Readington eavesdroppers get 30 months PTI for bugging private dinner

Christina Albrecht and Jacqueline Hindle will avoid prison for planting a recording device at a local restaurant and recording a private meeting of two elected officials from a rival GOP faction after a judge accepted their admittance into the state’s Pre-Trial Intervention program.

If the two Readington women successfully complete the PTI program, which includes mental health screening and 30 months without legal troubles, they will avoid a criminal record.

Superior Court Judge Christopher Garrenger also issued a no-contact order barring Albrecht and Hindle from communicating with the victims: Mayor Adam Mueller, Deputy Mayor Vinny Panico, and J.J. Cahill, the executive director of the Hunterdon County GOP.

But the order won’t extend to official capacities.  Hindle can remain on the Readington Planning Board and the Readington Republican County Committee until her term is up.

“We are deeply troubled and saddened by the actions of those responsible for this gross violation of our privacy,” Panico and Mueller stated in a joint statement. “The discovery of this illegal recording device was a shocking invasion of our personal conversations. It’s disappointing that individuals have chosen such underhanded methods to monitor our discussions. Our top priority now is to ensure that justice is served and that this behavior is addressed swiftly and appropriately.”

Albrecht and Hindle were arrested in October on charges that they violated the New Jersey Wiretapping and Electronic Surveillance Control Act.  Albrecht faces charges of burglary and wiretapping charges, and Hindle faces charges of conspiracy to disclose an illegally obtained recording and wiretapping charges.

Hunterdon County Prosecutor Renée Robeson alleged that Albrecht, whose husband, former Mayor Ben Smith, lost a Republican primary for township committee in June, placed an audio recording device on July 1 to capture private, oral communications between Mueller, Panico, and Cahill.   Albrecht later returned to The Rail, a local eatery, and retrieved the device – and then allegedly uploaded the recordings to a shared drive with Hindle, who ran on a GOP ticket with Smith.

One week later, prosecutors claim Albrecht returned to The Rail while it was closed and planted the device again.  That device was detected and turned over to local law enforcement.

Later, Albrecht and Hindle conspired to purchase another device in another bid to record Mueller and Panico covertly.

Albrecht allegedly was captured on a security camera placing and retrieving the device near a table where Mueller and Panico regularly sat after meetings.   The summons served on her today claims that Albrecht “conducted prior surveillance by taking a picture of them dining at The Rail before placing the device to ensure she placed it in the proper location.”

Mueller and another incumbent, R. Juergen Huelsebusch defeated Hindle, a former planning board member, and Smith, by a 2-1 margin.

“The democratic process and public service require transparency and open dialogue, but the actions taken here are neither appropriate nor acceptable in any form of governance,” Mueller and Panico said.  “We will continue to serve Readington Township with the same dedication and integrity as before, standing firm in the face of such harassment.”

Like many local government fights, tensions are running high.  There have been allegations of sign stealing over the last few years – some Republicans were informally caught swiping Kean placards in 2022 after a hunting camera was used to keep watch.

The backdrop to the story is a bitter internal fight between moderate old-guard Republicans and a newer, significantly more conservative faction in a Hunterdon County municipality split by supporters and opponents of Donald Trump.

The two factions have been in a civil war since 2022 when three-term Township Committeewoman Betty Anne Fort, a Republican rabidly opposed to Trump, lost the primary by a 2-1 margin to Panico, a former president of the Hunterdon Central Regional Board of Education who ran off the line with the blessing of party leaders.

Fort had endorsed Democratic Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-Ringoes) in 2020 over Republican Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) and contributed $7,900 to his 2020 and 2022 campaigns.  That cost her re-election.

Last year, two incumbents from the moderate faction, Albanese and Jonathan Heller, lost party support but ran off the line and narrowly won the GOP primary.

The conservative faction grew tired of playing the game and built out an independent sting operation.

They decided to attach Apple AirTags to repurposed signs from Kean’s 2022 race with a severe anti-Malinowski message and position them adjacent to the Smith and Hindle signs.

The AirTags allowed the group to ping the sign to determine its exact location.

Councilman John Albanese, Jr., was arrested at his home in May after stealing political signs from the other GOP faction, who had placed electronic tracking devices on their signs.  His trial is set for February in Hightstown.