Jennifer Borg

The defense attorney for convicted former state Sen. Joseph Coniglio (D-Paramus) is trying to force The Record's parent company to turn over notes and recordings from its April editorial board meeting with Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie.

The parent company, North Jersey Media Group, is trying to quash the subpoena.

The legal battle stems from attorney Gerald Krovatin's post-trial motion to dismiss the original federal indictment against Coniglio on the grounds of selective prosecution.

In April, Coniglio, who resigned from the legislature in 2007, was convicted of extortion and mail fraud for steering grants to Hackensack University Medical Center, which employed him as a consultant for $5,500 per month.  Christie was U.S. Attorney during the office's investigation of Coniglio and his subsequent indictment, though he resigned before the trial began.

After reading an April 30 story about Christie's meeting with The Record's editorial board the day before, Krovatin dropped a subpoena on the paper seeking all notes and recordings from the meeting, along with any documents that identified attendees.  The paper's story, he said, contained quotes from Christie that lent credence to his argument that Coniglio was selectively prosecuted.

Update: "The leadership of the Hackensack University Medical Center Board of Governors consulted with the hospital administration and everyone agreed to reverse the decision regarding The Record. We apologize to our patients and our staff for any inconvenience, and we apologize to The Record.  We are putting this incident behind us and moving forward." -- Statement issued by Rubenstein Associates on behalf of the HUMC Board.

Ignoring Mark Twain's advice about not picking fights with people who buy ink by the barrel, the increasingly tone deaf Hackensack University Medical Center (HUMC) will no longer advertise in The Record, and has banned the newspaper from being sold or distributed on hospital property.  The move appears to be retaliatory: The Record ran a story on Sunday that "detailed how various board members help to underwrite Bergen County's Democratic leadership and how several trustees do business with the hospital - a practice prohibited at some North Jersey hospitals." The Record also ran a hard-hitting story this week on contractor Joseph Sanzari, a major donor and HUMC player. 

HUMC may have a stronger case on pulling advertising than it does by banning the newspaper from their property.

The relationship between the hospital and politics was underscored recently by the conviction of former State Sen. Joseph Coniglio (D-Paramus) on federal corruption charges.  HUMC, which was not prosecuted and where one individual received immunity in order to testify, had hired Coniglio as a $5,000-per-month plumbing consultant, a move a jury found was to facilitate a the receipt in millions of dollars in state funds.

The feud between The Record, which actually defied the newspaper industry with an increase in circulation this year, and HUMC can't be good news for Bergen County Democrats.  Michael Kasparian, who succeeded Joseph Ferriero as County Chairman, is also a major player at HUMC, and Bill Maer, a political consultant for the BCDO, is also a HUMC lobbyist.  Kasparian ran on a platform that included a pledge for mandatory ethics training for party leaders; he has since decided that ethics training will be optional.  (And to The Record's credit, they noted that their Vice President and General Counsel, Jennifer Borg, is also on the HUMC board.)

Sources say that the Department of Law and Public Safety is not expected to file criminal charges against Jeff Pillets, a Pulitzer-nominated investigative reporter at The Record, after reviewing a report from the Department of Environmental Protection that Pillets removed public documents.  David Wald, a spokesman for Attorney General Anne Milgram, had no comment on the Pillets matter.  Written statements from Elaine Makatura, a spokesman for DEP Commissioner Lisa Jackson, and Pillets, are essentially the same -- except on one point: the DEP says Pillets initially denied having the missing files, while Pillets says he was a model of cooperation.

The following is a written statement from Makatura, send to PolitickerNJ.com yesterday and today:

North Jersey Media Group Vice-President and General Counsel Jennifer Borg said that, to her knowledge, Bergen Record reporter Jeff Pillets is not under investigation by anyone -- period.

“I am unaware of any investigation being conducted by the state or any other authority.  And to overstate it, nobody at North Jersey media group is aware of any investigation by the state or any other authority.  So there’s nothing for me to respond to,” said Borg. “We have not been contacted by any state or authority, and Jeff has not been contacted by any state or authority.  It’s a non-issue.  And if the state is indeed investigating Jeff, I wish someone would tell us about it.” 

Jennifer Borg, who runs the legal department at The Record and is part of the family that owns the newspaper, continues to decline comment on the state probe of reporter Jeff Pillets, who allegedly removed state documents from the Department of Environmental Protection.  There is speculation that The Record and Pillets has retained a criminal defense attorney -- if the reporter is charged with stealing public documents, he could face time in prison -- but Borg, Pillets and his editor have not responded to numerous inquiries.  It's been a week since Pillets filed a story.