Roberts was asked by law enforcement not to expel Assembly Members

by: Jason Springer

Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 04:30:00 PM EDT

Last week, Speaker Roberts suspended pay and health benefits Assemblymen Vas, Van Pelt and Smith after getting a ruling from his counsel that the he had the authority to take the action. Despite the fact that they remained silent during the corruption in their own back yard at the Burlington County Bridge Commission, Assembly members Addiego and Rudder tried to score some political points calling for expulsion as a further action:

"Last month's arrests of legislators, mayors and local officials - and the resignation of a key member of Governor Corzine's cabinet - proved that the Democratic tact of pretending New Jersey is not infested with corruption does not work," said Addiego. "We must act now to purge the Legislature of anyone - regardless of party affiliation - who is accused of breaking the public trust."

But Speaker Roberts was prepared for their grandstanding, having already consulted legal counsel about that possibility as well. First he explained the rules of the Assembly and then said this in his letter responding to Addiego and Rudder:

As you know, prior to any expulsion hearings, Rule 7:6 requires that the committee "serve written charges on the member, provide an opportunity for the member to be heard, to present witnesses, testimony and other evidence, to cross examine witnesses and to be represented by counsel."
Given that our rules would require the formation of a parallel investigation to the ongoing criminal inquiry, I immediately consulted with the State Attorney General and the United States Attorney concerning the expulsion of these members and the due process proceeding required by our rules. They advised that moving forward with the expulsion proceedings could significantly threaten their ongoing criminal investigation of these members and conveyed to me their strong inclination that I not move forward with any proceeding that could in any way hamper their investigation.
I agree that we must send a strong message to the public that corruption will not be tolerated. But, I believe that the actions we take can never jeopardize the ongoing work of law enforcement as they continue to interview witnesses, collect evidence and develop their criminal case against these individuals. That is why I took the unprecedented action of suspending the pay and benefits of these members last week.
I would once again renew my call for Assemblymen Smith and Vas to do the right thing for their constituents and for the good of the Legislature and resign because I believe that they cannot effectively serve the people they were elected to represent given the charges levied against them.

The fact is, Addiego and Rudder could have just sent Roberts the letter, but they decided to try and get some extra attention by putting out a release, which they love to do. So given the response from Roberts, do Addiego and Rudder want to jeopardize the ongoing work of law enforcement in an effort to score more political points? Maybe they can send out a release on that.

Jason Springer :: Roberts was asked by law enforcement not to expel Assembly Members

Tags: Joe Roberts, Dawn Addiego, scott rudder corruption, Assembly, Harvey Smith, Joe Vas, (All Tags)

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Roberts was asked by law enforcement not to expel Assembly Members | 1 comments

So Why Did The Justice Department Make The Arrests... (0.00 / 0)

.....and issue the criminal complaints when they did?

If the investigations aren't complete, why did they pull the trigger on the few targets already in their sights?

The timing on all of this is still suspicious to me as is the "coincidence" that Christie just happened to be in Hudson County that day.

The actual indictments need to made asap along with the release of more evidence and tapes and wire taps etc.

If these cases were broken early to give Christie some kind of issue and broken in such a way that weakens the cases and limited the potential scope of the dragnet; then we may need to appoint special prosecutors to investigate the prosecutors here, some of whom may be Christie loyalists more concerned with helping Christie win the election that with actually cleaning up the dirt in New Jersey.

If Cammarano and others beat the chrges because the cases weren't made air tight....then we have deeper problems than we may have imagined.

If there is solid evidence against these defendants then we need indictments and more evidence needs t be released to that the legislature can take the steps required to get them out of office.

Further, If I were the US Attorney General, I would gladly let Cammarano and the others off with plea bargain IF they squealed on EVERY one they knew to be engaged in corrupt activity!!!

Everyone complains about how high taxes are and how high the cost of goods/services are........it wouldn't surprise me if the cumulative effects of systemic corruption account for a 10% tax on every dollar we spend in taxes and on everything else....and I dare say that's a low estimate....because it's almost impossible to estimate how much better the whole quality of life would be in New Jersey if we could truly eliminate the cancer or corruption from our body politic.

by: Nick Lento @ Tue Aug 04, 2009 at 21:16:33 PM UTC