“I don’t think what I believe about his first corruption trial is material.”
“Is the standard that you’re saying you and the Governor have is ‘as long as he’s effective, he can do unethical stuff, he just can’t do blatantly illegal cartoonishly-corrupt stuff?”
News12 laid off veteran journlist Alex Zdan this week along with 29 other employees. Alex was one of the only actual journalists left in the state who was unafraid to ask difficult questions. Did his integrity make him more likely to land on the chopping block? Who knows, but if it did, his exchange with outgoing Murphy Administration Chief of Staff George Helmy (I gave you a snipped above) probably didn’t help.
Zdan’s question to Murphy’s #2 represented a fairly simple premise: why did Democrat put up with Bob Menendez’s obviously unethical behavior for so long? Only to finally decide that gold bars were the bridge too far? Murphy is now calling on Menendez to resign but only after the senior senator inflicted untold damage on our national security by allegedly taking bribes as Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman. Helmy repeatedly fell back to the excuse that Menendez was never convicted in his first corruption trial (it wasn’t an aquittal… it was a hung jury) during his exchange with Zdan, but a hung jury isn’t an absolution.
More to the point, the U.S. Senate admonished Menendez for
“knowingly and repeatedly accepted gifts of significant value from Dr. Melgen without obtaining required Committee approval, and that you failed to publicly disclose certain gifts as required by Senate Rule and federal law. Additionally, while accepting these gifts, you used your position as a Member of the Senate to advance Dr. Melgen’s personal and business interests.”
Shouldn’t THAT have been the point when they decided to move on?
And shouldn’t EVERY Democrat in New Jersey be made to answer the same questions as Helmy?
Watch the full interview below, and join me in wishing Alex the best as he moves on to the next phase of his career. His next employer’s gain will undoubtedly be New12’s loss and ours as well if said employer isn’t in the NY/NJ/Philly region.
Helmy, by the way, is moving to a plush post with RWJBarnabas. Sounds about right!
Check out the full #Power and #Politics interview here:https://t.co/2COYa4Na0h
— Alex Zdan (@ActualAlexZ) October 2, 2023
