The star witness in the political corruption case against suspended DeKalb County CEO Burrell Ellis may well be … Burrell Ellis.
Evidence disclosures filed late Friday, obtained exclusively by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, show DeKalb District Attorney Robert James has more than 1,450 audio files — potentially hundreds of hours of conversations secretly recorded between Ellis and others, as well as others about Ellis — to support his allegations that Ellis shook down county vendors for campaign contributions and punished those who did not give.
Only the list of 37 potential witnesses, including many of those vendors and top-level county workers, has been made public, according to court filings. The actual recordings — including 28 DVDs and CDs and a flash drive needed to hold 1,452 audio files and 204 other recordings — were given only to Ellis’ defense team and will not come out until trial.
James declined to comment about the evidence. Jeff Dickerson, a spokesman for the Ellis defense team, said Monday that the attorneys were listening to the files and would also have no comment.
But to members of a special grand jury, who listened to some of the recordings, those calls indicated that the way to do business with DeKalb was to donate to the political campaign of Ellis, who ran daily government operations as CEO.
via Secret recordings key in Ellis case | www.myajc.com.
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