In 2016, federal authorities in Philadelphia tapped George Norcross’s phones for months as part of a wide-ranging investigation into his ties to Philadelphia labor leader John Dougherty, suspicions of money laundering involving fundraising for a concert at the Democratic National Convention, and allegations potential abuse of the New Jersey tax credit program, as disclosed in court documents Wednesday.
But the U.S. attorney’s office ultimately brought no charges and concluded last year it would not pursue a federal case.
“Based on a review of the available admissible evidence, the applicable law, the likelihood of a successful trial and our office’s prosecutorial standards, we believe this case should not be the subject of a federal prosecution,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney KT Newton. – he wrote in an April 2023 letter to one of the FBI agents handling the case.
That letter — and hundreds of pages of documents detailing the agents’ discontinued investigation — were released Wednesday as part of a lawsuit filed by a Norcross co-defendant in a racketeering case against the New Jersey energy broker and five key allies.
Although The Inquirer reported on the existence of a prior federal investigation and the FBI’s tapping of Norcross’s phone in 2018, the documents filed Wednesday revealed for the first time what initially piqued the FBI’s interest.
“Intercepted telephone calls also demonstrated Norcross’s influence over numerous New Jersey politicians,” FBI Special Agent Jason Blake wrote in a partially redacted July 2016 statement supporting the wiretapping request.
The documents made public on Wednesday do not indicate whether or how the investigation conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia evolved in the years between the 2016 wiretaps and the official decision to close the case last year.
Still, Norcross – an insurance executive, chairman of the board of Cooper University Health Care and a longtime Democratic leader in South Jersey – argues that the decision by federal prosecutors in Philadelphia not to bring an indictment exposes significant weaknesses at the heart of New Jersey. The current case of Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin .
In June, a grand jury indicted Norcross and five co-defendants on racketeering and other crimes, alleging they used threats and intimidation to obtain valuable waterfront real estate in Camden from rival developers. They all pleaded not guilty and called for the case to be discontinued. The indictment that Platkin announced in June was based in part on the same wiretap evidence collected during the earlier investigation.
“Only the Attorney General had a different ‘opinion’ based on the exact same evidence,” Lee Vartan and Jeffrey S. Chiesa, attorneys for Norcross co-defendant William Tambussi, said in a statement. “Only one conclusion should be drawn – that the Attorney General puts headlines ahead of prosecutorial standards.”
In Wednesday’s filings, Tambussi’s lawyers noted that they had only received some of the FBI’s wiretapping requests from the 2016 investigation, which they attached to their motion. They demanded full access to these documents so that he and others could prepare to defend themselves in a racketeering case. They noted that some of the same FBI agents and U.S. attorneys who were involved in the earlier federal investigation now work on Platkin’s prosecution team.
“The principal evidence before the grand jury…were 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 issued the indictment, the defendants remain without motions and statements regarding wiretapping,” wrote Tambussi’s lawyers. “Worse still, it is not entirely clear when – or even – defendants will ever receive this discovery.”
A spokesman for the AG’s office said: “We disagree with the conclusion and will respond publicly to the record.”
Although the Platkin case covers much of the same time period and some of the same topics – including New Jersey’s tax credit program and Camden’s waterfront redevelopment – it differs significantly from some of the areas of focus outlined in the FBI’s wiretapping affidavits.
The affidavits show how this federal investigation grew — at least in part — out of an existing investigation into Dougherty, a Philadelphia labor leader who was convicted in 2021 and 2023 of bribery and embezzlement and sentenced to six years in prison.
Records show authorities had already been tapping Dougherty’s phone for more than a year when a federal judge signed a wiretapping order on June 10, 2016, authorizing agents to intercept Norcross’s communications for the first time. Norcross remained the target of wiretaps for at least two subsequent applications, in July and October of that year.
Agents told the judge they were investigating Norcross’s fundraising for Lady Gaga’s concert at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July 2016, including contributions from Local 98, led by Dougherty of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Blake, the FBI agent, told the judge he believed Norcross was trying to “conceal the source of the money” and may have committed money laundering.
Moreover, the agent wrote, there was probable cause to believe that the intercepted communications would represent “official acts contracted by Dougherty to be performed on behalf of George Norcross and any items of value given to Dougherty in return.”
Authorities said they hoped to learn more about Norcross’s involvement in the development of the Camden waterfront through Philadelphia-based Liberty Property Trust and whether Dougherty used his influence on the board of the Delaware River Port Authority to help Norcross acquire the land on which he had results from the declaration, financial interests.
In October 2016, investigators focused on plans by Norcross and his business partners to apply for New Jersey tax credits to finance the construction of an office tower and apartment complex in Camden. Investigators wanted to find out whether Norcross had made false statements to authorities when applying for tax breaks, FBI Special Agent Stephen Rich wrote in another wiretapping request.
Investigators only need to show probable cause – not proof – of a crime to obtain court permission to tap a victim’s phone. It is not uncommon for agents to abandon certain investigative theories or, after obtaining consent and continuing the investigation, find that they are not supported by additional evidence. The documents released Wednesday do not show what evidence, if any, agents discovered through wiretaps to support the theories they presented to the judge.
Ultimately, however, Norcross was not charged in connection with the Dougherty affairs, and his name did not appear during the labor leader’s trials. With Newton’s letter last year, federal prosecutors closed a separate investigation into Norcross. His lawyers denied any wrongdoing and pointed to the fact that no federal charges were brought against him, meaning he did nothing wrong.
The U.S. attorney’s office in New Jersey – with the help of FBI Agent Rich – also reviewed the tax credit case, and in 2018 prosecutors told Norcross’ lawyer, Michael Critchley, in a letter that they had closed the investigation.
This wasn’t the end of the story.
“Undeterred, Mr. Rich crossed back across the river and continued his investigation with the assistance of the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,” Tambussi’s lawyer, Vartan, wrote in a Wednesday filing.
The state Attorney General’s investigation began in 2019, records show. Records show that multiple federal prosecutors and investigators in Philadelphia — including Rich and Newton, who wrote the 2023 brief closing the Philadelphia investigation — have been hired as special state agents under the AG’s Office of Public Integrity and Accountability. Some of them still work on Platkin’s prosecutorial team.
“Although the ‘admissible evidence available’ was not sufficient to meet the Office of the Attorney General’s ‘prosecution standards,’ the exact same evidence was apparently sufficient to meet the Office of the Attorney General’s obviously much lower ‘prosecution standards,'” Vartan and, others wrote, referring to the language used in the 2023 letter.
