ALBANY — After prosecutors spent 13 days building a case againstJoseph L. Bruno, the former State Senate majority leader, his federal corruption trial moved toward a surprisingly swift end on Friday, with his lawyers calling only seven witnesses and announcing that Mr. Bruno would not testify.
Most of the defense witnesses, who took up only a single afternoon of what has been a nearly three-week trial, were business partners and friends of the former senator, who collectively painted Mr. Bruno as an honest public servant and hardworking business executive who was eager to help others.
“I think he’s a man of excellent integrity,” testified John Nigro, a business executive and a friend of the senator. “That’s all I’ve known him to be,” added Mr. Nigro, who has been involved in raising funds for Mr. Bruno’s legal defense.
Francis X. Lilly, an independent consultant who advised labor unions on which investment firms to hire to invest their pension funds, testified about the world of pension fund investing and about Mr. Bruno’s role in drumming up business for Wright Investors’ Service, a Connecticut company that won millions of dollars in business from unions that had legislative interests before the State Senate.
Mr. Lilly said that Mr. Bruno was careful to disclose his relationship with Wright, a key question in the case because of claims by prosecutors that he sought to deceive his partners and the public about his dual role as Senate leader and a business operator.
And he testified that Mr. Bruno’s role as Senate leader never affected the advice he gave to unions. “Mr. Bruno’s relationship had nothing to do with it,” Mr. Lilly said.
Speaking outside the courthouse on Friday afternoon, Mr. Bruno, 80, adopted the same confident posture he had shown in public statements since the day almost three years ago that he disclosed he was under federal investigation: He did nothing wrong, and no one could prove otherwise.
“There was nothing more that I was going to add that proves my innocence,” said Mr. Bruno, explaining the decision not to take the stand in his own defense. Mr. Bruno is accused of depriving citizens of his honest services as a public official by mixing his political and private business and trying to conceal that from the public. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
A final defense witness will be called on Monday.
The relatively brief defense reflects, in part, the latitude the judge in the case, Gary L. Sharpe of the Northern District of New York, gave both sides during questioning of prosecution witnesses, which appeared to have addressed most of the prosecution claims about the consulting fees Mr. Bruno was paid by clients during his nearly 14 years as Senate majority leader. The most colorful testimony of the day came from Jared E. Abbruzzese, an Albany-area business executive whose relationship with Mr. Bruno is at the heart of the prosecution’s case.
By turns combative, bitter and wisecracking, Mr. Abbruzzese described a relationship that he said delivered far more disappointment than lucre. He also repeatedly challenged the framing of questions put to him by a prosecutor, Elizabeth C. Coombe, seeming on several occasions to throw Ms. Coombe off balance.
He paid Mr. Bruno hundreds of thousands of dollars in recent years to introduce him to the politically influential and help him raise money for his fledging telecommunications and technology ventures. The senator, Mr. Abbruzzese said, was “one of the tools I deployed to try and build credibility around a story that otherwise didn’t have a chance.”
But many of the deals did not pan out. When he sought to enlist Mr. Bruno’s help in lobbying the Federal Communications Commission on wireless licenses, he said he discovered that Mr. Bruno, a political giant in Albany, was virtually unknown in Washington.
When Mr. Bruno introduced him to Donald J. Trump, the real estate magnate, Mr. Abbruzzese related, he had hoped to work with Mr. Trump to develop golf courses. Instead, he walked out of the meeting having purchased a membership in one of Mr. Trump’s clubs.
“He walked over me,” Mr. Abbruzzese said. “It cost me money. I got nothing out of it.”
He also testified about state grants that Mr. Bruno had helped arrange for Evident Technologies, an Albany-area start-up company in which Mr. Abbruzzese was an investor. Prosecutors said that the consulting fees Mr. Abbruzzese paid to Mr. Bruno, beginning in 2004, were a gift offered in exchange for the grants, which began in 2003.
But most of the promised money never materialized, Mr. Abbruzzese testified, leaving company executives to scramble to find other financing.
He admitted that he had agreed in 2005 to buy a horse from Mr. Bruno for more than it was worth, but testified that he felt a “moral obligation” to make up income Mr. Bruno lost when a company Mr. Abbruzzese was involved with canceled Mr. Bruno’s contract early.
Ms. Coombe asked Mr. Abbruzzese to sum up what, exactly, he had gotten from Mr. Bruno.
“At the end of the day, probably not a tremendous amount,” Mr. Abbruzzese said.
