NEW developments have come to the surface in the case of the state of Iowa versus film executive producer Wendy Weiner Runge:
The trial, originally set for Jan. 10, 2011, has been rescheduled to Feb.7, at the request of Runges attorney.
Two of Runges professional partners and former co-defendants have agreed to cooperate with Iowa prosecutors in their case against Runge.
The Des Moines Register reported that it obtained emails regarding a man who allegedly had been told by Runge that she was perpetuating a fraud scheme on Iowa voters.
Runge, who previously had no relationship with Sholom Rubashkin and Agriprocessors, is now interested in his case and its effect on his family.
Runge is falling short in her efforts to raise funds for her legal defense.
Runge is the 45-year-old Jewish filmmaker whose production company, Polynation Pictures, partook of generous tax incentives offered by the Iowa Film Office to entice the film industry to that state.
When it was discovered that the director of the Iowa Film Office and his staff were derelict in their due diligence as they liberally approved invoices for the tax credits, the office was shut down, the employees were fired, and the Iowa film chief Tom Wheeler was charged with nonfelonious misconduct in office.
Runge and two of her Polynation colleagues were charged with felony theft. If convicted, Runge could face 25 years in prison.
Runge says her attorney Matt Whitaker requested and was granted the postponement of the trial from Jan. 10 to Feb. 7 when he produced a laundry list of information and processes which the prosecution has not yet provided, such as discovery and accounting records.
The state has not provided one single document. We still havent been allowed to depose their witnesses, Runge said. You have to be able to face your accuser.
IT is now learned that those witnesses are sure to include two of Runges former co-defendants.
Charges against her films director Zachary LeBeau were dropped Oct. 15 in exchange for his cooperation and testimony against Runge and another partner, Matthias Saunders, in separate trials.
Read Larry Hankin’s previous coverage of the story
In late November, Saunders pleaded guilty of felony theft in the case, agreeing to cooperate with state prosecutors, according to an article in the Des Moines Register.
Runge told the IJN that Saunders, who had been hired by director LeBeau, insisted on using his own equipment on the set of the science fiction movie she produced using the $1.85 million in state tax credits, The Scientist.
Everyone thought he owned equipment. We didnt know it wasnt his equipment. In fact, I have emails from him stating that he owned the equipment. He lied about that. He had to ship it in, which we didnt know about, and he had no right to submit invoices [for the equipment].
He didnt submit his list of equipment until one week after the film was shot, so I couldnt inventory it, Runge told the IJN about Saunders guilty plea.
Runges job, as the films executive producer, was to find the money to pay for expenses, she said, not to determine what the expenses should be.
I dont make the budget; I just make sure the budget is made, she says.
She said shes prepared to produce big-time Hollywood witnesses to testify that that is the proper job description of a films executive producer.
Runge said she does not know why LeBeau would be testifying against her.
On Oct. 16, 2010, Des Moines Register reporter Lee Rood wrote that emails obtained by that paper show that former Iowa film chief Tom Wheeler received a letter last year from a man who alleged Runge was perpetuating a fraud scheme on Iowa taxpayers. Jim Brewer of Minneapolis said he had run into Runge, president of Polynation Pictures, while on vacation in Los Angeles.
She explained how she puts millions of dollars in phony deferments with people she knows, then gets tax credits to cover it, Brewer wrote.
The Register reported that the Iowa attorney generals affidavit alleges Wheeler never followed up on Brewers tip except to write him a letter that was later returned.
Runge told the IJN that the letter was returned because there is no Jim Brewer of Minneapolis. Its a made-up character. She said the letter was an anonymous fake. She never made the statements and never defrauded anyone, she said.
RUNGE believes she is being used as a scapegoat for the states failed film incentive program that potentially exposed the state to the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. Runge and her former co-defendants LeBeau and Saunders were the only filmmakers charged with criminal wrongdoing out of more than two dozen film companies who also availed themselves of Iowas generous film tax credits.
Runge wonders whether her identity as a Jew has anything do with the charges. Originally, a pre-trial hearing had been scheduled for Rosh Hashanah, and was not changed until the last minute after passionate pleas by Runges attorney for accommodation.
Ironically, after a questionable exchange last summer in which Iowa Deputy Attorney General Thomas H. Miller asked Runge about her relationship with the Rubashkin family at the time she had none Runge now finds herself drawn to the Rubashkins out of what she calls a sort of morbid curiosity.
Sholom Rubashkin was sentenced in June to 27 years in prison, having been convicted on 26 counts in conjunction with loans to his Iowa-based meat processing plant, Agriprocessors.
Runge expresses herself through near-daily emails she calls it keyboard therapy. On Monday this week, she wrote:
Last week, approximately 1,600 Jews attended the Rubashkin rally in Lawrence, Long Island. I was among them.
Several very caring people have suggested that I should try to keep my case in Iowa separate from the AgriProcessors case . . . but unfortunately, I dont believe that I can. We share the same prosecutor [who charged Rubashkin with immigration violations of which he was acquitted] and frankly, I believe I was entrapped by state officials because they thought it would be easy to make me look bad to a jury in Des Moines, just to cover their own mismanagement.
I know very little about the criminal cases against AgriProcessors because obviously I have my own issues.
At the rally for Rubashkin, Brett Tolman, former US attorney from Utah, spoke, calling the legal argument in the Rubashkin case tenuous.
In her email, Runge continued, ?. . . he clearly defined how overreaching the prosecution was and Mr. Tolman outlined the malfeasance of the court.
Honestly, I almost passed out because Mr. Tolman could have been speaking about the states behavior on my case.
When I learned that the rally was to take place, I was determined to attend for one reason: I needed to see how Leah Rubashkin endures the dreadful absence of her husband because G-d forbid my husband may have to walk that same lonely path.
How can I tell my family they will survive this horror if I have never actually seen anyone carry on?
Mrs. Rubashkin, you encouraged me to believe that we will survive this test. Your dignity and your faith that everything Hashem does is for the good are messages that I will bring to my husband and children.
RUNGE, who lives in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park, told the IJN this week that she worries constantly about her family.
This is so incredibly painful for my kids, my parents, my sisters. They know darn well that I didnt do anything wrong. Why would this just run so crazily? It just doesnt make any sense.
In addition to the fear of being convicted, Runge is equally consumed with her need to raise money for her legal defense. I cant raise the money I need to raise. . . . They are treating me like some kind of mafia kingpin or drug lord, she told the IJN.
Besides attorneys fees and the cost of bringing witnesses to the trial, Runge needs enough money to live in Des Moines during the trial which could go on for a month or so.
Runge is an observant Jew, and Des Moines is not a bastion of Orthodox Jewry where Runge could likely receive home hospitality for that long. She will need to pay for hotel rooms for herself and for her assistant for the duration of the trial.
She says she needs to raise $150,000.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
