NJ A.G. HITS NORCROSS AGAIN

And Steve Sweeney has a cameo.

Steve Sweeney, former New Jersey senate president, ex-iron worker, and 2025 gubernatorial candidate, gets a walk-on part in Attorney General Matt Platkin’s re-filed indictment of South Jersey boss George Norcross.

Which is not surprising, since Sweeney is Norcross’s creation and, during his time in government, was Norcross’s tool in getting done what the Camden boss wanted done in Trenton.

And, except for Steve Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City, the other Democratic gubernatorial candidates have been reluctant to say anything at all about Norcross, despite the mountain of evidence against him – a sign, perhaps, that Norcross’s control over much of South Jersey makes him a formidable figure indeed.

On Tuesday, Platkin, as promised, filed an appeal of his 2024 indictment of Norcross and his cronies, including his brother, Phil Norcross, a lawyer; William Tambussi, another lawyer and Norcross errand boy; Dana Redd, the ex-mayor of Camden; and two business buddies, Sid Brown and John O’Donnell. We’ll get to the details of Platkin’s appeal in a bit – which, by the way, was co-signed by nine other New Jersey officials, including a solicitor general, a deputy solicitor general, four assistant attorneys general, and three deputy attorneys general. Quite a power play!

You can read the entire 120-page brief filed by Platkin here.

But, back to Sweeney: there are least two references to Sweeney, on pages 91 and 100, which reference the role of the “senate president” (rather politely not naming Sweeney) in the machinations of what Platkin calls the “Norcross Enterprise.” The first notes Sweeney’s role in arranging a cushy post-mayoral job for ex-Mayor Redd, who was indicted for the illegal favors she did for The Boss:

“Norcross arranged for her to take a lucrative position on the Rowan-Rutgers board after her mayoral term ended, with an accompanying boost to her pension, thanks to an arcane legislative tweak shepherded by the Senate President, a key Norcross ally.”

The second reference, on page 100, refers back to a questionable tax break that Norcross arranged through Tambussi, his lawyer-fixer, with the state legislature:

“[T]he grand jury did not dispute that Philip Norcross had a ‘right to craft EOA legislation and to communicate with the Senate President’ -- … no one has ever claimed that these acts were criminal, but rather that they illustrate the breadth of the Enterprise’s power and reinforce the allegation that the tax credits were a long standing objective of the Enterprise.”

By “EOA legislation,” Platkin is referring to the 2013 Economic Opportunity Act, passed by the state legislature and signed into law by Governor Chris Christie. (One of the chief sponsors of the EOA back then was a third Norcross brother, Don Norcross, now a member of Congress from New Jersey’s 1st District.) The EOA wouldn’t have moved forward without the support of Senate President Sweeney. That law, which set up a controversial tax incentive program, provided more than $7 billion in tax breaks mostly to corporate beneficiaries. “Companies related to Norcross, his charitable affiliations and the law and lobbying firms of his brother Philip received tax breaks worth at least $1.1 billion under the program,” according to a bombshell investigation in 2019 by WNYC and ProPublica.

From left: Chris Christie, George Norcross, Steve Sweeney

Of course, Sweeney isn’t indicted. These acts, at least the ones included in Platkin’s appeal, don’t appear to be criminal, on his part at least. Still, it’s fair to call Sweeney a “known associate” of the man who, as Platkin says, was a “racketeer” controlling a “criminal enterprise.”

In the rest, Platkin says that the judge in the case inexplicably refused to look at “over 2,000 pages of testimony, including 341 exhibits” that backed up his case. And he reiterates the central charge in the case, that Norcross and his friends “conspired to extort and coerce others using unlawful threats, including threats to inflict reputational harm.” And they that did so “primarily to obtain property that they could use to exploit lucrative state tax credits they helped shape.”

By “lucrative tax credits,” Platkin means the above-mentioned $1.1 billion they pocketed, and by “credits they helped shape,” he means primarily through the Sweeney-engineered EOA.

The indictment quotes Norcross saying, explicitly, that the EOA “is for our friends.”

Norcross & Co. bullied rival developers over that valuable Camden waterfront property, with Sopranos-like threats such as “if you fuck this up, I’ll fuck you up like you’ve never been fucked up before. I’ll make sure you never do business in this town again.” And he could back that threat up by his “control of the Camden government,” says Platkin. (We’re looking at you, Dana Redd.)

And Phil Norcross, who seemed to be the enforcer of some of his brother’s threats, makes it clear in one hilarious passage that he wasn’t really being a lawyer in all this. “I try to practice as little law as possible,” says Phil Norcross, the lawyer. “Just for laughs and giggles I run a law firm. And for more laughs and giggles, my siblings and I get around the table and decide what [George Norcross’s] agenda is in Camden.”

By “my siblings,” he means George Norcross and Don Norcross, obviously. Who’s giggling now?

The other “lawyer,” Tambussi, had a role, too. “Tambussi was, among other things, a legal expert, able to wield his professional skill to the Enterprise’s advantage – beyond the scope of lawful practice,” writes Platkin.

The ugliness of all this, the business thuggery and audacity of a mafia-like boss in South Jersey pushing other businessmen around to get his way and using his control of local and state government to do so, boggles the mind. And the evidence to prove it – those 2,000 pages of testimony and hundreds of documents – is overwhelming.

In Jersey politics, though, Norcross seems not to be radioactive – yet. Governor Murphy has been making nice with him. The new MAGA-linked U.S. Attorney Alina Habba hasn’t weighed in, even while threatening to “investigate” Platkin and Murphy over their laudable non-cooperation with ICE. And the Democratic candidates for governor haven’t said much either, though Sweeney is clearly sticking with his master, calling Norcross “innocent.”

The one exception is Steve Fulop, the mayor of Jersey City, who said that if elected he’d ask Platkin to stay on as attorney general. When The New Jersey Democrat asked several candidates to respond to the Platkin appeal, Ras Baraka and Mikie Sherrill didn’t answer. But Fulop, who noted that “Norcross runs the entire South Jersey apparatus,” praised Platkin.

“Whether it is pushing back on Trump’s attacks on New Jersey, or pushing back on the political machine trying to protect a corrupt county line political system, or pushing back against political boss George Norcross, it is clear that Matt Platkin has been courageous and deserves credit,” he said.