The Office of Public Integrity and Accountability (OPIA), a division of New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin’s administration, has once again found itself at the center of controversy. This time, it’s the dismissal of a high-profile racketeering indictment against Democratic powerbroker George E. Norcross and his associates by Superior Court Judge Peter Warshaw.
This is the same OPIA that spent eight years relentlessly pursuing Lakewood’s Rabbi Osher Eisemann in a prosecution so baseless it could only be described as a witch hunt—mercifully ended by Judge Joseph Paone last year. The Norcross fiasco is just the latest chapter in OPIA’s growing saga of overreach, incompetence, and questionable ethics.
On Tuesday, Judge Warshaw threw out a 112-page indictment against Norcross, former Camden Mayor Dana Redd, attorney William Tambussi, and others, calling it “manifestly deficient and facially defective.” The charges, which alleged a criminal enterprise built on threats and coercion to secure Camden waterfront property and tax breaks, didn’t hold water. Warshaw ruled that the allegations “do not constitute extortion or criminal coercion as a matter of law,” there was no racketeering enterprise, and the charges were too old to prosecute anyway. It was a total rebuke of OPIA’s case, leaving Platkin scrambling to announce an appeal while doubling down on his anti-corruption rhetoric.
Sound familiar? It should. This is the same playbook OPIA used against Rabbi Eisemann, dragging him through nearly a decade of legal hell before a judge finally pulled the plug. In both cases, OPIA leaned on grandiose narratives of corruption, only to have courts expose their accusations as legally hollow.
Let’s rewind to the Eisemann case, where OPIA’s obsession with high-profile scalps turned into an eight-year nightmare for Rabbi Eisemann, who selflessly founded SCHI, a school for children with developmental disabilities. Starting around 2018, OPIA accused Eisemann of misusing school funds—charges like money laundering and public corruption that painted him as a criminal mastermind. What followed was a relentless prosecution, including a 2019 trial where he was acquitted on most counts but convicted of money laundering, only for that conviction to unravel when it emerged OPIA withheld exculpatory evidence.
After years of legal wrangling, Judge Paone had had enough and pulled the plug.
Attorney Lee Vartan, who also defended Tambussi in the Norcross case, called it a “complete vindication” for Eisemann, while critics labeled it a witch hunt from the start. Sound like a pattern? Because it is.
The Norcross and Eisemann cases aren’t isolated flukes—they’re symptoms of OPIA’s systemic rot. In Norcross, Judge Warshaw dismantled the state’s argument that political influence equals criminality, noting that “threats” in business dealings aren’t inherently illegal. Defense attorneys, like Michael Critchley, blasted OPIA for trying to “criminalize everyday business dealings,” while Tambussi’s lawyers called it a “vanity prosecution” that threatened their client’s life and livelihood.
Platkin’s response? A defiant promise to appeal, cloaked in sanctimonious talk about “restoring faith in our institutions”—ironic, given that OPIA’s blunders are doing the exact opposite.
Back in the Eisemann case, OPIA’s own detective testified that no crime occurred—just a bookkeeping error—yet the agency pressed on, wasting taxpayer dollars and trying to ruin a man’s reputation – and his life, by tossing him into prison. Both cases showcase OPIA’s knack for building castles in the air, only to watch them crumble under judicial scrutiny.
As Critchley asked after the Norcross ruling, “Who investigates the investigators?” Good question—because OPIA clearly can’t police itself.
Attorney General Platkin wants us to believe he’s New Jersey’s corruption-busting hero, declaring after the Norcross dismissal, “I won’t back down from that fight.” But his track record, via OPIA, tells a different story: one of hubris, ethical lapses, and a knack for picking fights it can’t win. He claims corruption “breeds a loss of trust in government,” yet it’s OPIA’s string of scandals—Norcross, Eisemann, and beyond—that’s eroding public faith.
When judges keep tossing your cases for lack of evidence or prosecutorial misconduct, maybe the problem isn’t the system—it’s you.
So lets see how Avi Schnall votes on the articles of impeachment against Platkin
But the Lakewood “Askanim” will again tell us to elect the Democrat candidates because “they are good for the community”.