Getting Menendez '82 tesimonty unsealed wont be easy for Kean

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Published in the Politics NJ, Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Getting Menendez testimony in '82 Musto trial
unsealed won't be an easy lift for Kean

By BILL ALBERS
PoliticsNJ.com

JUNE 20 - Hoping to move past an embarrassing few couple days of media coverage, the campaign of State Senator Thomas H. Kean, Jr. (R-Westfield) has reiterated its call for U.S. Senator Robert Menendez (D-Union City) to release the Grand Jury testimony dating back to the 1982 trial of State Senator, Union City Mayor, and Menendez political mentor William V. Musto.

The bold move first came only twenty-four hours after the Menendez campaign ambushed Kean with a scathing 'those in glass houses shouldn't throw stones' attack at a joint event in Atlantic City, hitting the State Senator for voting against a pay-to-play ban and for taking money from the casino industry for his federal campaign when such contributions are banned for state campaigns.

Musto has played a key figure in the messaging of both the Menendez and Kean campaigns. Menendez has taken to invoking Musto's name to tout his anti-corruption credentials – he highlighted his testifying against the Mayor during his campaign kickoff, an act he says he performed because Musto was "betraying everything (Menendez) believed."

The Kean campaign has been using Musto's name to paint a different picture, claiming that Menendez stood by the Mayor in the early days to advance his career, even when Musto's corruption was evident.

"Despite the fact that Mayor Musto had been indicted twice, first in 1977 and again in 1981, Menendez supported him for re-election to the State Senate," noted Kean this past weekend.

The implication or hope on the part of the Kean campaign, of course, is that there's going to be something in the Grand Jury that is seriously damaging to Menendez's campaign and credibility – that Menendez essentially traded his testimony against Musto for a deal with prosecutors.

"Did Bob Menendez stand up to corruption when he saw it, as he says he did? Or was he subpoenaed – an unwilling participant in a trial he now lauds as a cornerstone of his public statements on reform?" asked Kean spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker on Monday.

It's a calculated gamble that the Kean campaign seems happy to make. If something turns up in the testimony that hints at a deal or that Menendez was at one point under investigation, it could be seriously damaging to the image the Senator's campaign likes to paint of the Union City reformer who took on corruption and testified against his own boss because it was the 'right thing to do.'

There are only a small handful of people who know what's in that sealed testimony, but the Menendez campaign has been all too willing to call the Kean Campaign's bluff – if that's what it is, of course – stating that they're willing to make the testimony public record if they can.

"We don't know if it's possible (to unseal it) or if (the testimony) still exists, but we welcome unsealing it if it does," said Matt Miller, spokesman for Senator Menendez.

"Bob Menendez's testimony put a corrupt politician in jail," Miller added, noting that his campaign would be more than eager to continue the discussion about the Senator's involvement in the case.

According to one legal expert, who asked not to be identified because of the political nature of the case, the testimony is all but certain to still exist in storage somewhere, but getting it unsealed could be quite tricky.

"I don't believe that a witness can, on their own, unseal their testimony," the lawyer said, pointing out that testimony can contain sensitive information about other witnesses. "It's not as if it's Menendez's Grand Jury testimony, it's the Grand Jury's testimony."

The fact that the testimony is approximately twenty-five years old, however, and the fact that a number of the key players, Musto included, have passed could make courts more willing to unseal the testimony.

"It really depends on what's in the testimony," the lawyer added.

Getting the records unsealed, even if the Menendez campaign is agreeable to it, could be a lengthy process. But the Menendez and Kean campaigns are more than eager to bash each other over the head with the issue in the meantime.

"There is a crisis of confidence in Mr. Menendez, and New Jerseyans deserve straightforward answers about his early political history that he cites as evidence of his reform credentials," Hazelbaker answered back. "If he's calling for transparency in government, then it's only appropriate that he unseal the grand jury testimony for all twelve of his grand jury visits."

"It's a sleazy attempt to make things up and launch nasty smears," Miller answered back, criticizing Kean for questioning Menendez's ethics and for being unwilling to do it to his face. "He's happy to stand behind surrogates and launch attacks from afar, but when he had the chance to stand behind his words, he runs away."

http://www.politicsnj.com/default0406.asp

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