FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 29, 2022

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Levy Calls Out Felon-Funded Fiction

GREENWICH, CT - Leadership Now, a super PAC supporting career politician Themis Klarides, is funding false attack ads against conservative outsider Leora Levy with donations from a notorious felon ahead of the August 9 primary. Records indicate William (Billy) Tomasso, a felon who plead guilty to bribery and tax fraud charges in one of the biggest political corruption scandals, which toppled a Republican Governor, has donated $50,000 to date to the PAC. 

“Felon-funded fiction,” said Leora Levy in response to the new ad while on the David Webb Show. 

Levy's opponent is running scared. Just last night Themis Klarides dodged a forum at the last minute because she is on the run from the facts, her record, and refuses to be held accountable for her less than conservative principles. In attendance and representing the Klarides campaign was their collusion partner Peter Lumaj.

Check Out Tomasso’s Legacy of Corruption in Connecticut Politics: 

The New York Times: Firm in Bribery Investigation Was Big Donor to Rowland 

The contracting firm is under federal scrutiny for its possible role in a bribe scheme involving Gov. John G. Rowland's former deputy chief of staff has been among the most generous contributors to Mr. Rowland's political races and his other fund-raising efforts in recent years, state and federal records show.

From 1998 through most of 2002, relatives and employees of companies owned by the Tomasso family gave more than $47,000 to Mr. Rowland or the Republican Governors Association, which the governor headed as chairman or vice chairman from February 2001 to November 2002, according to state and federal election records.

William A. Tomasso, his two brothers, Paul and Michael, and their father, Angelo Tomasso Jr., run a number of construction and real estate companies in New Britain and Farmington, outside Hartford.

The New York Times: Two Connected to Rowland Plead Guilty to U.S. Charges

 A top deputy to former Gov. John G. Rowland and a state contractor whose companies made millions of dollars through his relationships with the two men pleaded guilty to federal bribery and tax fraud charges on Tuesday. The pleas concluded major elements of a wide-ranging public corruption investigation that once consumed the Capitol and already has put Mr. Rowland in prison.

Peter N. Ellef, Mr. Rowland's co-chief of staff from 1997 to 2002, and William A. Tomasso, Mr. Ellef's close friend, whose family's companies won more than $100 million in contracts under Mr. Rowland's administration, offered the guilty pleas more than a year after they were first charged in a much broader indictment that described Mr. Rowland's office as a racketeering enterprise.

"They admitted today to violating the public trust," said Nora R. Dannehy, the assistant United States attorney who led the investigation.

Each man pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit bribery for a series of transactions in which Mr. Tomasso provided gifts that included money and limousine rides to Mr. Ellef and free rent to a company owned by Mr. Ellef's son. In exchange for gifts, Mr. Ellef helped steer contracts to Tomasso companies, including one to manage construction for a controversial $57 million juvenile detention center in Middletown.

The two men also pleaded guilty to not paying federal income taxes on some of the money involved in their exchanges. In addition, Mr. Ellef, 61, Mr. Tomasso, 40, and Tomasso companies were ordered to pay $1 million collectively in restitution to the state, money expected to be paid entirely by a Tomasso company. Connecticut's attorney general, Richard Blumenthal, had filed a civil suit last year intended to help reclaim money potentially lost through the Rowland administration's corrupt steering of contracts to Tomasso companies.

Federal Election Commission: $50,000 in funding by William A. Tomasso to the Klarides super PAC.

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