Syndicated columnist and National Review editor-at-large John O’Sullivan testified on behalf of Conrad Black in the ex-media baron’s fraud trial in Chicago yesterday, telling jurors that a party Lord Black threw for his wife in 2000 was a legitimate business event.

The $62,000 party for Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel Black, at La Grenouille restaurant in New York was “a business event masquerading as a social occasion,” said John O’Sullivan, a veteran editor who once worked as a special adviser for former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Prosecutors contend the 62-year-old Black fraudulently charged the company that ran his former newspaper empire, Hollinger International Inc., $40,000 for the party, which they contend was a social affair.

Among those attending the party, according to Bloomberg news, were former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, real-estate developer Donald Trump and television host Charlie Rose:

Many of the guests, including Trump and Rose, were business contacts rather than social friends of the Blacks, O’Sullivan told jurors. Black’s lawyers have said that at the time of the party Black was negotiating the sale of the former headquarters of the Chicago Sun-Times to Trump.

Meanwhile, the (London) Daily Telegraph reports today that:

A former juror in Lord Black’s fraud trial said that she did not see enough evidence to convict the former newspaper owner during her time at the trial. Sandra Grubar spent almost a month on the jury before asking to be dismissed in April to care for her father. In an interview with a Canadian newspaper, she said: “I just never thought he would be found guilty,” adding that the evidence she heard against him was “pretty shaky”. She said that allegations about Lord Black’s lavish lifestyle were not a factor for her. The peer’s defence “made a plausible argument that that was just part of the business”, she said.

Testimony in the 13-week-old trial is scheduled to end today or tomorrow. Lawyers for both sides are due to start delivering their summations to the jury on June 18.

If convicted of fraud and other charges, Black, who renounced his Canadian citizenship and is now a member of Britain’s House of Lords, faces up to a staggering 101 years in prison and millions of dollars in fines. Hollinger International has since been renamed Sun-Times Media Group.

Much of the coverage of the trial in the media around the world, particularly in Britain, has been extremely nasty about the Blacks. But many former journalists and editors who worked for Black have come to his defense, relating that he was a good proprietor. And even some of those who work for rival papers, such as the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London, have defended him. This piece in the business section of the Times, “If Conrad Black’s guilty, so are millions more” by David Bolchover, is well worth reading.