One of Los Angeles best-known celebrity attorneys pleaded not guilty Tuesday to federal charges that he paid recently indicted private investigator Anthony Pellicano to wiretap the former wife of billionaire Kirk Kerkorian.
The plea by Terry Christensen came on the same day that Los Angeles city officials moved on two fronts to investigate how many LAPD officers might be moonlighting as private eyes or illegally accessing confidential law enforcement records.
The inquiries, requested by the Police Commission and Councilman Jack Weiss, were in response to an ongoing FBI investigation and grand jury allegations that Pellicano and former LAPD Sgt. Mark Arneson repeatedly used national and state law enforcement databases to dig up dirt on behalf of Pellicano's clients, who included lawyers and celebrities. Both Pellicano and Arneson have pleaded not guilty to wrongdoing.
To date, 13 people have been charged in the case, and federal authorities have made it clear that their investigation, launched more than three years ago, is far from over.
In a five-minute appearance before U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Abrams, Christensen was arraigned on charges that he paid Pellicano $100,000 to illegally wiretap the phone of Lisa Bonder Kerkorian, who was engaged in a bitter child support battle with her financier ex-husband.
Last week's indictment of Christensen, 65, alleges that the Beverly Hills lawyer conspired with Pellicano between March and May 2002 to wiretap Lisa Kerkorian to gain an advantage in the child support dispute.
The conspiracy, the indictment alleges, began with Pellicano's receiving a telephone call from an unknown lawyer instructing him to contact Christensen about "going after" Lisa Kerkorian's attorney, who had referred Christensen to the state bar for an undisclosed reason.
During a series of conversations, the indictment says, Christensen at least twice asked Pellicano what he had heard in the case and once asked specifically about what Lisa Kerkorian was discussing with her attorneys. On numerous other occasions, the indictment charges, Pellicano would share the results of his wiretaps with Christensen, twice reminding the attorney to be careful about the information because it could only have been obtained by secretly listening in on conversations.
