TRENTON, N.J. — The only thing worse than hiring a man who betrayed the public’s trust might be lying about the circumstances behind his hire.
Former Passaic City Councilman Marcellus Jackson did jail time after accepting $26,000 in bribes as payment for influencing the fate of public insurance contracts.
Then he ended up in state government (Phil Murphy’s Department of Education) with a high-paying job and very little explanation except for a promise, from the governor himself, that such hires would be the “new norm.” A probe was demanded. 15 Democrats even signed onto a Republican measure to help prevent other ex-officials convicted of crimes from working their way back into the halls of power.
Now Jackson is gone (he resigned on Friday), and the story of how it happened is just as strange as the hiring itself:
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https://twitter.com/MattFriedmanNJ/status/1045762323238064128
https://twitter.com/MattFriedmanNJ/status/1045809873085181954
https://twitter.com/MattFriedmanNJ/status/1045813536050622464
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Murphy lied.
Just last week, the radical Democrat Governor told state media that Jackson had been hired in July 2018 after a legal review was conducted. Murphy also told reporters “we feel completely comfortable with the process that Marcellus went through” after news of the hire originally broke.
However, on Friday, Attorney General Gurbir Grewal said his office only started looking at Jackson’s hiring last week; Gubir’s review determined that state law prohibited Jackson’s hiriong.
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