Mayor Marion Barry, facing trial on 14 drug-related counts, acknowledged he smoked crack cocaine during the FBI sting operation that led to his arrest but accused federal authorities of trying to kill him and manipulate Washington politics, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
"They had me ingest cocaine, crack cocaine, which could have killed me. . . . I could have been dead now, with 70, 80, 90 percent pure cocaine," Barry said Tuesday during an interview with the newspaper.Barry is scheduled to go on trial June 4 on three felony charges of perjury, 10 misdemeanor counts of cocaine possession and one misdemeanor count of conspiring to possess cocaine. A federal judge refused Tuesday to separate the drug and perjury charges into two trials.
Barry denied during the interview Tuesday that he was considering a plea bargain with federal prosecutors.
He predicted that if he is not acquitted outright on drug and perjury charges, there would not be a unanimous verdict to convict him, the Post said.
"I think the prosecutors know that in this town all it takes is one juror saying, `I'm not going to convict Marion Barry. I don't care what you say,' " Barry said.
The three-term mayor was arrested at a downtown Washington hotel Jan. 18 during an FBI sting operation in which he was reportedly videotaped smoking crack with a former girlfriend who was cooperating with federal authorities.
"I've seen this videotape, and the tape is more damaging to the government than to me," Barry told the newspaper. "It shows they bought the liquor, they did everything there."
Nineteen other people have been named as co-conspirators, and the videotape made on the night of Barry's arrest is considered an essential part of the evidence against him.
The Post said that during the hour-long interview in his office, Barry portrayed himself as "hounded, harassed, vilified, slandered."