It’s awkward when a journalist is thrust into a story as a player, not an observer. We belong on the sidelines.
But Esther Suarez, the prosecutor in Hudson County, just used the tools of her office to accuse me of personal misconduct, dredging up an incident from two years ago. The accusation came just as I wrote two critical columns about her in the last month, opposing her nomination as U.S. Attorney for New Jersey.
That job is immensely important to the state. Suarez would be in charge of the fight against political corruption, terrorism, organized crimes, and much else. And this episode deepens the concerns about her ethics and offers another potent reason she should not get the job.
Sen. Robert Menendez, the state’s senior senator, has already sent Suarez’s name to the White House, according to several sources, so the decision now falls to President Biden. If he takes a close look, he’ll find that New Jersey has many great lawyers, of all races, whose integrity and skills are beyond question. And you cannot reasonably make that claim about Suarez.
Some background: When news broke that Menendez chose Suarez, several prominent lawyers and politicians who know her expressed alarm to me, mostly regarding her ethics.
Suarez worked for years as chief counsel to the infamously corrupt Bergen County Democratic chairman, Joe Ferriero, who was eventually jailed on bribery charges. Later, working in Hudson County, Suarez was penalized more than $9,000 by the state for hiding the identity of donors to a political fund she managed as treasurer. Her political alliances in Hudson, ground zero for corruption in the state, were a deep concern, especially regarding Menendez, who was tried on corruption charges in 2017 and survived it when the jury couldn’t agree on a verdict.
“The history of corruption in Hudson and Bergen makes it very problematic for someone who has been a functionary in those political environments to manage corruption investigations,” says Ed Stier, former director of the Division of Criminal Justice, who has prosecuted more than his share of corrupt politicians and organized crime figures. “Her ascent as a lawyer has been based on the connections she’s had to those political machines, and particularly Ferriero.”
More recently, Suarez was widely criticized for mishandling the investigation into the rape complaint of Katie Brennan. A volunteer for Gov. Phil Murphy’s 2017 campaign, Brennan said she was sexually assaulted by a senior staffer in Murphy’s campaign, Al Alvarez, who was not charged in the end. Suarez personally knew Alvarez, so the case should have been moved to another county, as it later was. She claims she had no idea her office was investigating the case, though she was copied on four memos discussing the details. She claims she didn’t read “the substance” of the emails, whatever that means. Brennan remains dissatisfied.
Her charge of misconduct against me stems from that period. In early 2019, I wrote two columns arguing that she mishandled the Brennan case, but Suarez would never return my calls. A few months later, in April, I saw her at a political conference in Jersey City and did what obnoxious reporters are paid to do – walked up to her and tried once more to get a comment.
She didn’t respond, and I couldn’t tell if she heard me in the crowded hallway. I reached and touched her elbow, and she turned to me and said, “Don’t touch me!” I walked away.
In retrospect, I am sorry I touched her elbow that day, as I told Suarez this week in writing. It’s wrong to ever touch a stranger in any way, especially a woman. I get that, and my regret is bone-deep. Lesson learned.
Now, fast forward from 2019 to the present, and the plot thickens. This is the part that should concern anyone who believes in a free press.
Enter David Wildstein, the blogger without a soul, the man who ordered those lanes shut on the George Washington Bridge in the Bridgegate scandal, then turned against his two close friends, Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly, testifying against them in return for a plea deal. On the stand, Wildstein described a lifetime of pint-sized dirty tricks, like stealing Sen. Frank Lautenberg’s jacket just before a debate, to make him uncomfortable.
On Monday, he blogged about me, saying “Star-Ledger journalist put his hands on Hudson prosecutor, witnesses say.” He linked to a surveillance video of the two-year-old encounter, claiming “Moran is seen hovering over Suarez and raising his hands as if to touch her.”
On Tuesday, it escalated when a spokeswoman for Suarez, Jennifer Morrill, told Wildstein that this was no touch of the elbow, but something much rougher. “This was not a ‘gentle tap’ on the prosecutor’s elbow as stated but rather her arm was grabbed with such force she could still feel it several minutes later,” Morrill said. “This was documented and corroborated at the time by law enforcement who witnessed the incident.”
I got the police reports and the video, and dug in.
On that day in 2019, Suarez was escorted by two officers, who both filed incident reports a week after my encounter with her. Both were close by and offered first-hand accounts. Neither claimed they saw the elbow touch, let along rougher treatment Morrill suggests.
“Prosecutor Suarez stated that the male who touched her arm was a reporter named Tom Moran who was attempting to ask her a question,” wrote Sgt. Joseph Walsh of Jersey City Police.
“From my vantage point, I was not able to see exactly where he touched or came into contact with the Prosecutor,” wrote Gene Rubino, a senior investigator in Suarez’s office.
So, I asked Morrill what in those documents backs her claim that I grabbed the prosecutor’s arm. No comment. I asked why the officers didn’t talk to me about the incident before filing reports. No comment. I asked why the officers filed reports at all, and if Suarez requested them. No comment.
Now, let’s go to the security video. I’m on screen for about six seconds, starting at 10:45:40, and it’s posted on YouTube. You can judge for yourself.
What does all this add up to? It seems clear to me, and to several who expressed concern to me about the Suarez nomination, that she is retaliating against a media critic, using her spokeswoman to make these inflated charges.
I can’t prove that she is the source for Wildstein’s blog posts, but there’s good reason to suspect she is, or perhaps someone in her inner circle. Wildstein got the police documents and video after filing an open records request that specified my name, and the date of the event, two years earlier. How did he know about it? He won’t say, but who but Suarez and her inner circle would have that information?
The most disheartening moment of the week for me was to watch Murphy breathe life into this after a reporter for Wildstein’s blog asked him about it at a press conference. The governor said, “We always have to start in the place of believing women who come forward” and criticized The Star-Ledger for failing to investigate the claim.
This from a governor famous for enforcing gag orders on women, for mistreating Brennan and breaking promises to her, and for failing to hold his own crew accountable after more than a half dozen women complained of mistreatment while working on that notorious 2017 campaign.
As for the Ledger, the first thing the bosses did after I told them Wildstein’s story appeared was to ask me for a detailed account of what happened in writing, which I provided right away. I shared the police reports and videos as soon as I got them as well. Did Murphy ask his frat boys to do that when they were accused?
But the week did have its moments. Sen. Loretta Weinberg was aghast that the governor would say “believe women” as if this were a case of sexual harassment or assault. “I’d remind the governor this is not that kind of case,” she said. “And yeah, women should be believed, starting with Katie Brennan.”
Attorney Nancy Erika-Smith, who represented Gretchen Carlson in her groundbreaking harassment lawsuit against Roger Ailes and Fox News, said the video shows “no inappropriate touching” and that Suarez’s attacks on me were “Trumpian.”
Katie Brennan’s lawyer, Katy McClure, tweeted that Suarez’s claim against me was “ridiculous” and that Murphy was “rewriting history” to cover his failings in the Brennan case.
But what’s really kept my spirits up is the hope that something good will come of all this, that Suarez has just shown us again why she is unfit for job. Maybe Biden’s team will see that he would be stepping into a big mess if he nominates someone with all her baggage.
As for Wildstein, please note that no major media outlet is repeating his charges against me, beyond a short blurb on the web site of the radio station 101.5 -- even after the governor tried to lend them credence. The reason is that no one trusts the Bridgegate blogger. Now you know why.
More: Tom Moran columns
Tom Moran may be reached at tmoran@starledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @tomamoran. Find NJ.com Opinion on Facebook.
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