Former Orange County Sheriff Michael S. Carona thought Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas was trying to "take me out" and that their relationship had deteriorated into "one of those death spirals" after a special grand jury was impaneled last year to investigate the beating death of a jail inmate, according to court documents filed Monday.
Carona, speaking to former Assistant Sheriff Don Haidl during a conversation secretly recorded by the federal government, said he would emerge unscathed from the investigation because he was the "most lethal" politician in Orange County, the court documents show.
"He just wants to take me out. He thinks I'm weak," Carona is quoted as telling Haidl, apparently unaware that his former assistant was wearing a wire and cooperating with federal authorities in a corruption investigation. "His attorneys in open court said . . . they believe there was a cover-up by the sheriff."
Snippets of the dialogue between the two men were made public Monday in a motion filed by federal prosecutors seeking to allow jurors to hear sexual and racial slurs Carona used during three recorded conversations with Haidl last year. The motion opposes efforts by Carona's attorneys to exclude the tapes from the case.
Federal prosecutors in their filing Monday said the jurors should be allowed to hear the rough language in the tapes.
"Defendant Carona chose his words; that he now regrets his word choice is not a basis to exclude," prosecutors argued in their filing.
The statements provide the first raw look at the relationship between the county's top two law enforcement officials, whose political alliance was cemented when both men came to power in 1998.
Carona stepped down in January after he -- along with his wife and his mistress -- was indicted on federal corruption charges.
Prosecutors said the conversation with Haidl took place in July 2007, three months before Carona was indicted and months after the district attorney's office convened a grand jury to investigate the 2006 death of Theo Lacy Jail inmate John Derek Chamberlain, a Mission Viejo computer technician who was being held on suspicion of possessing child pornography.
Carona: "[Rackauckas] thinks that I'm gonna get rolled up in some, you know, federal beef or something, and he's impaneled a second grand jury to go after my guys. . . ."
Haidl: "Is it that jail deal?"
