Michele Brown

Former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie kept gubernatorial politics out of his initial statement on the resignation of First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michele Brown, leaving the task to his running mate for lieutenant governor, Monmouth County Sheriff Kim Guadagno. 

Brown resigned a week after her ongoing repayment of a $46,000 loan Christie gave her two years ago was first reported.  

"Michele Brown is a career prosecutor who has worked at the U.S. Attorney's office for 18 years, serving both Democratic and Republican presidents.  Michele's long and distinguished record of public service is impressive, and during that time she's shown herself to be a fair and respected federal prosecutor among judges, adversaries and her peers," said Christie.  "Her efforts have been instrumental to all the success the U.S. Attorney's office has had and her work ethic, determination and outstanding legal background will be missed by all those she has worked with over the years.  I know Michele will continue to be a success at whatever she chooses for her next challenge.”

It was Guadagno who blamed Governor Corzine for impugning Brown and forcing her to end "an acclaimed career."

"It is despicable that Jon Corzine has stooped so low to try to win re-election that he's aimed the negative attacks of his hired guns on a dedicated public servant who made it her life's mission to serve the people of New Jersey as a corruption-fighter," she said.  " As candidates willingly running for office, we expect this kind of mudslinging, but we don't expect it to be aimed at someone who has made a career serving both Democrats and Republicans in the best interest of the public good. Jon Corzine should be ashamed that he has smeared a respected federal prosecutor's name and forced her to end an acclaimed career in the sole interest of scoring petty political points."

Governor Corzine's campaign does not want to let the story about Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie's loan to former U.S. Attorney Office subordinate Michele Brown end with her resignation.  

Less than an hour after the news broke of her resignation, Corzine spokeswoman Elisabeth Smith released the following statement:

“Michele Brown’s resignation today does nothing to put to rest questions about Christie’s conduct both in and outside of the U.S. Attorney’s office. Whether it was illegally laying the groundwork for his gubernatorial campaign from the U.S. Attorney’s office with the help of Karl Rove, maintaining a secret financial relationship with the number two at the U.S. Attorney’s office during his campaign, or rewarding political cronies with millions of dollars in no-bid contracts, Christie still must answer to serious legal and ethical questions. He can start by demanding the immediate release of public documents from his tenure as U.S. Attorney as requested by the Corzine campaign.”

Former First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michele Brown, left, and GOP gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michele Brown, who found herself at the center of the contest for governor over a $46,000 loan Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie gave her when he still headed up the office, has resigned, the Star-Ledger reports.

Brown said she did not want to "become a distraction."

"I am extraordinarily proud of all the work we have done and all the good we have accomplished on behalf of the people of this state," Brown wrote in her resignation letter. "I also know how important it is that we continue to pursue our mission, and I do not want to become a distraction from the critically important work we do."

Brown was prosecutor in the office since 1991, predating Christie by a decade.  After Christie was appointed to head the office up, she became close friends with him and his wife, Mary Pat. She was promoted to the No. 2 spot by Christie shortly before he resigned in December, 2008.  

In October, 2007, Christie loaned Brown $46,000 by taking out a mortgage on her house, and she continues to pay him back in monthly installments.  That revelation cost Christie political points as the Cozine campaign seized on it and Christie's failure to disclose it to point to conflicts of interest and weaken him on ethical issues.  

Christie told reporters today that he would not ask Brown to pay the loan off early.

Republicans are hoping that a new Appellate Court ruling that towns which already have satisfied their Mount Laurel and Council on Affordable Housing (COAH) obligations may still be required to consider affordable housing zoning applications will move the focus off of Karl Rove and Michele Brown.  Mount Laurel has always been a great Republican issue, as long as Republicans don't step on their own feet. 

Senate Minority Leader Thomas Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) wants the Legislature to come back into session to overhaul COAH - a move that might annoy at least one of his top supporters.  The Council on Affordable Housing was created in 1985 by his father, who was then on his way to winning 70% of the statewide vote in his bid for re-election as governor.  A year later, Gov. Thomas Kean ignited a firestorm among Republicans by naming the author of the Mount Laurel decision, Chief Justice Robert Wilentz, for a tenured term on the top court.  Earlier this summer, Kean Jr. caught heat from conservatives by being only one of four Senate Republicans to vote for lifetime tenure for Associate Justice Barry Albin, a former partner at Wilentz's old law firm.

State Sen. Raymond Lesniak (D-Elizabeth) thinks that Republicans will be looking for a new gubernatorial candidate before the ballots go to print in early October.  In a NJ Voices Op-Ed, Lesniak opines that First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michele Brown may have attended political meetings with the GOP candidate while Christopher Christie was still U.S. Attorney, suggests that a Justice Department probe of Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra will conclude that "Christie mixed politics and law enforcement," and that Brown gave Christie "a heads up" on the July political arrests.

Just a month ago, there was considerable speculation that Gov. Jon Corzine would be the one to drop out - WNBC-TV's Brian Thompson reported that South Jersey Democratic leader George Norcross was urging the governor to end his re-election bid, and sources say that at least one other powerful Democratic leader had given Corzine until the end of the summer to repair his electoral woes.  Corzine made it clear he had no intention of dropping out, and Republicans close to Christie say he's not going anywhere either.

After a tough week answering questions about his loan to his former employee, career federal prosecutor Michele Brown, Republican gubernatorial candidate Christopher Christie this afternoon tried  to change the subject with an offensive on Gov. Jon Corzine, accusing the Democratic incumbent of engineering an income reporting loophole that allowed major corporations like Enron to hide debt.

When Corzine was CEO of Goldman Sachs in the 1990s, Christie said, he was integral in creating Monthly Income Preferred Securities (MIPS), which provided a way for corporations to make debt look like equity, and later lobbied President Bill Clinton in a letter, also signed by 34 others, against reigning the practice in.

"The Governor, as CEO of Goldman Sachs, personally lobbied to get a tax loophole for Enron to make debt look like equity.  What this did was contribute, as you all know, to the precipitous fall of Enron when things that looked like equity turned out to be debt," said Christie during a conference call with reporters."

Governor Corzine’s campaign today continued to insinuate that there is an improper relationship between Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie and members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which he ran until December of last year.  

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Teaneck), who is running as the Democrats’ candidate for lieutenant governor, said that First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michele Brown – who is currently paying Christie back for a $46,000 mortgage he took out on her house two years ago – should be removed from the task of retrieving the Corzine campaign’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

"The United States Attorney's office is filled with qualified professionals," said Weinberg.  "Based on what we already know and on today's report by the Associated Press that Christie is refusing to answer who he's still in contact with at the U.S. attorney's office and how informed he is about day-to-day activities there, we are simply saying we need someone not caught up in this controversy to work on the FOIA requests."

President Barack Obama submitted his first seven nominations for U.S. Attorneys on June 4.   The U.S. Senate confirmed five of the seven on August 7, but New Jersey's Paul Fishman was not one of them.  The five who were confirmed came from New York (Southern District), Alabama, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Vermont. 

Until the Senate confirms Fishman, which is unlikely to be any earlier than next month, Acting U.S. Attorney Ralph Marra will remain in the post he's held since Christopher Christie resigned on December 1, 2008 to seek the Republican nomination for Governor.  The Associated Press, citing two unnamed sources, reported earlier this week that the Department of Justice is investigating whether Marra made inappropriate public comments during a high profile announcement of public corruption cases that might have boosted the Christie campaign.

Representatives of New Jersey's two U.S. Senators, Frank Lautenberg (D-Cliffside Park) and Robert Menendez (D-Hoboken), continue to predict a smooth confirmation for Fishman, who jointly recommended his appointment to Obama in February.  But Lautenberg and Menendez have not been able to get the Democratic-controlled Senate to move forward on Fishman.  They have not said why.

Democratic State Chairman and Joseph Cryan today filed a complaint against Republican gubernatorial nominee Chris Christie with the Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC).

Cryan (D-Union), who is also an assemblyman, based the complaint on Christie’s failure to disclose interest from a $46,000 loan he gave to current First Assistant U.S. Attorney Michele Brown when she worked under him as executive assistant and counsel.  
    
Christie, who called the omission of the loan from ELEC forms, federal employee disclosure forms and income taxes a mistake and oversight, yesterday filed an amendment with ELEC disclosing the loan.

“Christie continues to fail to live up to the ethical standards he sets for others,” said Cryan.  “He is running for Governor -- failing to report a personal loan to a close colleague is a serious transgression and breaks both federal and state ethics rules.  Christie, of all people should know – he has prosecuted public officials for similar offenses, yet, he dismisses his own unscrupulous behavior as a simply an ‘oversight.’ This situation demands an immediate and thorough investigation.”