Seeking favors or innocent inquires?

Menendez trial tests officials' influence on criminal cases

By: Charles Stile
Political Stile
USA today Network

..... The trail of Senator Robert Menendez has shed a light on the gray area between politics and New Jersey law enforcement.
..... Although the trial aims to determine whether Menendez is guilty or innocent of sweeping bribery and abuse-of-power charges arrayed against him, it has also aside a significant question.
..... When is it incorporate for an elected person of power to discuss the status of a criminal investigation with the state's top law enforcement officer?
..... Is an apparent innocuous phone call form a person of political power to a top law enforcement official a less-then-subtle form of pressure? How often does this happen? Is this really the troubling, back-channel way politicians go about fixing their muscle with criminal matters of concern in New Jersey?
..... The issue stems form one of the federal charges facing Menendez. Prosecutors say Menendez sought to disrupt a state criminal investigation involving associates of Joe Uribe, a North Jersey insurance executive. Uribe, officials say, bribed Menendez, and reward him by purchasing a $60,000 Mercedes Benz con veritable for his wife, Medina. The Senator, according to testimony, went right to the tip, calling then-Attorney General Gurbir Grewal.
..... Menedez didn't get very far in two encounters with Grewal, who cut short the senator's effort by asserting a policy that prohibited him from discussing pending criminal matters, according to his testimony. But Grewal also disclosed, under questioning form Menendez's attorney, that he had been approached on two other occasions by prominent officials, regarding unrelated criminal prosecutions. Grewal cut short both of those inquires off by asserting the same "I can't discuss pending matt4e4rs" policy.
..... According to trial testimony, Grewal, who is now director pf the Division of Enforcement for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said he halted what he perceived to be an inquire from former Governor Richard Codey over the prosecution involving a former Mercer County Parks official accused of diverting taxpayer funds to a non-profit he controlled. And - although not named specifically - he cut off an inquiry in 2020 from George Helmy, the former chief of staff to Governor Phil Murphy, who reached out about the investigation of a North Bergen man whose case was complicating the passage of a landmark criminal justice reform.
..... Other than the outreach described in both cases, there is nothing to suggest any further parallel with the Menendez case. Still, disclosures of the encounters draw attention to the separation between law enforcement and politics, which has largely been guided by "norms," as Grewal put it in testimony, and internal policy outing proper protocols on communications about criminal justice matters - not by an law forbidding such contact.

Could this issue become a national one?

..... It's also an issue that resonates nationally. Former President Donald Trump reportedly wants the U.S. Justice Department to target his critics and enemies if elected to the second term, according to the Washington Post. The move would effectively shred the Justice Department;s independence and turn it into a political hit squad. Trump routinely makes wild and unsubstantiated claims that he is the target of a Justice Department witch hunt orchestrated by President Joe Biden.
..... The attack s have eroded public faith in the Justice Department. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research last fall [2023] found one in there U.S. adults continue to have low levels of confidence in the Justice Department, with Republicans having less confidence than Democrats.
..... Polarizing politics has contributed to the decline in confidence and a metastasizing perception that investigations are guided by political decisions. It poisons public confidence in the outcome and makes it difficult for prosecutors to conduit public corruption investigations. It will make it harder for prosecutors to persuade witnesses to come forth if they feel that the political fix is in.
..... "The only thing that you've got going for you as a prosecutor is your reputation, and if your reputation is undermined by people who claim that you can be influenced or that you can be intimidated you or that you've got some political sensitivity in you that affects your decisions making, you might as well pack up and go away, because you're not going to be able to develop these kinds of cases," said Edwin Stier, the first director of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice, created in 1970 flowing scandals revealing the pervasive influence of the mob and New Jersey politics and law enforcement.
..... That doesn't necessarily mean, however, that every contact by a public official crosses the line of inappropriateness, Stier said. Some may be reaching out based on confusion, or misinformation about the case may be circulating among allies or social media. Others might seek a status of the case for planning purposes.
..... "But when you have people calling seeking preferential treatment, meaning 'I don't want you to investigate him, or 'I want you to back off,' that crosses a line into criminality," Stier said. "that's inappropriate."
..... Yet, other political veterans say the mere phone call or contact -as seemingly as innocuous as it might appear - runs the risk of being interpreted as a form of soft pressure.
..... "Maybe it wasn't implied ... but maybe it was inferred that way. that's why you don't want to call to take place at all because you don't want it to be subject to misinterpretation," said Micah Rasmussen, director of the Rebovich Center for New Jersey Politics at Rider University. "You can give the most charitable view, and still it could have been viewed as pressure.

Why did Menendez's attorneys surface the other inquires made of Grewal?

..... Although it was never explained why the two unrelated contacts with Grewal's office were raised at Menendez's trial, it appears that the senator;s lawyers were attempting to make Menendez's contact seem like part of a routine, even innocuous part of political life. It was another version of the old it-happens-in-Jersey-all-the-time defense.
..... during his appearance as a government witness, Grewal testified that at the end of a meeting on an unrelated matter, Codey approached him to discuss an ongoing criminal matter, which Grewal understood to be the case of Kevin Bannon, the former executive director of the Mercer County Parks Commission who was indicted in 2017. Prosecutors accused him of diverting thousands of dollars in public money from the parks system to a non-profit he controlled and "conferring unauthorized benefits like free golf and VIP concert tickets on himself, his family and his inner circle,: former Attorney General Chris Porrino said at the time. (Bannon has declared himself innocent of the charges and the case is still awaiting trial.)
..... Grewal recalled Cody approaching him after a meeting on another matter and saying, "I'm concerned about how the prior administration weaponized this office politically, and I'm particularly concerned about a pending matter. And before he could raise it, I said to him, 'I'm not having a conversation with you about a pending matter.' "
..... Grewal also noted that Codey introduced legislation that was "directed at preventing me and my first assistant (Andrew Bruck) form running for office."
..... At the time Grewal's name was circulating as a possible candidate for governor. Codey, who is friendly with members of Bannon's family form Hudson County, said he ad non recollection of the conversation with Grewal, but argued that he felt that the case was overblown - the criminalizing of a common courtesy, as he viewed it.
..... "He has people that were volunteers for him and to show them his appreciation, he gave free tickets to a concert," Codey said. "What the freak am I misusing?"
..... He also sharply disputed suggestion that the legislation was in retaliation to Grewal. he said he had long raise concerns about high profile prosecutors using their offices as a springboard to elected office. He citied the case of former Governor Chris Christie who vaulted into the governor's office in 2009 on the strength of his high-profile political prosecutions.
..... While Helmy's name was not mentioned in the testimony, the reference to the governor's chief of staff aligns with his time in the role. The subject of his inquire involved the case of Walter Somick, a North Bergen recreation worker who was charged in 2016 - before Grewal took office - with falsifying time-sheets to collect pay for work he didn't perform. It was a serious charge - he was facing a mandatory five years in prison for official misconduct.
.....Somick had powerful connections. His mother is also marred to former state Senator Nicholas Sacco, the powerful political leader of North Bergen, where he also sered at the town's longtime mayor. but in 2020, the Murphy administratrix began pushing a landmark bill that would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for most nonviolent crimes.
..... It was based on the recommendation of a commission which argued that scrapping the mandatory punishments could help reverse the racial disparity in New Jersey prisons, which was the worst in the nation. The bill did not call for eliminating the mandatory minimum for official misconduct," which many view as a powerful deterrent against corruption. But Sacco inserted an amendment that would have lifted the mandatory punishment for officials conduce, a move that Murphy opposed. Sacco;s amendment threatens to derail the historic measure, causing alarm within the Murphy administration.
..... Two sources said Helmy reached out to Grewal only to get an update on "procedural" matters on the case and had no intention of interfering with the prosecution. Helmey, now a hospital system executive, declined comment. Murphy conditionally vetoed the bill. Somick eventually pleaded guilty to fourth-degree charges of records tampering and was sentenced to an 18-month term of probation, according to a published report.
..... Still Grewal testified that the incident prompted him in October 2020 to write an eight-age memo clarifying the proper procedures for communications between the Attorney Generals and governor's offices over criminal investigation.

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