Posted on 08/16/2004 10:39:09 PM PDT by conservative in nyc
RENTON, Aug. 16 - The federal investigation into Gov. James E. McGreevey's accusation that a former aide tried to extort him by threatening to reveal their extramarital affair is now focusing on a strange, last-minute offer to keep the matter secret if the governor agreed to approve a plan for a new medical school in New Jersey, according to three people involved in the inquiry.
Just 10 minutes before Mr. McGreevey was scheduled to announce his resignation last Thursday, a member of his inner circle received a telephone call from a lawyer who identified himself as an intermediary for Golan Cipel, the aide who was threatening to sue the governor for sexual assault and harassment.
The caller, Timothy Saia, reportedly said that Mr. Cipel would agree not to go public with his charges if Mr. McGreevey granted a charter to Touro College, a New York City institution that has been unsuccessfully seeking to open a medical facility in New Jersey for months.
State Senator Raymond J. Lesniak, the McGreevey confidant who received the call, declined to comment on the conversation. But Mr. McGreevey's lawyers reported the offer to the F.B.I., and federal officials involved with the case said that the authorities were now trying to determine whether it was an attempt to extort the governor.
The telephone call and reference to Touro add a new level of intrigue to the convoluted circumstances surrounding Mr. McGreevey's stunning decision to resign and announce that he was "a gay American." Mr. Cipel, who left the McGreevey administration two years ago and has worked as a political consultant, briefly worked for a media relations company that was hired last year to help Touro get a charter.
But Franklyn H. Snitow, a lawyer for Touro College, said that Mr. Cipel stopped working on the school's behalf in January 2004. He added that administrators at the college had never heard of either Mr. Saia or Mr. Cipel's lawyer of record, Allen M. Lowy.
"Touro College has no knowledge of, has never authorized, or had any communications with anyone regarding Cipel's alleged demand that Touro be given a charter," he said in a telephone interview. "Nor did Touro College ever authorize Timothy Saia to speak on its behalf."
In an interview on Saturday in Manhattan, Mr. Lowy acknowledged that both he and Mr. Cipel knew Mr. Saia, but he insisted that nothing about Touro College had ever been raised in 20 days of settlement talks with Mr. McGreevey's lawyers.
Mr. Lowy said that Mr. Saia had attended one negotiating session in Manhattan on Aug. 9, three days before Mr. McGreevey announced he was resigning. Mr. Lowy said neither he nor Mr. Cipel had asked Mr. Saia to become involved in the talks.
"I thought maybe the governor's people invited him," Mr. Lowy said.
But another person involved in the discussions, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Mr. Saia insisted that Mr. Lowy asked him to relay the last-minute offer to Mr. McGreevey's advisers. Mr. Saia reportedly was an acquaintance of Mr. Cipel and became involved in the case when he heard that Mr. Cipel was considering legal action against the governor.
The surprising mention of Touro College made some of the governor's advisers question whether Charles Kushner, a major McGreevey campaign contributor who was recently charged with hiring prostitutes to silence a witness in a fund-raising investigation, might have played a role in Mr. Cipel's threat to file suit.
Mr. Kushner, a developer, is on the advisory board of Touro College and has been an enthusiastic supporter of the school's plan to open a New Jersey medical school. He helped raise money for the planned school and hoped to have it named after his late mother. He also has ties to Mr. Cipel, whom he once employed and whom he sponsored for his visa when Mr. Cipel came to the United States from Israel.
But Mr. Kushner's lawyer said he had nothing to do with Mr. Cipel's plans to file a lawsuit or any of the settlement discussions it triggered. His lawyer, Ben Brafman, said Mr. Kushner was stunned when he heard news reports that Touro College's plans to move to New Jersey had been raised during the negotiations about the possible sexual harassment suit against the governor.
"Charles Kushner had absolutely nothing to do with this," Mr. Brafman said. "He hasn't seen Golan in years."
Touro College now has 29 campuses, mostly in the New York area but also in California, Moscow and Israel. It was founded in 1970 in Midtown Manhattan by Dr. Bernard Lander, a former dean at Yeshiva University who wanted a secular-studies college aimed at a largely Jewish audience.
While its 16,000 student body is still heavily Jewish and heavily Orthodox, it also has more diverse campuses like one in East Harlem where most students are black or Hispanic.
In its effort to get approval of a charter, Touro was also represented by former Senator Robert G. Torricelli, who now works as a political consultant. Mr. McGreevey's advisers said that in recent months, Mr. Torricelli and his aides had been unsuccessfully trying to arrange meetings with the administration to push for the project.
Mr. Torricelli did not return calls seeking comment Monday, but his aide, Sean Jackson, told The Associated Press that they were not involved in Mr. Cipel's efforts.
"Neither Senator Torricelli nor myself have ever spoken or met with Mr. Cipel," he said.
Jason George and Robert Hanley contributed reporting for this article.
This is getting weird.
Only the most corrupt politicians, including the Clintons, would be connected with the corrupt Touro College.
Sex tape artist abd campaign financier, Charles Kushner, also had been pressing for NJ to grant a charter for Touro College to open a medical school in the state.
He raised money for the school......and the medical school was one of the issues on the table after Cipel threatened to file a sex-harassment suit against McGreevey.
The Touro scam is so cunningly cute.
Clearly, the thieves needed a way to launder millions of dollars to pay Cipel's demands for hush money.
Some point to the NJ state budget and several multi-million items labeled unspecified, and McGay's needlessly borrowing over $1 billion to balance the budget.
Master extortionist Kushner (who videotaped hookers he's hired in sex acts to obstruct justice) sits on Touro's, board and Touro hired criminal mastermind Torricelli's firm to represent Touro College in the NJ medical school pitch.
Now this is a perfect set-up to launder illegal money. Would work something like this: The named principals would submit phony financial statements to the state for
say $150 million. But actually Touro needs say $100 million. The difference is hush money.
The hush money is transferred to a friendly bank under accounts labeled Touro Building Fund or Staff Accounts.....and friendly bankers (Kushner owns NorCrown bank) would ensure that only Kushner would have access to these accounts.
A medical school? Easy picking's for these criminals. Corrupt Touro officials, crooked Kushner and Torricelli are greedily eyeing all that wonderful federal Medicaid money that would flow in to a medical college.
A FReeper posted that his father worked for Touro but quit in disgust at Touro's crooked activities. Seems Touro enrolled hundreds maybe thousand of so-called Russian refugees claiming Jewish heritage (even if only one out of four grandparents was Jewish) then applied for Pell grants (and otjer tax-paid goodies). The so-called leeches/students never even showed up for class but Touro collected the avalanche of Pell Grant money which was intended for underprivileged Americans.
Touro also leeches tax monies in the form of state and federal grants.
And don't forget the Clintons pardoned four New Square Hasidics who ripped off Pell grants for about $94M --completely looting the fund---signing up people who never even existed. As a quid pro quo, these same Hasidics who claim to be pro-life and anti-gay then promptly voted pro-abortion, Hillary into the US Senate.
more things that make you go hmmmm
That rat's nest needs some serious cleaning out.
"Myself, says me to myself, if himself was here he would agree with herself that the boyo is bonkers..."
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