Gov. Phil Murphy’s nominations of Pearl Minato, the former director of the Division of Criminal Justice, and Jersey City Corporation Counsel Peter Baker, as Superior Court Judges could face some scrutiny since both have ties to the controversial public corruption units of the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.
Minato was at the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability during the itsy-bitsy corruption sting operation involving the state’s cooperating witness, suspended attorney Matt O’Donnell, while working in the attorney general’s office, along with one of its embattled prosecutors, John Nicodemo.
There are lots of questions about OPIA’s activities in the public corruption arena – separately, they’ve earned widespread praise for work on an investigation into racism and criminal allegations in Clark – but there’s no evidence that Minato is connected to allegations of prosecutorial misconduct against Nicodemo.
The attorney general’s office became aware of O’Donnell’s criminal activities in late 2016 and entered into a plea agreement with him in 2018, heavily redacted records show. Still, they allowed O’Donnell to continue operating a boutique Morristown tax appeal law firm that billed millions to municipal and county government entities even though state prosecutors knew he had committed multiple crimes.
Based on admissions made in court by another deputy attorney general, nobody was keeping track of how much he was making.
Much of Minato’s work on the O’Donnell-related prosecutions remains sealed or confidential. Still, multiple attorneys, all former prosecutors, have alleged that Nicodemo and the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability lied to a grand jury and committed Brady violations as part of a pattern of prosecutorial misconduct.
Somewhere along the way, someone appears to have dropped the ball on whether to report O’Donnell to the Office of Attorney Ethics, which safeguards the community from shady lawyers. It’s not clear if that was deliberate, and there’s no evidence that Minato was at all involved in that.
The 54-year-old Minato retired from the attorney general’s office in June to avoid the pitfalls of grifter Jill Mayer, a former acting Camden County Prosecutor who was confirmed to a judgeship nearly two years ago but has not yet been sworn in as she appeals a rejection of a second pension after miscalculating the waiting time between retiring and taking a judgeship.
Minato began receiving a $112,475-a-year pension in June; by waiting six months to go on the bench, she can double dip with a $175,000-a-year judicial salary. To be clear, that is legal and prevalent in New Jersey.
Baker, who has been campaigning for a judgeship for seven years, could have a greater challenge as he seeks confirmation.
When an anonymous whistleblower contacted the attorney general’s information that O’Donnell was using straw donors to funnel money into political campaigns connected with his bid to represent government entities on tax appeal cases, Baker was serving as the number two in the Official Corruption Bureau, the predecessor of the OPIA when O’Donnell began cooperating with prosecutors sometime around mid-2017.
Curiously, O’Donnell was removed as Jersey City’s tax appeal counsel in March 2018, around the same time Baker was named as the Jersey City Corporation Counsel. O’Donnell’s role in the sting operation didn’t become public until December 2019.
When O’Donnell first walked into the state attorney general’s office, he offered up about a dozen names of New Jersey political figures he could help charge with multiple crimes.
Later, the attorney general’s office gave O’Donnell its own target list of politicians they thought their witness might be able to help them with. It’s still unclear who the prosecutors wanted to administer selective integrity tests to. Five of the individuals – all relatively small-time players – were eventually charged.
More than two years ago, Superior Court Judge Mitzi Galis-Menendez sealed a list of potential targets in a state corruption probe, including a list of individuals O’Donnell offered to contact and a list of people prosecutors asked him to connect with in his role as a cooperating witness for the state. The role of Minato and Baker in selective integrity testing by the attorney general’s office remains in question.
O’Donnell has pleaded guilty to two counts of using straw donors to obtain public tax appeal contacts and faces up to three years in prison.
Assistant Hudson County Counsel Daniel DeSalvo, Secaucus Township Attorney Keri Eglentowicz, and Branchburg school board member David Dugan were also nominated to the Superior Court.
Editor’s note: a previous version of this story suggested that Baker had worked at OPIA; the unit was created soon after his departure from its predecessor, the Official Corruption Bureau.