NFI CEO Sidney Brown has added his voice to the legal push to have the New Jersey indictments of him and others tossed out, downplaying his role in the real estate standoff at the heart of the criminal case.
Following on the heels of a motion calling for the charges to be dismissed against all six defendants, Brown has filed his own motion for dismissal, making arguments unique to his involvement in the battle over control of a portion of riverfront real estate in Camden, New Jersey, across the Delaware River from Philadelphia.
The case filed in June by the state’s attorney general’s office has received heavy media coverage in New Jersey. That’s because one of the defendants is George Norcross, who has never held public office or even run for one but is frequently referred to as a “kingmaker” in Democratic Party politics in south New Jersey, including Camden.
Central to Brown’s arguments is that the allegations in the 111-page indictment have only one specific reference to the truckload carrier CEO being actively involved in the effort to have developer Carl Dranoff give up development rights in Camden that Norcross and others (including Brown) sought in part because they came with the prospect of tax credits for new construction. Prosecutors see the effort to pressure Dranoff as criminal and a violation of the state’s racketeering law; Norcross’ attorneys have portrayed it as normal hardball politics. (Dranoff has filed a civil suit against the defendants in the criminal case.)
Only one specific story for Brown
That one occurrence in the indictment citing Brown’s direct involvement was an Oct. 22, 2016, conference call to discuss whether the Norcross group could persuade the city of Camden to use eminent domain to seize some of Dranoff’s development rights, after Dranoff had backed out – or as the Brown motion says, “reneged” – on a deal to have Dranoff sell some of those rights to the Norcross group.
“Mr. Brown is not alleged to have been part of the negotiations or discussions leading up to this conference call, and his alleged contribution to the conference call was limited to one question regarding the goal of the litigation and another about the purpose of the call,” the Brown motion says.
The original indictment says that at that meeting, Norcross had said Camden “ought to condemn his [Dranoff’s] ass and just move on. He’s gonna come under some very serious accusations from the city of Camden, which are gonna basically suggest that he’s not a reputable person. … [Y]ou can never trust him until you get a bat over his head.”
The indictment, drawn heavily from wiretaps, quotes Brown as saying, “Is this the goal here? Let me just make sure: Is the goal here really to try and put some pressure on [Dranoff] to sign what we just tried to get signed?”
The indictment goes on to say that Brown, on the conference call, discussed putting further pressure on Dranoff. “A couple of good things would come out of this,” Brown said. “It puts pressure on Dranoff to come to the table and he hasn’t had any pressure up to this point.”
The statements by Brown caught on wiretap are the only direct statements by him cited in the indictment. There is no shortage of juicy quotes from others, such as Norcross, who is caught on the wiretap dropping the F-bomb in discussing Dranoff.
The entire indictment against Norcross and others is 13 counts. Brown is charged in eight of them.
Attacking the racketeering charge
The first count in the indictment alleges a violation of New Jersey’s racketeering law. Brown’s motion sums up the charge, saying it claims that “Mr. Brown and the other Defendants conspired, with the purpose of promoting and facilitating commission of the crime of racketeering, that one or more of them would engage in racketeering and that one or more of them would aid in the planning, solicitation, and commission of the crime of racketeering.”
Several of the charges in the indictment involve political pressure put on Dranoff by Norcross and others, with Norcross’ fearsome reputation as a power broker looming in the background. After spelling out some of those steps, the Brown motion says the NFI CEO “is not alleged to have had any involvement whatsoever in or any knowledge at all of numerous of the purported aspects of the enterprise.”
As an example, the motion cites the pressure by Norcross and others to have Dranoff give up rights to properties known as Radio Lofts and the L3 complex, which were not connected to the development of the Camden office building where NFI now has its headquarters, Triad1828, and where Brown has an ownership interest. “The indictment also nowhere alleges that Mr. Brown had any involvement in the events that form several critical aspects of the alleged enterprise’s activities” and then refers to the Radio Lofts/L3 dispute.
In the motion, Brown’s attorneys discuss case law on what constitutes a conspiracy under the state’s racketeering laws and state that Brown’s actions do not meet that legal definition.
The attorneys early in the motion take on the racketeering charge, which they say “fails — not as a matter of fact, but of law — because the Indictment fails to state that [racketeering] offense as well. Instead, its allegations, limited as they are to Mr. Brown having participated in a single meeting, do not come close to adequately alleging his participation in an enterprise and certainly do not and cannot — again, strictly as a matter of law — amount to his having done so through a ‘pattern of racketeering activity,’ a fundamental element of the offense.”
In a prepared statement, Lawrence S. Lustberg, a partner at Gibbons P.C., which is representing Brown, reiterated that theme.
“The indictment fails to describe any crime whatsoever, and that is especially true regarding Mr. Brown as to whom there is absolutely no evidence that he did anything wrong, let alone participated in some kind of racketeering enterprise, as the Indictment somehow alleges,” Lustberg said.
In a footnote, the motion cites the five charges of the 13 against the wider group that omit Brown as a defendant as another argument to put some distance between him and the group’s activities. But that push for separation does not come across as a significant effort to fully distance Brown from the others in the indictment, which includes Norcross’ brother and a former mayor of Camden. Brown’s motion says he “fully supports” the motion for dismissal that includes all the defendants, including Brown.
Since the initial arraignment of the defendants and their not guilty pleas (which Brown was not able to attend though he entered his own not guilty plea several weeks later), attorneys for Norcross and others have made the same basic argument: What is the crime?
Brown’s motion, in its first paragraph, comes back to that point. “Even if every single allegation of the 111-page Indictment is taken as true, what is alleged does not describe any crime whatsoever, let alone the offenses of extortion and official misconduct that are at the heart of the Indictment,” it says.
Brown has not made any public statements about the indictment. His separate arraignment lasted minutes.
But the motion describes Brown as “stunned” by the charges. Given what his attorneys see as a weak case that any criminal activity has occurred, prosecuting Brown “is not justified given [his] lifetime of extraordinary business success, characterized always by integrity, generosity and genuine caring for his community, including Camden, New Jersey,” the motion says.
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