George Norcross exploited ‘overwhelming political influence’ to extort rivals, prosecutors say in fight to allow charges to reach a jury
The attorney general's filing comes after Norcross and his codefendants urged a Mercer County judge to toss racketeering and extortion charges against them before trial.
New Jersey prosecutors balked at George E. Norcross III’s efforts to recast tactics he used to prevail in Camden waterfront land deals as nothing more than “hardball business negotiations” and urged a judge to allow a jury to decide whether the Democratic power broker had broken the law in his pursuit of lucrative property.
That argument, laid out in a 146-page court filing late Friday, came two months after Norcross — an insurance executive and board chairman at Cooper University Health Care — pushed Mercer County Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw to toss a 13-count racketeering indictment brought against him and five others this summer, arguing the charges were fatally flawed.
But prosecutors, in their court papers, insisted those claims were better suited for a jury and maintained the indictment was clear in its description of how Norcross and his codefendants criminally profited from their control over Camden government and gained the upper hand in business deals.
“By exploiting Norcross’s reputation for untrammeled control over local government and overpowering political influence across New Jersey, the Norcross Enterprise essentially took the Camden waterfront for itself,” Assistant New Jersey Attorney General Michael D. Grillo and Deputy Attorney General Adam D. Klein wrote, adding later: “That is not hard bargaining by any stretch, and the grand jury was well within its rights to call it extortion.”
How Warshaw decides that question in the coming months will determine the future of one of the most ambitious corruption probes the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office has pursued in years. The judge has set a date in January to hear arguments on whether to allow the case to proceed.
A grand jury indicted Norcross and the others in June, alleging they manipulated a state tax credit program to benefit themselves and used threats and intimidation to muscle out rivals in pursuit of Camden land deals.
Since then, Norcross and his allies have relentlessly attacked the case — in court and in the press — and accused Attorney General Matt Platkin of carrying out a “legal jihad” against them. They maintain he’s abusing his power to criminalize normal business negotiation tactics and lawful lobbying of government officials.
“This indictment has no business in a court of law,” their lawyers wrote in September. “It is both too trite and too generous to call it an indictment in search of a crime.”
» READ MORE: ‘A crime thriller with no crime:’ George Norcross’ lawyers urge judge to throw out racketeering case
At this stage in the case, prosecutors must only show that the indictment lays out theoretical crimes that if proven at trial would constitute violations of state laws. Arguments over whether the evidence backs up the notion that Norcross and his codefendants committed those crimes are typically reserved for the jury phase of the proceedings.
In their court papers Friday, prosecutors said that the conduct of the unelected Norcross and his allies far exceeded the bounds of the law and accused them of using their “raw political power and functional control over the levers of government” to threaten rivals and gain leverage in business negotiations.
“Nowhere should the promise of a level playing field be more straightforward than with elected government — yet the Norcross Enterprise extorted property and coerced action by intimating to its victims that, unless they did what George Norcross wanted, ‘they would forfeit any potential business opportunity’ in Camden and indeed suffer harm at the hands of the City,” they wrote.
They also rejected Norcross’ claim that many of the charges — which are based in part on allegations that date to 2012 — are time-barred under state law. They said the Norcross-led racketeering conspiracy continued to profit from their illegal activities to this day — chiefly through the obtaining and selling of tax credits tied to many of the business deals implicated in the indictment.
Also charged in the case are Norcross’ brother Philip, CEO of the law firm Parker McCay; former Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd; William Tambussi, an attorney who has represented Norcross and local government entities; and businessmen Sidney R. Brown and John J. O’Donnell, who partnered with Norcross on waterfront development deals. Each has pleaded not guilty.
The Attorney General’s Office on Friday also responded to the defense team’s disclosure last week of a 2023 letter from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia showing that federal prosecutors declined to pursue a case against Norcross last year.
Lawyers for Tambussi wrote in a court filing that the letter said Norcross and his codefendants “had committed no crime” and cast the current case against them as one built on evidence previously rejected by federal authorities.
The AG’s Office noted that the letter included no such language. “That defense counsel would suggest that the federal prosecutors’ letters say ‘no crime’ occurred signals his intent to circumvent the legal process and indoctrinate the press, the public, and, worst of all, the prospective jury pool, with a slanted version of the investigations,” prosecutors wrote.
They added that the attorney general’s probe “generated new evidence entirely distinct from” other investigations by federal prosecutors in Philadelphia and New Jersey.
Read the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office’s filing: