New Jersey prosecutors are dropping racketeering charges against Democratic power broker George E. Norcross III, ending a high-profile case that law enforcement officials had framed as a reckoning on the state’s culture of corruption.
Acting Attorney General Jennifer Davenport, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Mikie Sherrill, will not appeal a January appellate court ruling that upheld a judge’s decision to dismiss charges against Norcross and five codefendants, the attorney general’s office said Tuesday.
Davenport could have asked the state Supreme Court to review the Appellate Division’s decision, but prosecutors concluded that their resources “would be best spent on other matters,” Sharon Lauchaire, a spokesperson for the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office, said in a statement.
A three-judge panel said in a Jan. 30 decision that several of the racketeering conspiracy and extortion charges were time-barred under the statute of limitations. Other counts failed to state a crime, were untimely, or both, the panel said.
Norcross, 69, is a former longtime member of the Democratic National Committee, founder of insurance brokerage Conner Strong & Buckelew, and chair of Cooper University Health Care. He was accused of using threats of economic and reputational harm — and his purported control of Camden’s government — to obtain valuable property on Camden’s waterfront from a developer and a nonprofit.
His spokesperson on Tuesday portrayed the case against Norcross — announced in June 2024 by then-Attorney General Matthew J. Platkin — as a politicized abuse of the law similar to the Trump Justice Department’s targeting of perceived enemies.
“We always knew that Matt Platkin brought this case for reasons other than its legal merits — and now multiple judges and Platkin’s successor as AG agree the allegations simply weren’t true,” Norcross spokesperson Dan Fee said in a statement.
“The question now is whether Platkin’s supporters who cheered him on will take a serious look at what he did and whether other authorities will do the same,” he said. “We will certainly be making the case that he and anyone else who used lawfare against George should be held to account, no differently than Pam Bondi and her DOJ should.”
Platkin, who was appointed to the post by Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy, has denied pursuing the case for political reasons. He noted on Tuesday that the case “was presented to a grand jury by career prosecutors over several months.”
“Out of respect for the men and women who do brave work holding corruption to account, I won’t comment further — other than to say I remain proud to have supported their efforts at a time when trust in government is at an all-time low and I will never apologize for believing that everyone should be held to the same standards, no matter how powerful they may be,” Platkin said in a statement.
Notwithstanding the decision to drop charges, Lauchaire said the attorney general’s office “remains committed to prioritizing public corruption prosecutions in this time of deepening mistrust in government.”
“Wrongdoing by public officials undermines faith in our institutions, and the public rightfully demands and deserves that officials perform their duties with integrity and in accordance with the law,” she said. “We will never shy away from holding public officials accountable when they betray the public’s trust and behave unlawfully.”
The prosecution faced an earlier setback last February, when a Superior Court judge found that the charges were not timely and said that even if the allegations in the indictment were proven true, they amounted to hard bargaining in real estate deals and did not cross the line into unlawful threats.
Prosecutors appealed that ruling, arguing that the judge should review evidence presented to the grand jury before deciding whether the indictment was valid.
The appeals court affirmed the trial judge’s order, though the panel focused on the statute of limitations violations and largely sidestepped the question of whether the threats underpinning the indictment met the legal requirements for alleging conspiracy to commit extortion.
In addition to Norcross, prosecutors are dropping charges against his brother Philip Norcross, CEO of the law firm Parker McCay; attorney William Tambussi; former Camden Mayor Dana L. Redd; Sidney R. Brown, CEO of logistics firm NFI; and John J. O’Donnell, an executive at residential developer the Michaels Organization.
“We are pleased and gratified that this misguided, baseless prosecution has been finally laid to rest,” said Kevin H. Marino, a lawyer for Philip Norcross.
Henry Klingeman, an attorney for Redd, said his client “is relieved that this unjust and unnecessary ordeal is over.” The former mayor has “continued her unswerving commitment to bettering Camden,” Klingeman said.
Brown said he was “innocent of these baseless charges” and added that Tuesday’s decision showed “justice was carried out based on the facts.”
“Since its inception, this case was unfounded and attacked those of us who believed in the future of a thriving Camden,” the NFI CEO said in a statement.
Tambussi’s lawyers, Jeff Chiesa and Lee Vartan, said their client “engaged in the routine practice of law.” They said Platkin’s attempted prosecution “did damage to the profession” and “was rightly rejected by both courts.”
