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Rob Walker’s trial delayed until April

Jessica Parks

The trial of former Chief Deputy Nassau County Executive Rob Walker has been rescheduled to start on April 29. This is the trial’s second delay.

U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack is to preside over Walker’s trial, as well as the retrial of Walker’s former boss, Edward Mangano, who was  Nassau County executive.

Walker has been charged with obstruction of justice and lying to FBI agents.

The case, being tried in the Eastern District of New York at the Central Islip courthouse, was originally scheduled to start on Sept. 17. In July, Azrack said her calendar was too full to conduct Walker’s and Mangano’s cases so close to one another and rescheduled Walker’s trial until Jan. 7 according to Newsday.

At the time, the retrial of Mangano and his wife, Linda Mangano, had been scheduled for Oct. 9, but it has now been postponed to Jan. 22 due to the discovery of new evidence.

Walker’s case centers on his alleged acceptance of $5,000 from a Nassau County contractor at a Notre Dame football game in 2014.

Prosecutors say that once Walker learned that federal investigators were looking into acts of corruption by Nassau County officials in 2017, he reached out to the unnamed contractor a number of times in order to convince the contractor to hide the payoff from the grand jury.

Walker then met with the contractor at a park in Hicksville to return the $5,000 not knowing that the meeting was being watched by the FBI.

According to prosecutors, the contractor turned the money over to law enforcement officers there after Walker left.

Once confronted by the FBI, prosecutors say, Walker made a number of false statements “including denying that he received any cash payments from the contractor.”

Walker pleaded not guilty to both charges in February.

Reach reporter Jessica Parks by email at jparks@theislandnow.com, by phone at 516-307-1045, ext. 214, or follow her on Twitter @_JessicaParks

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