Troubling, bag-of-cash corruption case ends with N.J. prosecutors quietly backing down
More than six years after he was named in a wide-ranging corruption sting, the criminal case against former Democratic state assemblyman and Bayonne mayoral candidate Jason O'Donnell is going away.
Following a long-running court fight over the legitimacy of that investigation that went all the way to the state Supreme Court, O'Donnell — who never went to trial — will be allowed to enter the pre-trial intervention program. Upon its completion, the charges against him will be dismissed, officials said. He was not required to admit to any guilt.
PTI is a diversionary program that lets some first-time offenders avoid a traditional criminal conviction and jail time.
In a statement, the state Attorney General's Office said it takes all allegations of public corruption seriously, calling this case "a hard-fought prosecution with years of litigation and multiple appeals, which were decided overwhelmingly in the state's favor."
But a spokesman for the office said after many years, the parties were resolving the case with an agreement accepted by the court on Friday morning.
"The charges were amended to third-degree conspiracy to commit bribery," he said.
Officials did not respond to questions as to what led to that decision, although it came in the wake of an appellate court ruling in July ordering the state to release thousands of documents that had been withheld from defense attorneys — and after the state moved in a major shakeup to disband the anti-corruption unit that had brought the case.
O'Donnell, who did not immediately return a call for comment, will return to court in October for entry into the pre-trial intervention program.
The prosecution had raised serious questions about the operations of the Attorney General's Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, or OPIA, the special anti-corruption unit that had been under mounting fire by defense attorneys and legislators. Defense attorneys have accused OPIA prosecutors of withholding major pieces of evidence required to be shared before trial, have made claims of selective prosecution, or charged that the office deliberately misled grand jurors.
The unit was recently disbanded by Jennifer Davenport, the state's new attorney general.
O'Donnell, 54, was targeted in a wide-ranging state undercover sting that came to light in December 2019. He and four other political candidates and officials were accused of taking tens of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions and cash payoffs from a tax attorney secretly cooperating with prosecutors in an undercover sting operation.
That attorney, Matthew O'Donnell, who was not related to Jason, agreed to work as a cooperating witness in an effort to avoid prison after having been nabbed in a separate bribery investigation. That case involved years of his similar payoffs and donations in exchange for public contracts. He later pleaded guilty to misconduct and records tampering and has yet to be sentenced.
According to court filings, the two O'Donnells met at a New York restaurant and discussed the need for "street money" to fund the "get out the vote" operations for the Bayonne mayoral campaign on election day.
In surveillance recordings, the candidate promised that if elected as mayor, the job of Bayonne's tax attorney would be the payback for Matt O'Donnell, the complaint alleged.
"I just want to be your tax guy," said the lawyer in an exchange caught on surveillance recordings.
Matt O'Donnell subsequently delivered a paper bag stuffed with $10,000 in cash to Jason O'Donnell's campaign headquarters, prosecutors said.
But from the very start, attorneys for Jason O'Donnell raised doubts about the evidence, the motivations of prosecutors and the validity of the entire criminal case.
The bribery charges were quickly dismissed by Superior Court Judge Mitzy Galis-Menendez in Hudson County, who ruled that O'Donnell could not be charged because as a candidate, O'Donnell — who ultimately lost his mayoral bid — had no power to make any promises in return for the cash payment prosecutors claim he accepted.
Another appellate court reinstated the indictment and in 2023 the state Supreme Court upheld that decision.
After the case returned to the lower court for trial, however, new questions emerged about the evidence at the heart of the allegations. Leo Hurley, O'Donnell's attorney, argued in court briefs that the Attorney General's Office had been trying to lure the candidate into a trap.
"There was no meaningful reason, other than whim," to justify the targeting of O'Donnell, Hurley wrote, adding that there was no open criminal file on him. Nor was there an active investigation into his actions before prosecutors approved the recorded meeting with Matt O'Donnell, their cooperating witness, in an effort to catch him talking about things that could land him in prison.
The state, the attorney argued, had not produced a single document predating the meeting in New York that O'Donnell had engaged "or planned to engage in any criminal conduct," pointing to one email that surfaced between a deputy attorney general and a colleague that noted the "sole purpose of tonight's meet is to generate a conversation of illegal financial support to O'Donnell in his upcoming bid for the mayoral seat."
MORE BY TED SHERMAN
Prosecutors must disclose any evidence favorable to a defendant that might challenge the credibility of an unfavorable witness, under legal rules established by the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark case known as Brady v. Maryland.
In July, an appellate court ordered the state to turn over thousands of pages of documents requested by the defense, which was "undoubtedly entitled" to investigative reports related to the charge lodged against him and the state's investigation of him.
Less than two months later, the state moved to end the case.
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