Justice Department declined to prosecute George Norcross in 2023 based on ‘available admissible evidence,’ court filings show

Federal authorities in Philadelphia listened in on George Norcross’ phones for months in 2016, as part of a sprawling investigation into his relationship with Philadelphia labor leader John Dougherty, suspicion of money laundering involving fundraising for a concert during the Democratic National Convention, and allegations of potential abuse of New Jersey’s tax credit program, according to court filings released Wednesday.

But the U.S. Attorney’s Office ultimately brought no charges, concluding last year not to pursue a federal case.

“Based upon review of the available admissible evidence, the applicable law, the probability of a successful trial and the prosecution standards of the office, it is our opinion the matter should not be the subject of a federal prosecution,” Assistant U.S. Attorney K.T. Newton wrote in an April 2023 letter to one of the FBI agents leading the case.

That letter — and hundreds of pages of documents detailing agents’ shuttered investigation — were released Wednesday as part of a court filing from a Norcross codefendant in the state racketeering case against the New Jersey power broker and five key allies.

Though the existence of that earlier federal probe and the FBI’s tap of Norcross’ phone had been reported by The Inquirer as early as 2018, the documents filed Wednesday revealed for the first time what initially drew the FBI’s interest.

“Intercepted telephone conversations also identified Norcross’ influence over multiple New Jersey politicians,” FBI Special Agent Jason Blake wrote in a partially redacted July 2016 affidavit supporting a wiretap application.

The documents made public Wednesday did not show whether and how the probe by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia evolved in the years between the 2016 wiretaps and the official decision to close the matter last year.

Still, Norcross — an insurance executive, chair of the board at Cooper University Health Care, and longtime Democratic leader in South Jersey — has argued that the decision by federal prosecutors in Philadelphia to not bring an indictment exposes significant weaknesses at the heart of New Jersey Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin’s current case.

A grand jury charged Norcross and five codefendants with racketeering and other crimes in June, alleging they used threats and intimidation to obtain valuable waterfront real estate in Camden from rival developers. All have pleaded not guilty and have urged a judge to throw out the case. The indictment, which Platkin announced in June, drew in part upon some of the same wiretap evidence collected during that earlier investigation.

“It was only the Attorney General who had a different ‘opinion’ based on the exact same evidence,” Lee Vartan and Jeffrey S. Chiesa, attorneys for Norcross codefendant William Tambussi, said in a statement. “There is just one conclusion to be drawn — that the Attorney General prizes headlines over prosecution standards.”

In Wednesday’s filings, lawyers for Tambussi noted they’d only received some of the FBI’s wiretap applications from that 2016 probe, which they attached to their motion. They sought full access to those documents so that he and the others could prepare to defend themselves in the racketeering case. They noted that some of the same FBI agents and U.S. attorneys who were involved in the earlier federal investigation are currently working as part of Platkin’s prosecution team.

“The central evidence before the grand jury … was intercepts obtained from federal wiretaps authorized by the District Courts for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. More than five months after the State returned its indictment, Defendants remain without the underlying wiretap applications and affidavits,” Tambussi’s lawyers wrote. “Worse, it is totally unclear when — or even if —defendants will ever get that discovery.”

A spokesperson for the AG’s Office said: “We disagree with the filing and we’ll be responding publicly on the docket.”

While Platkin’s case covers much of the same time period and some of the same topics — including New Jersey’s tax credit program and redevelopment of Camden’s waterfront — it differs significantly from some areas of focus laid out in the FBI’s wiretap affidavits.

The affidavits show how that federal investigation grew — at least in part — out of an existing probe into Dougherty, the Philadelphia labor leader, who was convicted on bribery and embezzlement charges in 2021 and 2023 and sentenced to six years in prison.

Authorities had already been tapping Dougherty’s phone for more than a year when, on June 10, 2016, a federal judge signed a wiretap order authorizing agents to intercept Norcross’ communications for the first time, records show. Norcross remained a wiretap target for at least two more applications, in July and October that year.

Agents told the judge they were investigating Norcross’ fundraising for a Lady Gaga concert during the July 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, including contributions from the Dougherty-led Local 98 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Blake, the FBI agent, told the judge he believed Norcross had attempted “to disguise the source of the money” and may have committed money laundering.

Additionally, the agent wrote, there was probable cause to believe that intercepted communications would show “official acts that Dougherty caused to be performed on behalf of George Norcross, and any items of value that are provided to Dougherty in return.”

Authorities said they hoped to learn more about Norcross’ involvement in Philadelphia-based Liberty Property Trust’s development of the Camden waterfront, and whether Dougherty had used his influence on the board of the Delaware River Port Authority to help Norcross obtain land in which he had a financial interest, according to the affidavit.

By October 2016, investigators turned their focus to Norcross’ and his business partners’ plans to apply for New Jersey tax credits to finance construction of an office tower and apartment complex in Camden. Investigators wanted to learn whether Norcross would make any false statements to the state when applying for tax credits, wrote FBI Special Agent Stephen Rich in another wiretap application.

Investigators must only show probable cause — not proof — that a crime has been committed to receive court authorization to tap a subject’s phone. And it is not uncommon for agents to abandon certain investigative theories or find that they are not borne out by additional evidence after that approval has been obtained and the investigation continues. The filings released Wednesday, do not indicate what — if any — evidence agents uncovered through the wiretaps to support the theories they put forward to the judge.

Ultimately, though, Norcross wasn’t charged in connection with the Dougherty cases, and his name didn’t come up at the labor leader’s trials. And with the letter from Newton last year, federal prosecutors closed their separate investigation of Norcross. His attorneys have denied any wrongdoing and have pointed to the fact that no federal charges were filed against him as a sign that he hadn’t done anything wrong.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey — with the help of FBI agent Rich — also reviewed the tax credit matter, and in 2018 prosecutors told Norcross’ attorney Michael Critchley in a letter that they had closed the investigation.

That wasn’t the end of the story.

“Undeterred, Mr. Rich crossed back over the river and continued his investigation with the aid of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,” Tambussi lawyer Vartan wrote in the filing Wednesday.

The state attorney general’s investigation began in 2019, the filing says. Multiple federal prosecutors and investigators in Philadelphia — including Rich and Newton, who wrote the 2023 letter closing the Philadelphia investigation — were deputized as special state agents reporting to the AG’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability, according to the filing. Some of them continue to work as part of Platkin’s prosecution team.

“While the ‘available admissible evidence’ was not enough to meet the ‘prosecution standards’ of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the exact same evidence was apparently enough to meet the obviously much lower ‘prosecution standards’ of the Attorney General’s Office,” Vartan and others wrote, referring to language used in the 2023 letter.