Former Al Steele challenger arrested in the same net that snared his opponent

Chauncey I. Brown III, the former Paterson Board of Education president and a long-shot candidate for Assembly last year, was arrested today for allegedly soliciting bribes, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's office.

Brown, a former Paterson fire captain, was arrested this morning at the ambulance company where he worked as an EMT.

The arrest is directly tied to U.S. Attorney Chris Christie’s corruption bust of 11 public officials last September, who were accused of soliciting bribes to influence who received public contracts.

In his Assembly bid last year, Brown, the 35th district’s sole Republican legislative candidate, was initially running against a ticket that included Democrat Al Steele, who was one of those arrested public officials.

Federal authorities accuse Brown of soliciting and accepting $7,000 in bribes in exchange for getting an FBI shell company an insurance contract with the Paterson School Board in 2006.

In its complaint, the U.S. Attorney's office said that it has video and audio of Brown accepting the bribes.  In September, a coorperating witness first gave a $2,000 payment to Brown in Atlantic City, after which they quote him saying “I don’t hink I’ll have any problem bringing you into Passaic County.”  The next month, a coorperating witness and agent allegedly paid Brown an additional $5,000.  

The complaint goes on to claim that Brown advised them to spend a couple minutes at a board of education meeting handing out flyers about the insurance contract and said "its a no-brainer . . The Board should consider [moving] forward and that’s t, I’m out of it . . . [I]ts not gonna be a problem."

Brown was interviewed by the FBI twice after the incident.  On September 14th, the complaint states that he told interviewers “Yes, it was wrong to take money for contracts.” Later, when confronted with video evidence of him accepting the payments by agents, Brown allegedly pointed to the computer screen and said "that's illegal." 

Upon hearing the news of Steele’s arrest in September, Brown told PolitickerNJ that he was "just taken back in shock -- I'm totally caught off guard.”

“Al Steele’s a great guy. Every person is innocent until proven guilty, and my prayers are with his family,” he said.

Brown received the endorsement of the Bergen Record in his Assembly run, and some Republicans initially thought he might have a better-than-average shot in the wake of Steele’s corruption bust. Brown, however, finished with just 6,730 votes to Steele replacement Elease Evans’s 11,749 and Assemblywoman Nellie Pou’s 11,784.

Brown is charged with attempted extortion under cover of official right, and made his first court appearance today where his bail was set at $150,000.