Sarah Maslin Nir

“I’m done with this!” the mayor declared, cutting short an explanation of why he believed his challenger’s accusations of voter fraud in the recent Democratic primary — allegations that are being investigated by the state — were false.

The mayor jumped into a car and sped away.

Nine minutes later, he called. Let’s meet on the city’s East Side, he said, where he was campaigning shop to shop.

The change of venue made sense: Ganim is perhaps most at home among the city’s voters. He was Bridgeport’s mayor from 1991 to 2003 and was voted back in 2015, his tenure inconveniently interrupted by the seven years he spent in federal prison on a corruption conviction.

The world of politics is filled with messy local races, acrimonious small-town battles, contested elections and quixotic campaigns.

And then there’s Bridgeport and its mayor, Joe Ganim.

The latest turmoil to hit Connecticut’s largest city, about 60 miles northeast of Manhattan, centers on Ganim’s narrow victory in the Democratic primary last month.

State Sen. Marilyn Moore defeated Ganim at the polls by 4 percentage points, or roughly 350 votes. But Ganim trounced Moore in absentee balloting by more than 600 votes: The final count gave the mayor 5,304 votes to Moore’s 5,034.

An investigation by Hearst Connecticut Media then detailed how some residents at the P.T. Barnum public housing complex and Harborview Towers, a low-income apartment building, said ballot takers pushed them to vote for Ganim. Some claimed that absentee-ballot providers filled out forms for them, or gave them absentee ballots when they did not qualify for them, both of which are illegal under state law.

In late September, the state Elections Enforcement Commission began an investigation into the matter, on the referral of Denise Merrill, the secretary of state.

The commission has issued subpoenas for elections records related to absentee ballots, as well as surveillance videos and visitor logs from P.T. Barnum and Harborview Towers.

“There is a reason that we have absentee ballots, and that has been abused over and over again,” Moore said in an interview. “This is not about Marilyn Moore. This is about an opportunity to break down a system that has kept people disenfranchised for a very long time.”

The matter has also been taken up in Bridgeport Superior Court, as a judge is hearing testimony on a lawsuit claiming a number of instances of voter fraud. The lawsuit, brought by two grassroots groups, Bridgeport Generation Now Votes and PT Partners, seeks to invalidate the primary results and schedule a new primary.

The two groups said they found “patterns of behavior that show repeated violations of the laws regarding the absentee ballot process.”

One of those accused was Beverly Cox, a retired nursing assistant who lives in Harborview Towers and has for many years distributed absentee ballots to her neighbors.

The lawsuit accused her of helping at least two residents fill in applications for absentee ballots, and then instructing them to vote for particular candidates.

Cox, known as Miss Beverly at Harborview, said that supplying absentee ballots was a thankless, laborious task — shuttling applications and then ballots to and from City Hall for her neighbors, many of whom are physically disabled.

“These people in wheelchairs, they can’t get out to voice their opinions,” said Cox, who added that she feared that the scrutiny over absentee ballots would discourage many from filing them. “They’re confusing my people here in the building, and come election time they won’t know how to vote because of this mess.”

On Washington Avenue, two neighbors with physical disabilities joined Cox, who held a wooden paddle with an inscription that suggested its use for corporal punishment.

“It makes me angry because are we not allowed to go and vote like we are supposed to go and vote?” said one of the neighbors, Anthony Brown, as he navigated his motorized wheelchair over a curb. “Why are only the handicapped and the disabled targeted for this? They are taking your rights away from you.”

Ganim downplayed the lawsuit and the investigation by the state elections commission and highlighted the importance of getting absentee ballots to those who need them.

“In this city, you have an inordinate amount of seniors and people who have a challenge in getting to the polls,” he said. “They have a legal right, if they meet the criteria, to vote. Machine votes aren’t weighted more than an absentee vote. A vote is a vote.”

On the day the lawsuit was filed, Ganim’s camp questioned some of Moore’s election tactics, distributing to reporters photocopies of the senator’s ballot petition, with errors — like a couple in which the wife appeared to have signed for both herself and her partner, which is not allowed — highlighted in orange.

Moore, who is still hopeful that a new primary will be ordered, has also begun a write-in campaign for the general election.

“When I talk about people with second chances, I expect people to do better than they did before, right, at least to prove yourself,” she said. “And I’ve just seen so many things happen during his term that I doubt that he’s any different than the person than he was the first time. He showed his true colors, and he went and did it again this time.”

The senator was referring to Ganim’s prison sentence for 16 counts of criminal misconduct, including extortion, tax evasion, racketeering and bribery. That case accused him of lavishing city contracts on his friends in exchange for things like wine and home improvements.

Much of that seemed a distant memory as the mayor walked from restaurant to barbershop to vape shop on East Main Street, until he met a couple outside a Puerto Rican restaurant.

They happened to be suing the city of Bridgeport for what they say was brutality by members of the city’s Police Department, and began admonishing the mayor. Ganim took off.

Attempts to follow him were rebuffed. “You’re going to write something bad about the mayor!” a member of the mayor’s entourage screamed, blocking access to Ganim.

The mayor shrugged and again left. After another invitation to rejoin him was politely declined, the mayor’s spokeswoman, Rowena White, called to follow up.

“The mayor wanted me to call,” she said. “He thought today could have gone better.”

This article originally appeared in

Ex-Con Mayor of Connecticut City Is Faced With New Controversy

BRIDGEPORT, Conn. — Mayor Joseph P. Ganim was standing outside his office on a recent afternoon at the start of a prearranged interview, posing for a portrait photo.

Giuliani, then a Senate candidate, casually mentioned that Judith Nathan, whom he had just described as a “very good friend,” was someone he would now turn to, “more now than maybe I did before.”

It was a fitting way to introduce a relationship made for high tabloid style. He was the king of the city and soon to be “America’s mayor”; Nathan would become his muse, constant counterpart and eventual third wife, married in a pearl and diamond tiara on the lawn of Gracie Mansion.

They presided over box seats at the opera and at Yankee Stadium, as well as over a national tragedy: He comforted a shaken city after the Sept. 11 attacks; she manned call centers for its victims.

Giuliani would become a global brand, a Republican presidential candidate and, most recently, the president’s personal lawyer, using his worldwide speaking engagements to amass millions of dollars, six homes and 11 country-club memberships for the highflying couple.

Were their relationship to ever end, it could do so only in operatic fashion.

“Big performances, big moments, big consequences,” said Marc Mukasey, Giuliani’s former longtime law partner. “There is no dull Rudy.”

Last spring, the Giulianis filed for divorce after 16 years of marriage, setting off a rancorous battle that, like most everything Rudy Giuliani touches, demanded attention.

In caustic legal proceedings this summer, the separated couple has battled over things as prosaic as her kitchen renovations and as rarefied as his splurges — $7,131 on fountain pens and $12,012 on cigars.

“It is beyond me why either party in this case would have an interest in having all of this done publicly,” Justice Michael Katz said at an appearance last year in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. Settling privately, he advised, “would treat their relationship and marriage with more respect than divulging all our dirty laundry out for public consumption.”

Despite the judge’s advice, a trial date has been set for January, and the underlying reason, as it often is, stems from money.

A primary issue is Giuliani’s current income. His wife believes that Giuliani left his law firm, Greenberg Traurig, in 2018, a month after the divorce was filed and chose to work for President Donald Trump pro bono in order to reduce any future alimony.

Giuliani earned $7.9 million in 2016 and $9.5 million in 2017, funding the couple’s roughly $230,000-a-month lifestyle, according to Judith Giuliani’s lawyers. In 2018, the year he began working for the president, Giuliani’s earnings dipped to $6.8 million, and he has suggested that this year’s income will be well below that.

Rudy Giuliani now gives his wife $42,000 a month, as well as covering other bills, including the carrying costs for their properties, as ordered by Katz in February. Judith Giuliani must pay for the landscaping at their home in Southampton.

She says she had no choice but to take him to court, to prove what he is worth financially and get what she believes she is entitled to.

“I feel betrayed by a man that I supported in every way for more than 20 years,” she said in an interview. “I’m sad to know that the hero of 9/11 has become a liar.”

But to hear Rudy Giuliani’s circle and his legal team tell it, Judith Giuliani’s endgame tactics are merely an extension of her personality, which they have not and do not describe kindly.

As long as Rudy Giuliani has been with his now-estranged wife, many among his cadre of loyalists have provided a steady stream of knife-in-the-back impressions to reporters, almost always delivered anonymously.

They portray her as being a social climber through marriage, someone who rose from her background as a nurse by marrying twice before meeting the mayor of New York City.

And once she found her third husband, Judith Giuliani was accused of pushing her new husband’s children and many of his nearest friends away in an effort to control him.

“It seemed overtly apparent to the people that were close to him that she was jealous,” said Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner and Giuliani ally, who spent time in prison for tax fraud. “But there was nothing to be possessive about. He is a public figure, he’s a political figure, and you’re really well taken care of.”

“Every single one of his closest friends,” Kerik continued, “she diminished those relationships and she slaughtered those friendships.”

On a recent day trip in from their Southampton mansion to the midtown office of her lawyer, Bernard Clair, who has represented, among others, Jocelyn Wildenstein in another made-for-tabloid divorce trial (her settlement was reported to be $2.5 billion), Judith Giuliani sat drinking a coffee.

The cup said Dunkin’. “Cops’ and nurses’ coffee,” she said.

She slid a packet of press clippings about her and her husband across the table. On top was a 2006 edition of Women and Cancer magazine, which chronicles her role as her husband’s caregiver as he battled prostate cancer.

“Whatever he asked me to do, I did with him and for him; I loved him,” she said, adding: “I don’t enjoy politics. I enjoyed supporting my husband.”

When Rudy Giuliani learned that he had cancer shortly before that surprise announcement in Bryant Park, his new paramour was there for him; he has referred to her as his “Nurse Nancy.”

After his devastating showings in the 2008 Republican presidential primaries, she said, Giuliani was almost catatonic. She nursed him then, too, hunkered down at her parents’ Florida condo. In 2017, when he was incapacitated after a fall, she nursed him again in Southampton, she said.

She recalled how his posse complained at the time that she pushed away even his security team; according to Judith Giuliani, she wanted to protect her husband’s pride.

“She has put 20 years into this relationship,” said her friend Andrea Ackerman, a real estate agent from whom she has purchased six homes. “She is not folding. Not this time, uh-uh.”

Rudy Giuliani’s personal life seems to disintegrate in roughly decade-and-a-half cycles: His 14-year marriage to his first wife, Regina Peruggi, ended in a comparatively subdued manner in annulment shortly before he became U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York in 1983.

His second marriage, to Hanover, lasted 16 years and went far less quietly: After Giuliani’s startling news conference came more headlines, when Hanover sought and received a legal order barring Nathan from the mayoral residence in 2001.

If there is one regret for Rudy Giuliani as his life once again upends in public, it is that his personal problems end up ensnaring the people around him, he said in an interview. “Everybody’s life around you is being disrupted. You get the pain of that, but also you get the satisfaction of what it means to be in public office — they don’t,” he said. “There is a certain amount of guilt in that.”

Swirled into the current divorce proceedings is more scandal-ready fodder: intimations of Giuliani’s involvement with yet another woman.

In court, Judith Giuliani has claimed that her husband spent $286,532 since their divorce commenced on a woman named Maria Rose Ryan, the chief executive of a small New Hampshire hospital, with whom he has traveled abroad.

Any suggestion that Rudy Giuliani and Ryan were having an affair would be categorically false, according to Ryan’s daughter, Vanessa Ryan, who is Giuliani’s personal assistant.

She said her mother sometimes serves as a consultant for Giuliani. He had brought her in, the daughter said, to close some deals because “she can talk a bum into buying a ham sandwich. She’s a great businesswoman.”

“You think his ex-wife would be happy about that,” Ryan added. “She’s bringing more money.”

Giuliani has also denied any romantic relationship with Ryan’s mother, but the accusation is another echo of the past: Hanover accused him of being intimately involved with a staff member, Cristyne Lategano-Nicholas; they both have consistently denied any improper relationship took place.

Giuliani insisted that his relationship woes did not affect his stewardship as the mayor of New York City, just as they do not affect his ability to assist Trump’s legal defense. If anything, he said, the president’s familiarity with how marital squabbles can be front-page news earned him a fair amount of empathy.

“When you do what I do, and this could speak for most people in public office, or in demanding jobs, you compartmentalize. Believe it or not in a strange way you might even do better” under the duress, Giuliani said. “Because you concentrate harder.”

He continued: “There is a great opera, ‘Pagliacci.’ He finds out — he has a much younger wife — and he sees her kissing another man. He says, ‘I’ve got to go out and laugh, and my heart is breaking, but this is the job I have to do.’ Then he gives a great performance,” Giuliani said.

“Then he kills his lover,” he added. “But I wouldn’t do that.”

Divorce, Giuliani Style: An Ugly Court Battle Unspools for America

NEW YORK — On a spring afternoon in 2000, Mayor Rudy Giuliani used a news conference in Bryant Park to drop a personal bombshell: He was separating from his wife. That was news not only to New York City but also to Donna Hanover, the woman he was married to at the time.

On the other side of City Hall, another possibly current mayor of Mount Vernon, Andre Wallace, occupied a different office.

And in a jail cell across the street sat a third man, who may or may not be the city’s police commissioner. He had just been appointed to the post by Wallace, only to be arrested on suspicion of trespassing when he showed up for his first day of work that morning at the police station — an arrest approved by Thomas, the former and possibly current mayor.

“This is the worst day of my adult life!” the reputed police commissioner, Shawn Harris, said as he was released from jail at 5:30 p.m. on that same day. “And it’s been the worst first day of work that I ever had!”

To say that Mount Vernon, the third-largest city in Westchester County, is in disarray would barely scratch the surface. And at the core of the turmoil is Thomas, a self-described young disrupter who promised to bring fresh perspective to the government.

His tenure, however, was often rocky, and the tipping point came in 2018, when he was accused of stealing more than $12,000 from his campaign committee. Thomas pleaded guilty to charges related to misuse of his campaign funds earlier this month.

As part of his plea agreement with the New York state attorney general’s office, Thomas must vacate office no later than Sept. 30. But the Mount Vernon City Council did not want to wait that long: Citing the City Charter, which held that Thomas’ guilty plea automatically disqualified him from office, the council quickly appointed Wallace, the council president, as acting mayor.

One tiny glitch: Thomas has not budged, claiming his plea agreement permits him to remain mayor.

“This is a fight against dirty politics,” Thomas said, contending that the agreement with the attorney general’s office superseded the City Council’s authority. “I said OK to the attorney general saying Sept. 30.”

Outside his office, police officers stood guard near the oak doors, with “Mayor’s Office” detailed in gold lettering. Thomas sat ensconced inside, a glass chessboard and pieces in front of him, an oil painting of the rapper Nipsey Hussle — who was murdered earlier this year while under investigation by the Los Angeles Police Department — just above him on the wall.

Thomas said the criminal charges had been the result of a vast conspiracy. He said he was railroaded into pleading guilty to a crime he did not commit: “I plead to it because I had two young children, a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old, and I did not trust I would get a fair trial,” he said.

Thomas pleaded guilty July 6 to two misdemeanors, including attempted grand larceny after a joint investigation by the attorney general’s office and the state comptroller found he had used campaign donations to finance his lifestyle. Thomas was found to have used more than $12,500 to pay for things like car payments and rent.

During an interview, Thomas — a Democrat who graduated from New York University’s Stern School of Business — seemed to suggest he may have absent-mindedly spent his donors’ money on himself.

“I’m 30-something years old, I’m putting stuff on my credit card, I’m not rich like Chelsea Clinton, I don’t have it,” he said. “I’m a poor kid from the South Side of Mount Vernon, so I used everything I had.”

Thomas was fined $13,000 and sentenced to a conditional discharge of one year, in which he is prohibited from running for office — all the more reason, perhaps, for him to stay in office as long as he can.

His criminal defense lawyer, Michael Pizzi, said the City Council was wrong in its interpretation, and that Thomas had every right to remain in office until Sept. 30.

Lawrence Porcari, the city’s corporation counsel, concurred, issuing a memo outlining what should be the city’s legal position. “Pursuant to the charter and pursuant to law, Mr. Thomas is the mayor, and he is going to be the lawful mayor until or unless some court of competent jurisdiction decided otherwise,” he said Wednesday.

“I cannot explain or go into whatever might be motivating the City Council, but our belief is what most of what they engaged in or did in the past weeks was unlawful.”

Then again, Porcari’s impartiality could be in question: He was indicted by in May on charges that he directed $365,000 away from the Mount Vernon Board of Water Supply to pay Thomas’ legal bills, and hire a public relations firm.

Controversy has dogged Mount Vernon, a small city that credits itself as the inspiration of the Bill of Rights, and is about 65% African-American. The promised cleanup of its decaying sports park, Memorial Field, has been in limbo for more than a decade; last year, the Justice Department sued the city for violating federal law for its sewer system that dumps raw sewage into the Bronx and Hutchinson Rivers.

In 2014, Thomas’ predecessor as mayor, Ernest D. Davis, pleaded guilty to federal charges for failing to file personal and corporate tax returns, but the City Council did not invoke the charter’s rules then, and he was permitted to finish his term. At the time, Thomas called for Davis to be removed from office.

But little compares to the drama currently seizing the city government, where things were in such flux that staff members in the city clerk’s office needed to print out organizational charts as they tried to explain who in the administration is currently who.

And Wallace was forced to spend a significant part of Tuesday scuttling across Roosevelt Square between City Hall and City Court, trying to figure out how to get Harris, his appointed police commissioner, out of jail.

“The police chief was sworn in, and he was out to do his duty, he was following the charter and following the laws and following the rules,” Wallace said.

A call came in on his cellphone, interrupting a back-and-forth with some court officers outside City Court. “Mayor Wallace speaking,” he said into his Bluetooth earpiece.

The uncertainty over who is actually mayor even tripped up Harris’ lawyer, as he condemned the circuslike scenario that led to the jailing of his client.

The lawyer, Jeffrey P. Chartier, aimed his ire at “Mayor Thomas,” before quickly correcting himself. “I mean former Mayor Thomas,” he said.

“I find it unbelievably disrespectful that a man who is currently squatting at City Hall, has the gall to direct the Police Department to arrest a veteran, and public servant for over two decades for trespass, while he is trespassing every day in the mayor’s office,” Chartier said.

On Wednesday, the impasse seemed at a lull. The two would-be mayors were both back in City Hall. Harris had stayed home from the police station on his lawyer’s advice.

No charges have been filed against Harris yet by the Westchester district attorney’s office: It cannot yet make a determination, according to a spokeswoman, because it is still unclear who, in fact, is the mayor.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/nyregion/mount-vernon-mayor.html" id="3aa6d5fb-4520-36f3-a870-7fd4ac9446d2">The New York Times</a>.

Who Is True Mayor of Mount Vernon? No One Knows

MOUNT VERNON, N.Y. — On one side of City Hall, Richard Thomas, the former and possibly still-current mayor of Mount Vernon was in his office Tuesday, the door guarded by two police officers.

And in a jail cell across the street sat a third man, who may or may not be the city’s police commissioner. He had just been appointed to the post by Wallace, only to be arrested on suspicion of trespassing when he showed up for his first day of work that morning at the police station — an arrest ordered by Thomas, the former and possibly current mayor.

As part of his plea agreement with the New York attorney general’s office, Thomas must vacate office no later than Sept. 30. But the Mount Vernon City Council did not want to wait that long: Citing the City Charter, which held that Thomas’ guilty plea automatically disqualified him from office, the council quickly appointed Wallace, the council president, as acting mayor.

Thomas pleaded guilty July 6 to two misdemeanors, including attempted grand larceny after a joint investigation by the attorney general’s office and the state comptroller found he had used campaign donations to finance his lifestyle. Thomas was found to have used a total of $12,500 to pay for things like restaurant meals, vacations and a Chanel purse.

During the interview, Thomas — a Democrat who graduated from New York University’s Stern School of Business — seemed to suggest he may have absent-mindedly spent his donors’ money on himself.

Then again, Porcari’s impartiality could be in question: He was arrested and indicted by the attorney general’s office in May on charges that he directed $365,000 away from the Mount Vernon Board of Water Supply to pay Thomas’ legal bills, and hire a public relations firm.

Controversy has dogged Mount Vernon, a small exurban city that credits itself as the inspiration of the Bill of Rights, and is about 65% African-American. The promised cleanup of its decaying sports park, Memorial Field, has been in limbo for more than a decade; last year, the Justice Department sued the city for violating federal law for its sewer system that dumps raw sewage into the Bronx and Hutchinson Rivers.

In 2014, Thomas’ predecessor as mayor, Ernest D. Davis, pleaded guilty to federal charges for failing to file personal and corporate tax returns, but the City Council did not invoke the charter’s rules then, and he was permitted to finish out his term. At the time, Thomas called for Davis to be removed from office.

Mt. Vernon Has 2 Mayors, and Its Police Commissioner Was Just Arrested

To the Ramapough Lenape Nation, which owns a patch of land in the gated community and piled the stones here, it is an altar.

To the township of Mahwah, the 15-foot-long mound is a violation of town code. And since 2017, the town has regularly issued flurries of citations: for the rock pile, for a collection of fallen trees tipped upright and arranged in a circle, and for using a residentially zoned plot for religious use, even when no one is there.

So many summonses — the Ramapough estimated they receive up to $12,500 a week in fines — that the town says the tribe owes more than $4 million.

The tribe has refused to pay the fines or apply for the permits that the town says are required, and instead has concentrated its energy on a lawsuit it filed last year, contending that Mahwah and the club are using zoning rules and fines to persecute it.

The conflict is the latest episode in a series of long-standing disputes over the government’s treatment of Native Americans — over planned pipelines, water rights and how the United States handles funds and natural resources that it holds in trust.

But in this case, the federal government — often a tribe’s adversary — has come to the Ramapoughs’ aid. The federal Justice Department filed a letter last month expressing its support for the tribe, suggesting that the tribe had cause to believe that the town’s behavior has “significantly chilled Ramapough’s use of the land for religious purposes” in violation of federal protections.

The Justice Department letter comes on the heels of a ruling in Trenton that clarified the Ramapoughs’ status as a state-recognized tribe.

“Freedom of religion is so endemic to the country that I almost can’t believe that people would have the gall to try to suppress it with Jim Crow zoning,” said Dwaine Perry, chief of the Ramapough tribe. “One part is racism, and the other part is that they see an opportunity by manipulating zoning,” he said. “They want to fine us out of existence.”

The disputed land, at 95 Halifax Road, sits within the Ramapo Hunt &amp; Polo Club Association, a private community where houses routinely sell for in excess of $1 million.

The site, 25 miles northwest of Manhattan, is near areas considered sacred to the tribe: Ramapo Pass and the junction of the Mahwah and Ramapo rivers.

In community meetings and on social media, club residents complain that the Ramapoughs have damaged their quality of life by using the nature preserve for noisy and unlawful gatherings that have filled the quiet enclave with cars and outsiders, and the air with ceremonial smoke and drums.

“The tribe are trying to get away with murder,” said Stephen Murray, a retired schoolteacher whose house overlooks the tribal property. “They are trying to make this an issue of religious discrimination,” he said.

“But when they have a community gathering, a smoking celebration or a ‘half moon’ or whatever they’re doing, we have to hear their drums and the other crap that goes on there.”

John Roth, the mayor of Mahwah, declined to comment on the specifics of the situation, citing continuing litigation. “The Township of Mahwah’s singular interest here is that the zoning and property-use ordinances we have in place are complied with by everyone,” he wrote in an email.

In a sense, the clash has ties to President Donald Trump’s decision to permit an oil pipeline across the Standing Rock reservation, which extends across North and South Dakota. In 2017, the Ramapough turned the New Jersey site into a protest camp, complete with teepees and a mess tent, in solidarity with Sioux who were protesting Trump’s decision.

Protests were also held against a proposed pipeline much closer to home: the Pilgrim Pipeline, which would run through Ramapough land and carry oil and refined petroleum products between Albany, New York, and Linden, New Jersey.

After receiving numerous complaints about the protests, the town revoked a 2012 permit that the Ramapoughs had used to worship on the Polo Club site, which the tribe calls Split Rock Sweet Water. It successfully sued the tribe in New Jersey Superior Court for ignoring zoning rules. An appeals court upheld the ruling in part, but sharply reduced the fines the Ramapough had to pay.

In 2018, the tribe filed its federal lawsuit against the town and the club on grounds that its freedom of religion was being violated.

The town “is applying the zoning law in an outrageous and irrational way, to limit the Ramapough from using the land in the way they have for centuries,” said Rachel Meeropol, a senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, which, along with the law firm of Weil, Gotshal &amp; Manges, represents the tribe in the federal suit. “It’s a blatant violation of the Ramapoughs’ right to religious practice,” she said.

On March 18, the tribe received the Justice Department’s statement of interest in support of the Ramapoughs’ suit. The move is in keeping with a Trump administration-led push for the department to throw its weight behind cases of religious liberty — albeit one that has more often seen it interceding in Christian causes like that of a Colorado baker who refused to bake a gay couple’s wedding cake, and religious expression in school.

In gaining federal support, the Ramapough say they find themselves in an uneasy alliance with a government that many of their members believe has emboldened racial animus, citing Trump’s stance on Standing Rock and his comments disparaging judges, political candidates and others.

“He started it by denigrating people, and started reinforcing old folk tales about people’s heritage,” Perry, who also goes by Maqua, said. “We are more than pleasingly surprised by the Trump administration’s support,” he added. “It’s on a path to redemption.”

Emboldening the Ramapoughs is another, parallel war that the state’s Indians have been waging: for official recognition. Though the state is dotted with Indian place names, like Ho-Ho-Kus, Lake Acquackanonk and Mahwah, or “gathering place” in the Lenape language, the state’s tribes spent years in limbo starting in 2012. That was when Gov. Chris Christie, in a filing to the federal government, said the state had no recognized tribes.

The state’s tribes — the Ramapoughs, the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape and the Powhatan Renape Nation, which say their memberships number in the tens of thousands — countered that they had been recognized by the state since the ’80s. (None of the tribes are federally recognized, a designation that would afford them the right to open casinos.)

“For some reason, one governor said, ‘You know what, there are no more Indians in New Jersey, you guys don’t exist,’” said Pastor Roy Bundy, a tribal representative for the Powhatan Renapes. Bundy believes that Christie wanted to block the tribes’ potential path to federal recognition, and neutralize any threat to the state’s powerful gaming interests in Atlantic City.

“It makes you feel kind of powerless — someone at the stroke of a pen can deny that you exist,” said Dr. J.R. Norwood, the principal justice of the Nanticoke Lenni-Lenape Supreme Court and a councilman at large for the tribe, known as Smiling ThunderBear. In 2015, the Nanticoke-Lenape sued the New Jersey attorney general, seeking to regain its official status.

Last month, the Ramapoughs were officially recognized (or perhaps re-recognized) after the state settled with the Nanticoke-Lenapes in November. “Tribal rights are important rights,” Gurbir Grewal, the New Jersey attorney general, said in a statement on the settlement. “As a result of this settlement, there is no more ambiguity regarding the tribe’s official status, and the tribe’s forward progress cannot be impeded by any state-related recognition issues.”

The Ramapoughs hope recent decisions made in Trenton about their tribal status will bolster their claim on their patch of land.

On a recent afternoon, Perry presided over a gathering at Sweet Water, standing within the circle of upright logs, some carved with pensive faces, for a tobacco ceremony. About 50 guests sprinkled tobacco leaves into a bowl, which then was cast onto a bonfire.

They did not have a permit for the event.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/nyregion/ramapough-lenape-indians-mahwah-nj.html" id="7fceacda-42f8-3c8c-a183-ba38684fcfdd">The New York Times</a>.

Native Americans Find Surprising Ally in N.J. Fight: Trump Administration

MAHWAH, N.J. — A knee-high pile of rocks sits in a far corner of a gated community set among rolling hills known as the Polo Club.

But in this case, the federal government — often a tribe’s adversary — has come to the Ramapoughs’ aid. The federal Justice Department filed a letter last month expressing its support for the tribe, suggesting that the town’s behavior has “significantly chilled Ramapough’s use of the land for religious purposes” in violation of federal protections.

After receiving numerous complaints about the protests, the town revoked a 5-year-old permit that the Ramapoughs had used to worship on the Polo Club site, which the tribe calls Split Rock Sweet Water. It successfully sued the tribe in New Jersey Superior Court for ignoring zoning rules. An appeals court upheld the ruling in part, but sharply reduced the fines the Ramapough had to pay.

On a recent afternoon, Perry presided over a gathering at Sweet Water, standing within the circle of upright logs, some carved with pensive faces, for a tobacco ceremony. About 50 guests sprinkled tobacco leaves into a bowl, which then was then cast onto a bonfire.

The budget proposed by the school board in Paterson, the third-largest city in New Jersey, offered a staggering package of cuts. Officials said they have no choice but to make the cuts that stand to undo years of gains by the school district.

“The upsetting thing about it is the district was in a rebound,'’ said Rosie Grant, the executive director of the Paterson Education Fund, a nonprofit group. “They have put in early reading programs, math programs, different interventions, and we were seeing some results from that.

Paterson is one of four poor-performing districts that were taken over by the state starting in 1989, after officials determined that the school systems had fallen into educational bankruptcy with dismally low test scores and poor high school graduation rates. Newark and Jersey City have since regained control of their schools, but Camden and Paterson are still under state oversight.

Despite the worry that has gripped Paterson, some officials questioned whether the district’s threatened cuts were meant to try to force the state to provide more financing. Two years ago, the school board said it would lay off about 96 teachers, according to reports, but ultimately 25 teachers ended up losing jobs.

Last year, Paterson and the state entered into a two-year agreement that would return the schools to local control provided it met specific bench marks, such as improved scores on standardized state tests and higher graduation rates.

By some measures, Paterson has succeeded: Almost 85 percent of students graduate from high school, up from a 46 percent graduation rate 10 years ago. The positive trajectory comes despite the high number of children from families that are below the poverty level; 97 percent of Paterson’s students qualify for free or subsidized school lunches.

But over the past decade, Paterson officials said, the city’s 54 public schools have accrued a $280 million shortfall in state aid, forcing the district to cut more than 500 education positions between 2010 and 2017.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/nyregion/paterson-nj-public-schools-layoffs.html" id="5edc1a92-4fae-31ab-ad8e-31694395a5cc">The New York Times</a>.

More than 200 education jobs would be cut, including 150 teachers and 23 vice principals. Class sizes would balloon. Art and music classes would be erased.

Cuts of 150 Teachers Threaten Troubled New Jersey City

The five-judge panel in Manhattan ruled that Summer Zervos, who competed on Trump’s reality game show, could go forward with her lawsuit, which she filed after Trump said her claims that he had groped and kissed her against her will were lies.

The 3-2 ruling upholds a lower-court decision from a year ago that similarly concluded the president could be sued in state court while in office for actions unrelated to his official duties.

“The current sitting president attempts to shield himself from consequences for his alleged unofficial misconduct by relying upon the constitutional protection of the presidency,” Justice Dianne T. Renwick wrote for the majority. “We reject defendant President Trump’s argument.”

Zervos and nine other women claimed during the presidential campaign in 2016 that Trump had engaged in sexual misconduct.

Zervos said Trump twice forced himself on her in 2007: in a job interview in Trump Tower in Manhattan, and during a meeting in Los Angeles.

Trump responded to the claims by calling the women liars and retweeting a picture of Zervos with the sentence, “This is all yet another hoax.” Zervos sued for defamation in New York State Supreme Court, saying the allegations were true and his comments had damaged her reputation.

Lawyers for the president sought to have the case dismissed based on what is known as the Constitution’s supremacy clause, which prohibits states from interfering with the federal government’s exercise of its powers.

The state Supreme Court appellate panel said the president’s lawyers had misinterpreted the clause.

“The supremacy clause was never intended to deprive a state court of its authority to decide cases and controversies under the state’s Constitution,” Renwick wrote. “Read plainly, the supremacy clause confers ‘supreme’ status on federal laws, not on the status of a federal official.”

Mariann Wang, Zervos’ lawyer, said in a statement she was pleased that an appeals court had affirmed that the president is “not above the law.”

“We look forward to proving to a jury that Ms. Zervos told the truth,” she said.

Trump’s lawyer, Marc E. Kasowitz, had argued unsuccessfully that being subject to a lawsuit in state court could impede the president from performing his duties. He vowed to fight the ruling and to take the argument to the state Court of Appeals.

“We respectfully disagree with the majority decision in the Appellate Division,”Kasowitz said in a statement.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Peter Tom and Justice Angela M. Mazzarelli agreed with the president’s stance that the suit could interfere with his ability to do his job. “The court holds the power to direct him to respond to discovery demands, to sit for a deposition and to appear before it,” Mazzarelli wrote.

The majority’s ruling relied in part on precedent set in the case of Paula Jones vs. President Bill Clinton, who in 1994 sued the then-sitting president for sexual harassment that she alleged occurred when he was governor of Arkansas.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1997 that sitting presidents do not have immunity from federal suits concerning their unofficial actions, but it did not address whether the same held true for lawsuits filed in state courts.

In October, a federal judge in California dismissed a defamation suit brought by Stormy Daniels, a pornographic film actress who has said she had an affair with Trump. In that case, she argued that the president had defamed her by calling her claims false. The court ruled Trump was engaging in lawfully protected free speech.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/14/nyregion/summer-zervos-trump-defamation-lawsuit.html" id="846836a4-d746-3b37-a8dd-98362c315295">The New York Times</a>.

Trump Can Be Sued for Defamation by 'Apprentice' Contestant, Court Rules

NEW YORK — A New York appeals court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s argument that the Constitution makes him immune from state lawsuits, clearing the way for a defamation suit from a former contestant on “The Apprentice” who has said Trump groped her.

But Cohen said he didn’t work alone, unexpectedly mentioning by name the involvement of another member of Trump’s inner circle, Allen Weisselberg, more than 20 times. The revelations are set to intensify the scrutiny on Weisselberg, Trump’s unassuming 71-year-old chief financial officer, who already is a focus for federal prosecutors in New York.

On Wednesday, Cohen specifically identified Weisselberg as helping mastermind a strategy to mask reimbursements to Cohen for his payment to Stormy Daniels, the pornographic film actress who said she had an affair with Trump.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, D-Md., chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, said after Wednesday’s hearing that he “probably will” want to call additional witnesses, including Weisselberg, to gather additional evidence about the hush-money payment.

A Democratic official said the House Intelligence Committee anticipates calling Weisselberg to testify, as well.

Cohen said in the hearing that the payment was ordered by Trump, which violated campaign finance laws because it was intended to buy Daniels’ silence so that she could not hurt Trump’s prospects right before the election.

Cohen said he had paid Daniels with his own money, and then was repaid by the Trump Organization.

“Allen Weisselberg made the decision that it should be paid over the 12 months so that it would look like a retainer,” Cohen told lawmakers, describing how reimbursements were made monthly.

Cohen submitted to Congress a copy of a $35,000 check — labeled exhibit 5b — that he said was one of those monthly payments.

It was signed by Weisselberg and Donald Trump Jr.

Weisselberg declined to comment through his lawyers. But it is clear why lawmakers and investigators might hone in on him as they examine the Trump Organization’s finances.

After Cohen pleaded guilty to campaign finance fraud and other crimes in August, federal prosecutors in Manhattan began focusing on what role the Trump Organization and its executives, including Weisselberg, played in the campaign finance scheme, according to people briefed on the matter.

As part of the investigation, Weisselberg was granted limited immunity to testify before a federal grand jury last year. But there has been no indication that he has cooperated with prosecutors.

Weisselberg, an accountant, began his career doing the books for Trump’s father in a dingy building in Brooklyn. For decades, he has represented Trump on paperwork for everything from complex real estate deals to the operations of the antique carousel in Central Park, which the Trump Organization runs.

In 2015, a lawyer representing students who alleged they were defrauded by Trump’s education venture, Trump University, questioned Weisselberg during a deposition, describing him as “Mr. Trump’s eyes and ears for his investments.”

Weisselberg replied, “Am I his eyes and ears? From an economic standpoint,” court records show. In 2016, Trump settled the case for $25 million.

Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign official, wrote in a book that he co-authored, “Let Trump be Trump” that Weisselberg “knows of every dime that leaves the building.”

Sarah Maslin Nir

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