More than a year after he was charged in a high-profile political corruption case, a former state Assemblyman is fighting in court to force prosecutors to reveal more about the deal they made with the informant who set him up in a long-running sting operation.
In court filings released Thursday afternoon after the state tried to seal the matter from further public scrutiny, attorneys for Jason O’Donnell said the Attorney General’s office has been silent on the “full nature and extent” of their witness’s cooperation.
The state last week tried to put a protective order on the filings after reporters sought their release. Attorneys for NJ Advance Media also intervened to press for public disclosure of the documents.
The names of individuals who were apparently a focus of the investigation, but never charged, were ultimately scrubbed from the documents at the order of Superior Court Judge Mitzy Galis-Menendez in Hudson.
“The state made a mistake in this case,” the judge said by filing the documents with the names unredacted.
The briefs, accompanied by hundreds of pages of exhibits, shed some new light on the case, including the fact that prosecutors continued their investigation after the charges against Jason O’Donnell, a Democrat, and four others, were first filed. Copies of subpoenas to municipalities around the state showed the Attorney General was still seeking documents months after the complaints were filed in 2019.
O’Donnell was running for mayor in Bayonne when he was ensnared in the sting. Also charged in the case were Sudhan Thomas, then the Jersey City school board president; John Cesaro, a former Morris County freeholder; John Windish, a former Mount Arlington council member; and Mary Dougherty, the wife of the current mayor of Morristown and a former Morris County freeholder candidate.
According to the criminal complaints in the case, the five were offered tens of thousands of dollars in political contributions or at times outright cash payments, in exchange for promises that the informant would be given contracts for lucrative tax and real estate work.
Prosecutors said they took more than $70,000, including cash stuffed into envelopes and paper bags that was delivered in restaurants, parking lots, a political fundraiser, and a campaign headquarters. They said checks were also delivered from illegal “straw donors” — individuals reimbursed to write checks to the defendants’ campaigns in amounts that complied with the legal limit on individual donations.
At the center of it all is a municipal tax attorney whose name was not even acknowledged by the state until last week’s hearing, despite being widely identified through the initial documents in the case.
“Matthew O’Donnell. That’s his name,” said Deputy Attorney General John A. Nicodemo in court.
He is no relation to Jason O’Donnell.
Elizabeth Valandingham, a former law partner of Matthew O’Donnell, was also later charged with falsely claiming that their Morristown firm had not made any reportable contributions to candidates in two towns where the firm had been vying to provide legal services. Authorities said in fact the law firm had made the contributions.
In his brief, defense attorney Leo Hurley Jr. said at issue was Matthew O’Donnell’s credibility as a witness, as well as how the state targeted individuals in the investigation.
“The defendant’s right to material bearing upon the credibility of a state’s cooperating witness is absolute,” Hurley wrote.
The attorney said the state has also not identified the other co-conspirators or provided discovery related to those alleged conspiracies, adding that the plea agreement was silent on the specifics of Matthew O’Donnell’s cooperation.
“But the state has refused to disclose the full nature and extent of Matthew O’Donnell’s cooperation,” Hurley wrote.
The state in response called the motion a “fishing expedition,” and said all the evidence regarding the “cooperating witness,” including how and why he came to be a cooperator, was provided.
In his own brief, Nicodemo said it was clear that the genesis of the charge against Jason O’Donnell arose solely from his interaction with Matthew O’Donnell.
“Counter to the defendant’s assertion, there is ample evidence to demonstrate that the state opened an investigation into the ‘CW’ and that the ‘CW’ is facing serious charges for his conduct,” he wrote, referring to Matthew O’Donnell as the cooperating witness. “The discovery provided the roadmap for the defendant. It also appears that the defendant wants the state to drive him to his destination.”
No trial date has been set in the case.
Earlier this year, Mary Dougherty — who was charged with taking $10,000 in a take-out coffee cup from Matthew O’Donnell — had the bribery charges against her dismissed and she pleaded guilty to greatly reduced charges in February of falsifying a campaign finance report.
She was sentenced to last month to probation.
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Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TedShermanSL
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