Interviews with more than two dozen defense attorneys, judges, prosecutors, whistleblowers, and lawmakers show a growing concern that the state Office of Public Integrity & Accountability has become a paper tiger, with a noticeable inability to close cases – some allegations remain unresolved for years — and accusations of prosecutorial misconduct without checks and balances.
Then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal created the OPIA in September 2018 as a ramped-up office to “root out corruption and misconduct.” But nearly six years later, the OPIA has what many have described as a mediocre record on prosecutions that are more likely to get stuck in the mud than fulfill the initial goal of enhancing public confidence in government.
Evidence exists that the OPIA engaged in the controversial practice of selective integrity testing, in which prosecutors and investigators provide cooperating witnesses with a wish list of targets in the hope that they will initiate a criminal case.
“That’s Gestapo thirties stuff,” one legislator said. “It’s not the America I hope I live in.”
That legislator and other individuals with direct experience dealing with the OPIA spoke to the New Jersey Globe on the condition of anonymity out of concern that the agency might retaliate against them.
Perhaps most significantly, there are complaints that prosecutors assigned to the OPIA have impeded the discovery of evidence and, in some cases, misled or lied to grand juries to obtain an indictment.
“I believe they do it deliberately. They’re afraid to say they are wrong,” the legislator said. “They just refuse to do it, and I don’t understand why.”
A defense attorney called the prosecutors “a bunch of self-righteous bullies.”
“For those of us who remember Chris Christie as United States Attorney, this OPIA group makes him look like Mother Theresa,” the attorney said.
Several defense attorneys said that the former OPIA director, Tom Eicher, and other officials refused to meet with them to discuss allegations.
The OPIA is also shrouded in secrecy: the Department of Law and Public Safety has no independent inspector general to investigate prosecutors’ allegations of wrongdoing. Prosecutors are quick to issue press releases spinning their side of an allegation but won’t answer questions about the progress of their cases. The director, Drew Skinner, has declined multiple requests for interviews; inquiries about the office – not the prosecution of cases – are regularly met with a masterful, best-in-class demonstration of their rope-a-dope skills.
Now, as the OPIA prepares to prosecute the biggest of fish, George E. Norcross III, some of his political foes wonder if the OPIA is up to it – and some of his allies are quick to mention the office’s dismal track record.
In what might be the most enormous stain on the OPIA so far, Superior Court Judge Joseph Paone dismissed the indictment of a well-known rabbi and educator from Lakewood last week after the state had rested its prosecution, determining that prosecutors failed to prove their allegations of money laundering and official misconduct.
The prosecution of Rabbi Osher Eisemann lasted over nine years. Paone overturned Eisemann’s 2022 conviction because the OPIA failed to turn over evidence that might have resulted in a different verdict; Brady violations can violate a defendant’s constitutional rights.
The OPIA appealed Paone’s order to the appellate division and the New Jersey Supreme Court without success and then chose to retry him.
At the same time, there are renewed questions about embattled Deputy Attorney General John Nicodemo, who has been accused of deliberately withholding evidence and lying to grand juries — with some wondering why he’s still employed — whether the Office of Attorney Ethics is investigating allegations of prosecutorial misconduct against him, whether he ought to be charged with official misconduct, and if he is entitled to qualified immunity.
Nicodemo was the lead prosecutor in the first Eisemann trial. The prosecutors in the second trial were two OPIA supervisors, Jeffrey Manis and Frank Valdinoto.
ALLEGATIONS OF SLUGGISHNESS
It’s been nearly five years since Grewal announced criminal charges against five relatively small fish connected to a politically active tax appeal attorney who became the state’s cooperating witness, Matt O’Donnell. The allegations came a week before Christmas 2019 in the form of a press release. Since then, one of the defendants agreed to a plea bargain with one-year probation and a temporary loss of her real estate license; the other four are still awaiting their day in court.
More than four years ago, two Paterson councilmen were charged with election fraud; Grewal made a strong case in the media that Alex Mendez and Michael Jackson won because they forged vote-by-mail ballots. Since then, Mendez and Jackson served their council terms, were re-elected, and have since been sworn in again. Mendez is now the council president and ran for mayor two years ago. But the two men remain under indictment and are awaiting trial.
The OPIA has been unable to solve the anonymous racist flyer capers in Edison and Hoboken during the 2017 campaign. And the tragic and mysterious death of a first responder dog in Gloucester County on August 12, 2022, while in the custody of a county employee remains a cold case. OPIA wrestled control of the probe from the county prosecutor’s office, but there is no sign that they’ve been able to complete its investigations.
Simply put, to borrow a Seinfeld reference, the OPIA knows how to make accusations that ruin people’s lives, they just don’t know how to get those people in front of a judge and jury to defend themselves.
“Summonses and indictments are easy to get,” a sitting judge told the New Jersey Globe on the condition of anonymity. “Convictions require evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.”
In some cases, the attorney general’s office blames slow-moving judges for the delay. They said the Jackson prosecution in Paterson has stalled because they could not obtain a court order to take possession of his cell phone, and once they did, Jackson had forgotten his password.
According to the OPIA, from 2018 to 2023, they obtained 76 indictments and made 80 accusations involving 244 defendants, but they are unable to provide a detailed accounting of convictions, plea agreements, acquittals, or dropped charges.
While the federal courts and a majority of state courts make criminal dockets available to the public online, New Jersey does not.
But another sitting judge pushed back on any attempt by the OPIA to blame the judiciary, stating that was “a whole lot of crap.”
“Look, it’s not just the attorneys. Judges are pretty frustrated, too,” the judge said. “There are valid complaints about the public integrity unit, and I would imagine that would come up at trial.”
The OPIA has had other high-profile failures.
During his 2021 campaign for Bergen County Sheriff, the OPIA charged Saddle Brook Police Chief Robert Kugler with permitting police escorts for funeral processions to cemeteries involving a local funeral home he owns.
A year later, Judge Marilyn Clark dismissed the indictment after finding that Kugler didn’t violate any law and determining that Deputy Attorney General Eric Cohen, who prosecuted Kugler for the OPIA, left out critical information that might have benefited the suspended police chief to the grand jury that indicted him.
“Presenting evidence in fair context and presenting material exculpatory evidence is certainly required,” Clark said in her ruling. Clark has also demanded an explanation as to how the OPIA handled another case, but it’s not clear if she, too, lost a rope-a-dope match with the OPIA.
Cohen is no longer employed by the attorney general’s office.
DEMAND FOR INVESTIGATION
Lee Vartan, a former federal prosecutor and executive assistant attorney general who represented Eisemann, is demanding an immediate investigation into Eisemann’s prosecution.
“OPIA has a history of slipshod and failed investigations and unethical prosecutors who courts have found violated defendants’ rights. John Nicodemo is perhaps the prime offender, but as you well know, there are others. Mr. Manis and Mr. Valdinoto now must be added to the list,” said Vartan. “But they are perhaps worse than Mr. Nicodemo. They are supervisors. They are presumably setting OPIA policy and training other prosecutors on their obligations as prosecutors. They should not be.”
He suggests that OPIA officials ignored two Supreme Court cases, Brady v. Maryland and Giglio v. United States, which obligate prosecutors to provide criminal discovery to defendants. Vartan claims the OPIA violated the attorney general’s guidelines by not maintaining a Giglio file.
According to Vartan, Mannis and Valdinoto “either failed to take notes or failed to produce the notes” when they interviewed the lead detective in the Eisemann case, Tom Page. He also maintains that the state failed to include the name of an auditor who assisted another investigator, on a list of persons who might have relevant information, and “more egregiously, produced the auditor’s report made in 2017 for the first time during trial.”
“Each one of these failures represents a glaring departure from attorney general protocol, but the combination is staggering,” stated Vartan.
Page, a government witness at the second trial, testified that he didn’t believe Eisemann had committed a crime.
Vartan raised another concern: that any prosecutions involving Nicodemo and investigators involved in the tainted Eisemann case should also be scrutinized “due to the strong possibility that the State’s failure to disclose vital Brady/Giglio information in those cases may have led to convictions that a court may now need to reverse”
Rather than address specific issues related to their office, the OPIA issued a 570-word statement that defends its achievements and criticizes prior attorneys general for “an era of inaction” where the prosecution of public corruption was not a priority.
While the statement does not mention attorneys general by name, it appears to target Jeffrey Chiesa, who represents one of the co-defendants in the Norcross case; John Jay Hoffman, Gov. Phil Murphy’s nominee for a seat on the New Jersey Supreme Court; and Christopher Porrino, a former law partner of the current attorney general, Matt Platkin. It also appears to go after former directors of the Division of Criminal Justice, including Elie Honig, Porrino’s current law partner, and Stephen Taylor, now a Superior Court judge who presided over O’Donnell’s guilty plea and for a while was the judge assigned to some defendants in the O’Donnell sting operation.
But mainly, there is little doubt that the OPIA statement takes direct aim at Vartan, suggesting that public corruption was ignored “interestingly at times when this Office was being led by some of OPIA’s most vocal critics within today’s defense bar.”
The statement also defends the agency’s honor: “Given the scope, nature, and sensitivity of the work done in OPIA, it is entrusted to career public servants driven to achieve the just and right outcome each and every time they open a file. Every individual in this office takes our obligations to victims, defendants, the public, and the courts extremely seriously.”
The OPIA disputed the notion that they need independent oversight similar to the Department of Justice’s Office of the Inspector General, maintaining that it “created and implemented procedures and protocols, consistent with those in other such agencies, to ensure that there was sufficient oversight over the critical aspects of the investigation and prosecution process – such as maintaining an evidence and file management system, and conducting regular supervisory case reviews.”
“Even with such safeguards in place, no agency is infallible and mistakes get made, corrected, existing procedures get re-evaluated, and new procedures get implemented to prevent reoccurrence,” the statement said. “While every prosecuting agency’s intention is to see justice and thus only bring cases when appropriate and when the government believes the facts and law support the charges, it is inevitable that any such agency tasked with prosecuting complicated white-collar matters will sometimes lose cases. As regrettable as that reality may be, it is no reason to stop holding the powerful to account.”
The retirement of Eicher and the appointment of Skinner, a former assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and a member of Platkin’s leadership team, represents the first change in leadership since 2018.
“We are once again taking inventory of existing practices, and expanding on the strong foundations already in place,” the statement explained. “A committee has been established to review and make recommendations on new policies, systems, and training that would benefit the Office.”
The OPIA said it was “migrating to a new evidence management system to allow for improved tracking of the ever-increasing volume of digital evidence.”
“Seeking to increase the in-depth, frontline supervision of cases, and enhance the experience level of the attorneys and investigators within the office, over the last several months leadership has created ten new supervisory roles within the OPIA, and has — or is actively in the process of — filling five critical, existing, supervisory roles that were vacant,” the OPIA stated.
However, the OPIA did not fulfill a request for a list of the new hires, an organization chart, and a list of deputy attorneys general assigned to the office.
“This Office is confident in the work being done by the dedicated, career prosecutors and investigators in OPIA. Their work is not only sensitive, but it is time-consuming and complicated – and often unpopular among powerful people and interest groups,” the statement continued. “Their impactful work promotes improved trust in the government and agencies charged with serving the public by holding power to account. The women and men of OPIA work tirelessly to serve the public’s best interests, and no amount of criticism will deter them from continuing to carry out this vital work.”
UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
There may be some casualties of the OPIA’s actions. Pearl Minato, the OPIA chief of staff from 2019 to 2022, was nominated for a Superior Court judgeship in 2023. She has sign-off from her home county state senators, but her nomination has stalled amid concerns about how the OPIA has conducted itself.
Former Assistant Attorney General Anthony Picione, who was the number two at OPIA, retired earlier this year; later, he was named acting Warren County Prosecutor – a move that has led to a fast-tracked process to pick a permanent replacement and remove Picione from his position of authority.
While a long and thorough probe of racist, sexist, and anti-Semitic comments in the Clark Police Department led to a scathing report alleging misconduct by local officials – and criminal charges against Mayor Sal Bonaccorso on an unrelated matter – demands that the police chief and the internal officer be fired remain unaddressed, something that is not the OPIA’s fault.
Despite problems at the embattled OPIA, Platkin’s civil division appears to be operating on all cylinders. They’ve sued arguably bad corporate actors, won a high-profile U.S. Supreme Court case, and brought in north of $1.4 billion in fines and settlements.
Still, one legislator suggested that Platkin needs to “take responsibility” for the actions of the OPIA.
In March 2022, O’Donnell, the state’s cooperating witness in a political corruption sting operation, pleaded guilty on two counts connected to using straw donors to obtain public contracts for his law firm, O’Donnell McCord, that could require him to serve three years in state prison. O’Donnell admitted to illegal activities related to his work as the Mount Arlington borough attorney and tax appeal attorney for multiple municipalities and counties.
In a revised plea agreement, O’Donnell 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. While the statutory maximum sentence is 15 years, the attorney general’s office has agreed to a deal that requires O’Donnell to serve two three-year prison sentences concurrently – a better deal than the one they had initially agreed to.
But the state’s delay in prosecuting four defendants has slowed O’Donnell’s sentencing.
Under O’Donnell’s first plea agreement in June 2018, the state permitted O’Donnell to become the recipient of a considerable amount of public funds even after he acknowledged an unspecified criminal act.
Since entering a plea agreement, O’Donnell has billed government bodies for tax appeal work—sometimes precluding other firms from obtaining the work—and represented the State of New Jersey in court as a municipal prosecutor. In mid-2017, O’Donnell began cooperating with the New Jersey Attorney General’s office.
Attorneys say O’Donnell billed public entities over $4.5 million while serving as a cooperating witness. The OPIA told a judge in 2021 that they haven’t maintained a detailed accounting of how much money O’Donnell might owe the state.
In a January 31, 2018, meeting with prosecutors – his first – “O’Donnell provided the names of approximately 12 politicians he has dealt with in the past and believes he can assist us in charging for multiple crimes,” according to Kristin Maier, an OPIA detective.
Thomas Calcagni, O’Donnell’s attorney, told prosecutors that the “particular names were chosen as they felt they were the most time-sensitive,” the report said.
Four of the twelve names were eventually charged as part of the sting operation. In 2021, Superior Court Judge Mitzy Galis-Menendez redacted some other names.
Galis-Menendez sealed a list of potential targets in a state corruption probe, including individuals O’Donnell offered to contact and people prosecutors asked O’Donnell to connect with.
Nicodemo acknowledged ongoing investigations related to a cooperation agreement that O’Donnell and his law firm entered with his office in June 2018. No additional charges appear to have been filed in matters connected to O’Donnell.
In 2023, the attorney general’s office declined to disclose the current job of embattled Deputy Attorney General John Nicodemo, saying it could “reveal or lead to information that may reveal such duty assignment.” The information was sought in a request under the state’s Open Public Records Act.
The secret assignment at the time was a stint as a diversity officer. Nicodemo is now assigned to the Division of Highway Traffic Safety, where calls go to his voicemail even when another staffer says he was in his office. Nicodemo has not returned multiple messages left at his office and on his cell phone.
Still, despite multiple allegations of prosecutorial misconduct – a defense attorney accused Nicodemo of deliberately editing out portions of a statute, offering false testimony, and purposely hiding exculpatory evidence during a grand jury presentment – Nicodemo has had twelve raises in the last six years. His salary jumped from $74,508 in 2017 to $145,053, a 94.7% increase. That includes two in 2020, two in 2021, three in 2022, and two in 2023, according to records released by the attorney general’s office.
However, a state website listed Nicodemo’s salary as $144,653 on Wednesday evening – an apparent pay cut.