"I'm angry," said [State Sen. Jim] Whelan. "There's a lot of us - most of us in public service - who do it the right way. And then there's this behavior: greedy and stupid and arrogant."There is nothing that leads me to believe that Jon Corzine or his office will be touched directly by this stuff," Whelan added. "I'm not sure him stepping down would make sense at this point."
Sorry, I got off track. My purpose here is not to get into the inevitable roller derby of New Jersey politics. It is instead to wonder aloud about what must be a very weird situation to find oneself in.
One of the politicians picked up in the sting, Peter Cammarano, was elected Mayor of Hoboken just last fall. He'd only been in office for a few months. In fact, his campaign website is still up. Feel free to gawk.
The Times reports that the investigation took two years, although the public corruption component was incorporated later. Even assuming a huge once-in-a-lifetime break, a case of this magnitude would, I assume, require a lot of time to put together. More than a fews months I'd guess.
In other words, last November, somewhere in New Jersey a team of investigators must've been aware of Cammarano's corruptibility. Heck, it's even possible one of the investigators was one of his constituents. They had to watch the election, maybe receive campaign literature or solicitations for donations, knowing full well that the people of Hoboken were going to elect a guy who they had every intention to arrest for public crimes.
How surreal must that be? I'm not a lawyer or an investigator (though I did do asset protection at Sears way back when) so maybe such scenarios are common and I just don't realize it.
Think about that the next time you see some Dark Suits wandering around the FBI building (which is still super ugly).
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