By Rich Bockmann
Looking for work, willing (and now able) to travel.
Indicted former City Councilman Dan Halloran has been granted permission to travel up and down the Eastern Seaboard and to Texas in order to find work as he waits for his federal corruption trial to begin.
“Mr. Halloran intends to travel to the above locations to improve his chances of finding work,” the northeast Queens Republican’s lawyer wrote in a letter dated Feb. 18 to White Plains federal Judge Kenneth Karas, who approved the request two days later.
Halloran will have to give 24-hour notice and submit an itinerary to the court’s pretrial services office when he plans to travel to Texas or any state along the East Coast between Maine and Florida. He is allowed to travel anywhere within New York state without giving notice.
A criminal and constitutional attorney who was a partner at the firm Palmieri and Castiglione before joining the Council in 2010, Halloran started his own practice in December 2012, four months before he was arrested and charged with five counts of conspiracy, fraud and bribery for his alleged role in trying to buy GOP backing for a southeast Queens Democrat, state Sen. Malcolm Smith (D-Hollis), to run in last year’s mayoral race as a Republican.
Halloran was released on $250,000 bail, ordered to surrender a shotgun the feds found when they arrested him at home and restricted to traveling within the Southern and Eastern districts of New York.
Federal prosecutors charged Halloran with accepting nearly $39,000 from agents working with the FBI that he intended to use to buy off Republican leaders.
He is also accused of promising to allocate up to $80,000 in Council funding to an undercover FBI agent in exchange for $6,500 in contributions to his failed 2012 bid for Congress.
As for ties outside the state, Halloran received around $19,000 from contributors up and down the East Coast to his campaign two years ago.
The trial is set for June 2.
Reach reporter Rich Bockmann by e-mail at rbockmann@cnglocal.com or by phone at 718-260-4574.
