12 murders while working under their watch. At one point, another AUSA questioned Weissmann on why he was not turning over exculpatory evidence to the defense and he falsely and unethically denied that what he knew about this corrupt relationship had to be disclosed.
“Michael Sessa and Vic Orena, accused of being a Captain and Acting Boss respectively, were convicted by a jury as a direct result of Weissmann’s corrupt decision to withhold all exculpatory evidence (described in further detail below). Once evidence of the corrupt relationship was exposed after their trials, every single other defendant in directly related trials, including 16 defendants in front of 48 different jurors, were acquitted. The Department of Justice had to completely overhaul its rules for dealing with confidential informants. FBI agent Devecchio was indicted for multiple murders, but Weissmann has to date remained completely unaccountable for what he did in securing convictions and life sentences for Michael Sessa and Vic Orena through perjured testimony and by withholding the most vitally important and directly relevant exculpatory evidence.”
The letter also cites articles by right-wing writer Joe Hoft, Gateway Pundit website founder, which allege that both men were unfairly targeted by Weissmann.
And Sessa’s cause has also been getting a boost thanks to Jennie Bruzzese Coluccio, the wife of the man who Sessa was convicted of murdering. She’s also been writing letters seeking Sessa’s release from prison.
“Without a grant of clemency, Mr. President, these two men will remain in prison for the rest of their lives as a direct consequence of Andrew Weissmann’s outrageous misconduct,” Schoen noted in his letter to Trump.
The letter, which also has been published on Roger Stone’s website, argues that:
“Thirty-five years ago, federal prosecutors in Brooklyn alleged that a “war” broke out within an Italian organized crime enterprise known as the Colombo Family. We know today from evidence that has come to light, but that was withheld at the time, that in truth, a brutal mob killer and underboss of the Colombo Family named Gregory Scarpa, working with a corrupt FBI agent named Lindley De Vecchio, fomented the “war” to enable Scarpa and his friends to gain control of the Family. Much of what we now know comes from Scarpa’s son, who committed crimes with and for his father and from other Top Echelon Confidential Informants and indisputable documentary evidence.
“Andrew Weissmann knowingly and intentionally withheld all evidence of the corrupt relationship between Scarpa and Devecchio and essentially gave them license to kill, according to a Top Echelon Confidential Informant working for them, who admitted committing 12 murders while working under their watch. At one point, another AUSA questioned Weissmann on why he was not turning over exculpatory evidence to the defense and he falsely and unethically denied that what he knew about this corrupt relationship had to be disclosed.
“Michael Sessa and Vic Orena, accused of being a Captain and Acting Boss respectively, were convicted by a jury as a direct result of Weissmann’s corrupt decision to withhold all exculpatory evidence (described in further detail below). Once evidence of the corrupt relationship was exposed after their trials, every single other defendant in directly related trials, including 16 defendants in front of 48 different jurors, were acquitted. The Department of Justice had to completely overhaul its rules for dealing with confidential informants. FBI agent Devecchio was indicted for multiple murders, but Weissmann has to date remained completely unaccountable for what he did in securing convictions and life sentences for Michael Sessa and Vic Orena through perjured testimony and by withholding the most vitally important and directly relevant exculpatory evidence.”
The letter also cites articles by right-wing writer Joe Hoft, Gateway Pundit website founder, which allege that both men were unfairly targeted by Weissmann.
And Sessa’s cause has also been getting a boost thanks to Jennie Bruzzese Coluccio, the wife of the man who Sessa was convicted of murdering. She’s also been writing letters seeking Sessa’s release from prison.
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Anthony (Bird) Coluccio, a Colombo associate in Sessa’s crew, was murdered in May 1989. As per court documents, Coluccio primarily conducted loansharking activities, but had also “done some work with [Colombo consiglieri Carmine Sessa, Michael’s brother], meaning murders.”
During the several months prior to his murder, Coluccio “was dealing drugs, was taking drugs, was committing robberies, [and] was doing stupid things. In the winter of 1989, he was arrested with his brother for possession of drugs while on his way to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Fearing that, if arrested again, Coluccio would cooperate with authorities, Carmine Sessa instructed Michael and Joseph Ambrosino to “kill [Coluccio] in the car and dump him off on Third Avenue under the highway where the Puerto Ricans hang out, in a drug infested neighborhood; let everybody think that the drug dealers killed him.”Prosecutors, based on Ambrosino’s testimony, alleged Michael Sessa shot Coluccio three times in the back of the head.
As for the murder of Ocera, as per testimony at trial, Orena had a number of motives—including he did it as a favor to John Gotti—but his primary reason, as per prosecutors, was to silence Ocera after he put Orena in jeopardy thanks to an October 5, 1989, search executed by Suffolk County police of the Ocera-operated Manor Restaurant in Merrick, on Long Island. The police seized Ocera's loansharking records, and the seized records implicated Orena.
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We don't know about the Andrew Weissmann allegations, etc., but we do know that these guys have been in prison since Bill Clinton’s first term as president. Orena is in his 90s and in failing health; Sessa may be younger and in better health, but even the wife of the man he supposedly killed is working to get him released. She has called Michael “a good man who made a bad mistake.”
Enough is enough, in our humble opinion. Let these guys out, for Christ’s sake.
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