A New Jersey Democratic power broker pleads not guilty to state racketeering charges

TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — The New Jersey Democratic power broker charged with racketeering by the state attorney general pleaded not guilty Tuesday to charges he threatened people whose properties he sought to take over and orchestrated tax incentive legislation to benefit organizations he controlled.

George E. Norcross III and four other co-defendants appeared in state Superior Court in Mercer County to enter their pleas in response to Attorney General Matt Platkin’s criminal charges unsealed last month. They all pleaded not guilty.

“My client emphatically states that he is not guilty,” Norcoss’ attorney Michael Critchley told Judge Peter Warshaw.

A sixth co-defendant sent a letter to the judge saying his lawyer is currently involved in another trial and hasn’t entered a plea yet, Warshaw said.

The charges, brought by a Democratic attorney general, against a longtime influential Democrat put the state’s dominant political party under scrutiny in an election year and as the state’s senior U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez is on trial in New York on unrelated federal bribery charges.

In a sign of how contentious the trial could be, the prosecutors and defense attorneys went back and forth Tuesday over nearly 14,000 pages of documents the state has yet to turn over to the defendants as required under the rules. The attorney general’s office sought to subject those documents to an order barring their distribution to third parties, like the news media, while the defense argued there shouldn’t be any such order.

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