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| Kosta, Yahoo |
One can only hope that Konstantinos “Kosta” Diamantis will be writing a memoir while vacationing in Greece.
The former Connecticut deputy budget director and head of
the state’s Office of School Construction Grants and Review, we are told in
numerous news stories, fled to Greece on September 17, 2026, just before his
scheduled federal sentencing for a major corruption case.
Convicted in October 2025 on 21 federal counts -- including
bribery, extortion, conspiracy, and making false statements to federal investigators
– prosecutors tell us that Kosta abused his authority over state school
construction contracts (worth about $8.5 million) to pressure contractors for
bribes between 2018 and 2021.
According to a recent story in CTMirror, Diamantis sent a
“rambling ten page email to his attorney in which he cast “the prosecution as
‘politically motivated.’ He also said that the Department of Justice was
‘weaponized’ against him, copying language frequently used by Trump… Diamantis
blames Lamont for the federal charges leveled against him. And he claims the
criminal case against him was meant to distract the public from the governor
and his wife’s business dealings, particularly a previously vetted investment
in a company that provided COVID-19 testing in the early weeks of the pandemic.
“
Diamantis wrote. “The entire investigation was a politically
insulated script written by Lamont, Connecticut DOJ and Connecticut’s tight
knit legal aristocracy hired by Lamont to protect himself and his family from
scrutiny and ensure I would be discredited.”
Kosta’s defense attorney, Norm Pattis, was not surprised by
Kosta’s flight to Greece, which has an extradition arrangement with the United
States, suspended in cases in which the person to be extracted is a Greek
citizen. Kosta has duel citizenship in Greece and the United States.
Long in the habit of avoiding arcane legalese, Pattis tells
us "As a lawyer, you know, I cannot support his decision to take the law
into his own hands [and flee the country], but as a fellow human being, I
understand why he did what he did. He's got two choices: spend the next five
years of your senior citizenship, or your golden years, asking Bubba for
permission to stand in line, or go to Greece. Who wouldn't go to Greece?"
Governor Ned Lamont very quickly washed his hands of all
responsibility. He was shocked – SHOCKED! – “that this guy, with that big a
judgment, is able to get away like that," Lamont said.” Thankfully,
"It's a federal matter, and I hope they hold him accountable and get
him." The federal government, Lamont told reporters, is “responsible for
tracking him."
Lamont has not yet accused Trump, regarded in Democrat
precincts as being the cause of every political ill in the country, of
conspiring to spirit Kosta to Greece. It is pretty well known that Connecticut
Democrats are glad to be rid of an albatross who knows a great deal about legal
political peculation -- as do Democrats. The current mayor of Bridgeport, the
affable Joe Ganim, was elected mayor of the
city six times, serving from 1991 to 2003, when he resigned after being
convicted on federal felony corruption charges. Ganim spent nine years in
prison – a very “big judgment” to quote Lamont. Shortly after his release,
Ganim in 2015 regained his old office in a successful political comeback and
once again was elected Bridgeport mayor.
The federal government was responsible for trying Diamantis,
and he was certainly found wanting at trial. But Diamantes’ political rap sheet
shows a long and fervent attachment to Lamont’s Democrat Party. One news account tells us, “Diamantis was
initially appointed by Gov. Dannel Malloy to oversee school construction
funding for the state government and was given the additional title of deputy
budget director under Lamont, who also kept him in the school construction
role. He was previously a Democratic state representative for a Bristol district
for 14 years.”
“The conspiracy charged by federal prosecutors,” we are
told, “did not implicate anyone else in state government. Following Diamantis’
flight, “Republican gubernatorial nominee Ryan Fazio asserted that the episode
reflected on the governor…” Fazio noted, “When Gov. Lamont promoted Kosta
Diamantis and put him in a position of enormous authority over taxpayer
dollars, he was putting his trust in him to safeguard the public’s money. That
decision ended with Diamantis convicted on federal corruption charges, and now
he has fled the country rather than face sentencing. The taxpayers deserve accountability
for the judgment and failures that allowed this to happen.”
Diamantis is said to be considering a return to Connecticut
to serve time for what appears in the grand scheme of things to be relatively
minor peculations. Most of the grand political crimes in Connecticut are
committed against taxpayers, largely the result of a 30 year old one-party
state in which the majesty of the law regularly winks at the real robber barons
who commit legalized theft. Carrying an accumulative debt of billions of dollars
while boasting of fake “surpluses” ought to be worth a few days in the clinker.
At the very least, those who engage in legal theft should be “sent to Coventry”
or publicaly vilified at stocks set up fronting Connecticut’s Old State
House. But legal peculation that occurs
under laws written by the peculators is generally written off as “politics as
usual” by both dominant Democrats and the remnant of the state’s once
independent media.
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