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.
The decision dealt another substantial blow to the embattled New Jersey Office of Public Integrity and Accountability.
Judges Lisa Gooden Brown, Joseph DeAlmeida and Maritza Berdote Byrne 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 Jason 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 defense 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.
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 appeal 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 the state had not shown O’Donnell received a benefit in exchange for performing official duties. She relied on a precedent from a similar case against former Assemblyman Louis Manzo (D-Jersey City).
The Appellate Division reversed her ruling in April 2022, finding that the state’s bribery law applies to candidates even if they do not hold public office. The New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously affirmed that decision in August 2023, reinstating the indictment and returning the case for trial.
The prosecution has since become 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.
Hurley alleged in February 2025 that prosecutors had produced an email whose existence the state had denied for four years. Four months later, he told the court that OPIA had destroyed the work phones of investigators Michael Fallon, Ho Chul Shin and Brian Powers despite an earlier discovery demand. A fourth investigator’s phone was not replaced because he was on active military duty.
Hurley argued that the destruction “bear[s] upon any matter these investigators were involved in,” while prosecutors disputed when the preservation demand was made.
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.”
Attorney General Jennifer Davenport must decide whether to appeal the decision to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
The original charges were brought by prosecutors who are no longer with the state, including John Nicodemo, whose mistakes and ethically dubious behavior led to his removal from the unit and a transfer to a desk job at the state Office of Highway Safety.
Matthew O’Donnell became a cooperating witness after investigators confronted him with evidence of his own alleged wrongdoing. He agreed to wear a recording device while interacting with people who had sought financial assistance from him and identified nearly a dozen potential targets.
In a revised plea agreement, Matthew O’Donnell admitted guilt to second-degree conspiracy to commit misconduct by a corporate official and third-degree conspiracy to tamper with public records and information.
The charges involved the use of straw donors to obtain public contracts for his law firm, O’Donnell McCord, and illegal activity connected to his work as Mount Arlington borough attorney and as a tax appeal attorney for Morristown, Bloomfield and Morris County.
Matthew O’Donnell faces a potential three-year state prison term and agreed to debarment and a ten-year prohibition on doing business with the state. In a related civil settlement with Holmdel Township, he agreed to pay a $250,000 public corruption profiteering penalty and accepted a lifetime ban on public employment.
He continued to profit from municipal contracts after entering his cooperation agreement in June 2018, billing government entities more than $4.6 million during roughly the next three years.
Investigators found that Matthew O’Donnell stopped filing required business entity disclosure forms because they would have revealed that most of his firm’s work came from Democratic-controlled governments, potentially hurting his ability to secure contracts from Republicans.
The investigation also found that he developed a scheme to collect checkbooks from relatives and friends to make political contributions appear to have come from other people.
Hurley has said the case against Jason O’Donnell could ultimately turn on whether jurors trust the state’s cooperating witness.
“Do you believe this guy?” Hurley asked.