If there is such a thing as a typical international fugitive, it clearly is not Konstantinos “Kosta” Diamantis.
He’s done at least three print interviews since fleeing the U.S. rather than face a prison sentence Thursday. He was live on WTIC-1080 talk radio Monday afternoon, and a television interview conducted via Facetime on Sunday was to air Monday night on WTNH, News 8.
In addition to the TV and radio interviews, Diamantis has spoken to reporters from Hearst Connecticut, the CT Examiner and the Connecticut Mirror. His intended audience is not known to be a consumer of news from any of those five sources.
Diamantis, who has a pardon application pending at the White House, acknowledges he is trying to make sufficient noise in the hope President Donald Trump will make his troubles disappear with a stroke of his black Sharpie.
“And if the president hears that message, which I hope he does in a pardon, then I would be eternally grateful,” Diamantis said in an interview with Connecticut Mirror on Monday.
He’s made a public a 10-page email broadly outlining his claim he is the victim of a “weaponized” Department of Justice and a conspiracy implicating the governor, three former U.S. attorneys and others.
At the heart of the email is a claim he is facing retribution for his opposition to a no-bid contract for COVID-19 testing to a company with ties to Lamont’s wife, Annie Lamont. The administration gave contracts to all four companies that responded to a request for a testing in the early days of the pandemic.
He said juicier stuff includes allegations and evidence in his pardon application.
“They’re in my pardon, and my pardon is not public,” Diamantis said.
The governor’s press office said the media should turn down the volume of the Diamantis show.
“It’s obvious that Diamantis is putting on this dog and pony show to try to win a Presidential pardon,” said Cathryn Vaulman, Gov. Ned Lamont’s spokesperson. “If the media is going to give him the attention he craves, he needs to be held to some standard of proof.”
His claims of being a victim are generally consistent with complaints raised the night he was fired from a political appointment as the deputy secretary of policy and management and pushed towards retirement from his second classified job overseeing school construction grants. He described himself as a man who came to cross purposes for his bosses for the right reasons.
“I put information in my pardon. That is is not a public document, and to then open up those things in in public defeats the purpose of it being something that they are investigating,” he said. “And everybody has to wait, I guess, including the public and you.”
Diamantis said he is opting for flight, a pardon application and media-tour-in-absentia due to lack of confidence in the federal courts. He said he is bitter that no mistrial was ordered after evidence that one or two jurors had read media accounts while sequestered.
He said the government’s claim he extorted bribes from contractors in return for help getting contracts was a public humiliation, albeit one attested in sworn testimony by three witnesses the government considered both victims and co-conspirators. The jury believed them — not Diamantis, who had testified in his own behalf. One of them was his former brother in law.
“The thought process was I just felt that I had been humiliated to the point where I needed to redeem myself and I needed a voice. I needed to be able to have a voice without fear of of retribution or reprisal,” Diamantis said. “And it was a knee-jerk reaction to do so, I suppose, but I needed to let the public know.”
Was he saying his decision to flee was knee-jerk?
Diamantis declined to discuss when he decided to depart for Greece, the nation where he says he currently is residing — and where was conceived. He said Monday his mother was three-months pregnant when she and his father emigrated to the U.S., and his parents had registered his birth on a visit to their old village when he was 8. The registration was a prelude to his former application for Greek citizenship and passport while the federal case was proceeding.
He speaking out is evidence of of a man trying to clear himself, he said.
“If I was a guilty person,” he said, “I would have come to Greece and never told anybody.”
This story was originally published by the Connecticut Mirror.
