After dismissals, these are the two defendants left in Paterson's election fraud case
PATERSON — In a case that brought infamy to Paterson on the national political stage, half of the four suspects accused of election fraud in the 2020 City Council races have gotten off the hook.
The New Jersey Attorney General’s Office allowed Abu Razyen to enter the pretrial intervention probationary program in September 2022. A month after that, the state dismissed the charges against Shelim Khalique. Officials in Trenton kept that information quiet until this past week, when they acknowledged those outcomes in responding to questions from Paterson Press.
The Attorney General's Office won’t explain why those charges were set aside, saying Tuesday that it “doesn’t comment on prosecutorial decisions.”
Razyen and Khalique were the small fish in the state investigation. They were campaign workers charged with fewer and lesser crimes than the two big-fish, high-profile defendants: current City Council members and recent mayoral candidates Michael Jackson and Alex Mendez.
Michael Jackson and Alex Mendez maintain their innocence
Jackson and Mendez repeatedly have professed their innocence, expressing confidence they will be exonerated when their cases go to trial. But the legal proceedings have been stalled by frequent postponements, and it’s almost time for the two of them to begin collecting signatures on nominating petitions for their possible runs for reelection next May.
On Monday afternoon, a judge is scheduled to decide whether Jackson must give state investigators the passcode for his cellphone, which they seized several months ago in a probe looking into his allegedly tampering with a witness in the election case. Meanwhile, Mendez next month has a court session in which his trial date may be set.
The recent revelations that the Razyen and Khalique election charges have gone away raise questions about what impact those developments will have on the state’s cases against Jackson and Mendez.
Some political insiders are speculating that Razyen and Khalique will cooperate with the Attorney General's Office against Jackson and Mendez — something Khalique has told Paterson Press he is not doing. Others say the dismissal of the charges against the small fish may be a sign of weakness in the state’s case against the two big fish.
The state announced the charges against the four men in June 2020, just days before Jackson and Mendez were going to take the oath of office. Top-ranking officials issued forceful statements that called the accused “criminals” even though none of them had been convicted.
“Today’s charges send a clear message: If you try to tamper with an election in New Jersey, we will find you and we will hold you accountable,” said Gurbir Grewal, attorney general at the time. “We will not allow a small number of criminals to undermine the public’s confidence in our democratic process.”
The press release depicted the case as one big package of Paterson corruption. But none of the hundreds of pages of court documents made public so far makes any mention of any conspiracy, collusion or cooperation among the four men. The criminal charges, probable cause affidavits and indictments all read like four separate cases, with each set of accusations focusing on one defendant without naming anyone else.
In a sense, that separateness reflects the nature of the ward elections that were the focus of the probe — Jackson won the 1st Ward seat; Khalique and Razyen were campaigning for Shahin Khalique, the accused’s brother who won the 2nd Ward seat; and Mendez prevailed in the 3rd Ward race. After the criminal charges were filed, a judge nullified Mendez’s victory, but he ended up winning the seat anyway in a special election five months later.
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What are the accusations?
Thirty months have gone by since the Attorney General's Office announced the Jackson and Mendez indictments, which came nine months after the original charge.
Both men are accused of violating a state law that prohibits candidates from delivering vote-by-mail ballots and another law banning anyone from delivering more than three mail-in ballots.
Jackson also has been charged with allegedly taking a voter’s mail-in ballot that had not been filled out or sealed and delivering it to the election board sealed.
Mendez has been charged with submitting registration forms for two people to vote in the 3rd Ward when he allegedly knew they lived elsewhere.
The entire May 2020 election was conducted through mail-in ballots because it took place in the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. The attorney general's press release said the state started the probe after hundreds of Paterson ballots were found mailed together, one batch in a mailbox in Haledon and another in a Paterson mailbox.
But none of the criminal charges make any reference to the bundling of ballots found in the two mailboxes.
Joe Malinconico is editor of Paterson Press. Email: editor@patersonpress.com
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Paterson NJ election fraud case: Alex Mendez, Michael Jackson charged
