Is A Christie Ally Retaliating By Suing Dawn Zimmer?
A former director of the Hoboken housing authority, represented by an attorney who was trying to call Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer a liar just over a week ago, is suing the mayor in an action that seems very conveniently timed:
Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer threatened to fire Carmelo Garcia, director of the local housing authority, unless he agreed to hire politically connected contractors, a recently filed lawsuit claims.
Zimmer’s lawyer says the claims are baseless and suggested they are retaliation engineered by Christie allies.
The strong-arm tactics alleged by Garcia, who is also a Democratic assemblyman, come two weeks after Zimmer, also a Democrat, claimed in a nationally televised interview that the Christie administration threatened to withhold Hurricane Sandy recover money for Hoboken unless she agreed to fast-track a development project the governor backed.
In the lawsuit filed last week in Superior Court in Jersey City, Garcia claims Zimmer pressured him to award contracts to her political allies. When he resisted, Zimmer and her husband, Stanley Grossbard, “began to subject Director Garcia to an unlawful pattern of harassment, threats, intimidation and extortion,” the suit claims. …
The lawsuit, first reported by NJTV, was filed by Zayas, the same attorney who last week claimed Zimmer lied about keeping a diary. A similar suit was filed in August but was dismissed.
Zayas said today he believes Zimmer was also lying about her husband’s role in her administration. In September, he filed a motion in Superior Court to hold her in contempt for committing perjury, but the motion was rejected.
“She definitely tried to mislead me in suggesting her husband did not play a role in her administration,” Zayas said. Garcia did not respond to requests for comment.
Krovatin questioned why the tapes were released now.
Frankly, so do we.
