An appellate court has narrowed a sweeping discovery order in the bribery case against former Assemblyman Jason O’Donnell (D-Bayonne), but directed the Attorney General’s Office to turn over internal communications concerning a key recording at the center of the eight-year-old investigation.
The unanimous, 36-page ruling does not dismiss the indictment against O’Donnell, who is accused of accepting $10,000 in cash during his unsuccessful 2018 campaign for mayor of Bayonne. The case will be returned to Superior Court in Hudson County for further proceedings.
Today’s decision dealt another substantial blow to the embattled New Jersey Office of Public Integrity and Accountability.
O’Donnell was one of five people charged in a sting operation by the attorney general’s office in 2019 when prosecutors alleged he received a bribe in 2018 from tax attorney Matt O’Donnell (the two are not related), the state’s cooperating witness.
Judges Lisa Gooden Brown, Joseph DeAlmeida and Maritza Berdote Byrne Torregrossa-O’Connor partially upheld and partially reversed a March 2025 discovery order issued by Superior Court Judge Mitzy Galis-Menendez.
The appellate panel upheld Galis-Menendez’s order requiring prosecutors to disclose all communications concerning an April 23, 2018, consensual recording between O’Donnell and Matthew O’Donnell, a Morristown tax attorney who became the state’s cooperating witness. The two men are not related.
“The communications supporting the authorization of the April 23 consensual intercept is relevant to defendant’s challenge to the lawfulness of the intercept,” the judges said.
But the panel ruled that prosecutors do not need to disclose communications surrounding ten other consensual recordings made during the larger public corruption investigation.
“We discern no basis to require the State to produce all communications pertaining to the remaining consensual intercepts, and defendant has advanced no viable ground to require them,” the court said.
The judges also struck down portions of Galis-Menendez’s order directing the state to provide all internal emails and text messages concerning O’Donnell, the investigation and any potential benefits provided to Matthew O’Donnell.
O’Donnell is entitled to investigative reports, the cooperating witness’s agreement with the state and information about benefits Matthew O’Donnell received or hoped to receive, the court said. But he is not entitled to search indiscriminately through all of OPIA’s internal communications.
“Defendants are not permitted to conduct a ‘fishing expedition,’ or ‘transform the discovery process into an unfocused, haphazard search for evidence,’” the judges said, quoting earlier court decisions.
The panel also ruled that internal assessments of Matthew O’Donnell’s cooperation are protected work product unless they were included in an investigative report or witness statement.
The decision amounts to a partial victory for both sides. It shields large categories of internal communications sought by O’Donnell’s attorney, Leo Hurley, while requiring the state to disclose records concerning the authorization of the April 23 recording.
The judges rejected the Attorney General’s Office’s broader contention that all internal communications concerning consensual recordings should automatically be protected from discovery under work-product and deliberative-process privileges.
“[T]here is no blanket privilege protecting investigative files, deliberative materials or intra-agency memoranda,” the court said, quoting a 2000 appellate ruling.
Prosecutors may submit a privilege log identifying specific communications they believe should be withheld.
O’Donnell was one of five people charged in a 2019 public corruption sting conducted by the attorney general’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability.
Prosecutors allege that Matthew O’Donnell discussed a $10,000 payment with Jason O’Donnell during the recorded April 23 conversation. Investigators later supplied the cooperating witness with $10,000 in cash, which he delivered in a white Baskin-Robbins bag on May 3.
“I just want to be your tax guy,” Matthew O’Donnell said during the recorded exchange, according to the court.
“Yeah done,” Jason O’Donnell responded. “That’s, that’s easy but I need.”
Prosecutors allege the payment was made in exchange for a promise that Matthew O’Donnell would become Bayonne’s tax attorney if Jason O’Donnell defeated incumbent Mayor Jimmy Davis. O’Donnell lost the election.
Galis-Menendez dismissed the indictment in June 2021, finding that O’Donnell was not a public official and lacked the ability to perform official duties when he allegedly accepted the money.
The Appellate Division reversed her ruling in April 2022, and the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously affirmed in August 2023 that the state’s bribery law applies to candidates even when they are not elected. The indictment was reinstated and the case was sent back for trial.
Since then, the prosecution has been bogged down in discovery disputes.
Galis-Menendez criticized OPIA in September 2024 after prosecutors disclosed a relevant group-chat message following years of denying that internal communications existed. Additional disputes emerged over other previously undisclosed communications and the destruction of state-issued cell phones used by investigators assigned to the case.
The appellate panel did not resolve those broader misconduct allegations. Its ruling was limited to determining which categories of records prosecutors must produce.
“Affirmed in part, and reversed in part,” the judges concluded. “We remand for further proceedings consistent with this opinion.”
O’Donnell was one of five people charged in a sting operation by the attorney general’s office in 2019 when prosecutors alleged he received a bribe in 2018 from tax attorney Matt O’Donnell (the two are not related), the state’s cooperating witness.
He allegedly discussed the bribe with Jason in a recorded April 23, 2018, conversation, then delivered $10,000 in cash in a Baskin-Robbins bag on May 3, allegedly in exchange for making him Bayonne’s tax appeal attorney if O’Donnell won his 2018 mayoral bid. O’Donnell lost that race.
In June 2021, Superior Court Judge Mitzi Galis-Menendez dismissed the indictment, finding the state hadn’t shown O’Donnell received a benefit in exchange for performing official duties, relying on a precedent from a similar dismissed case against ex-Assemblyman Louis Manzo (D-Jersey City).
In April 2022, an appellate court reversed that dismissal, ruling it’s illegal to bribe a candidate even without current office, sending the case back for trial. O’Donnell appealed further, and in August 2023 the New Jersey Supreme Court agreed to hear the case; it ultimately determined in August 2023 that candidates could be charged with bribery and reinstated the indictment.
The case has since stalled in pretrial discovery fights. In September 2024, Judge Galis-Menendez blasted the Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA) for withholding evidence, after defense attorney Leo Hurley revealed prosecutors had only disclosed a relevant group-chat message in August 2024, after three years of denying any internal communications existed.
Hurley demanded all internal OPIA communications about the case. In February 2025, the New Jersey Globe reported on further allegations of prosecutorial misconduct after release of an email the state had spent four years denying existed.
Then in June 2025, Hurley told the court that OPIA had destroyed the work cell phones of three investigators — Michael Fallon, Ho Chul Shin, and Brian Powers — who had used them to text each other and prosecutors about the case, despite a 2020 discovery demand; a fourth investigator’s phone was never replaced because he’s on active military duty. Hurley argued the destruction “bear[s] upon any matter these investigators were involved in,” while prosecutors disputed when the preservation demand was actually made.”
State Sen. Joseph Cryan (D-Union) strongly criticized the OPIA.
“This case is older than COVID. No one had yet heard of Fauci when this started, and years later it still takes a three-judge panel to tell the office of the Attorney General to turn over documents. Something is really very wrong here,” sI hear so much about DOJ in D.C.; OPIA in Trenton may actually be worse.”
Attorney General Jennifer Davenport viewed today’s decision as a win.
“We’re grateful for the Appellate Division’s decision, which overwhelmingly sides with the State and affirms longstanding discovery and privilege rules that have governed prosecutions in this state,” she said. “We look forward to justice being done in this case and continue pressing forward towards trial.”
Her spokesman, Michael Simmons, said the state expects to go to trial.
“We look forward to justice being done in this case and continue pressing forward toward trial,” he said.
Matt O’Donnell became the state’s cooperating witness in the corruption sting operation that led to charges against Jason O’Donnell and several others after investigators confronted O’Donnell with evidence against him. He agreed to become a cooperating witness, including wearing a recording device while interacting with people who had sought financial assistance from him in the past. He identified nearly a dozen potential targets to investigators,
Matt O’Donnell pleaded guilty himself. In a revised plea agreement, he admitted guilt to one count of second-degree conspiracy to commit misconduct by a corporate official and one count of third-degree conspiracy to commit tampering with public records and information, related to his use of straw donors to obtain public contracts for his law firm, O’Donnell McCord, and illegal activity involving his work as Mount Arlington borough attorney and as a tax appeal attorney for Morristown, Bloomfield, and Morris County.
As he awaits his own sentencing, Matt O’Donnell faces a potential three years in state prison and agreed to debarment and a ten-year ban on doing business with the state. Separately, he agreed to pay a $250,000 public corruption profiteering penalty and accepted a lifetime ban on public employment as part of settling a related civil lawsuit with Holmdel Township.
Hurley said the verdict against Jason O’Donnell could come down to whether jurors find Matt O’Donnell trustworthy, asking pointedly, “Do you believe this guy?”
The New Jersey Globe reported that even after entering his plea agreement in June 2018, Matt O’Donnell had not yet formally pleaded guilty and continued to profit from municipal contracts. Separately, court proceedings covered by the Globe noted he billed government entities more than $4.6 million in the roughly three years since his cooperation with the sting operation began.
Investigative findings describe how O’Donnell allegedly gamed the system: he stopped filing the state’s required business entity disclosure forms because they’re public and would show most of his firm’s work came from Democrats, reasoning that since he’s a Republican, other Republicans might not hire him if they saw that. The investigation found the real reason the forms went unfiled was his use of straw donors — he explained that he and law partner Elizabeth Valandingham began collecting checkbooks from family members and friends to make contributions appear to come from other people.
This story was updated with comment from Davenport, Hurley and Cryan.
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