Alan Hevesi Watch: No "Guilty" Plea Coming Today

Stand down. Despite many eager media predictions to the contrary, informed sources say that there will be no guilty plea today at least by Alan Hevesi, the ever-enigmatic and disappointing former comptroller for both the city and the state.

That's not to say that there isn't a deal in the works for Hevesi to plead guilty to a tough felony charge stemming from the huge pay-to-play pension fund racket unearthed by Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's team.

If Hevesi does plead, however, it will be a weird twist of political fortunes...

The toughest allegation made so far against lifetime Democrat Hevesi comes from a West Coast financial wizard named Elliott Broidy who is the former national finance chairman of the Republican Party. Broidy raised several hundred thousand dollars for Hevesi's election as state comptroller. After the election while he was seeking business with the pension funds, he took Hevesi and his sons on an expense-paid trip to Israel.

During the trip, Hevesi got to fulfill a long-held dream: to stay at the historic King David Hotel overlooking the Old City in Jerusalem. This is apparently the kind of thing only Republican fatcats can afford. The trip cost some $75,000 according the charges that Broidy pled guilty to last year.

As for Hevesi, he's always been a man of mystery. How such a brilliant politician could give so much power in his office to the likes of Jack Chartier -- the hapless schmuck from the Queens clubhouse whose red-hot passion for a faded TV actress has now proved everyone's undoing -- remains one of the great puzzles of this story.

Oh, another reason there's no deal today is that Hevesi's attorney, Bradley Simon, is in London.