Rabbi subpoenas Nicodemo, seeks prosecutor’s disciplinary and employment file

Embattled Deputy Attorney General John Nicodemo has been called to testify at the money-laundering retrial of a Lakewood rabbi, but prosecutors are seeking to quash the subpoena and are pushing back on a demand by defense attorney Lee Vartan to produce Nicodemo’s disciplinary record and employment file.

Nicodemo has been accused of holding back evidence from defense attorneys and lying to grand juries to obtain indictments.

Rabbi Osher Eisemann was first convicted of money laundering and corporate misconduct in 2019, but in 2022, Superior Court Judge Joseph Paone vacated the conviction and set a new trial after determining that the state had information that would have exonerated Eisemann that the state did not share the information with the rabbi’s attorney.|

Nicodemo prosecuted Eisemann’s first trial. He has since been reassigned to an administrative job with the Division of Highway Traffic Safety and is no longer a line prosecutor.

“The material sought can only confuse, mislead, and misdirect the jury away from its fact-finding function,” said Jeffrey Manis and Frank Valdinoto, the deputy attorneys general who are now prosecuting the case.

The motion to quash the Nicodemo subpoena is expected to be hard by Paone today.

Four attorneys — all former federal and state prosecutors — and several state legislators have leveled allegations of prosecutorial misconduct against Nicodemo in other cases, but the state attorney general’s office has said there is nothing to see and says defense counsel is just making the dinner theater actor-turned-prosecutor their scapegoat.

Paone’s decision to dismiss the first case was appealed to the appellate division and then to the New Jersey Supreme Court without success.  Eisemann was first indicted in early 2017.

Vartan moved to dismiss the case earlier this month and declare a mistrial after the state’s only witness at the second grand jury retracted his testimony on a key element of the charges: the identity of the victim.

“For years, the State’s unambiguous theory of the case was that Eisemann committed financial facilitation by writing down a loan debt he owed to a non-profit foundation and not a school the rabbi ran. “For years, Eisemann prepared his defense against the crime charged, that he wrote down a loan to the foundation. A criminal defendant cannot be tried and convicted by surprise.”
Vartan maintained the issue “is not some minor violation that can be cured.”

“The proofs at trial have already veered too far from the conduct identified in the Indictment. That bell cannot be unrung,” Vartan said.  “(Detective Thomas) Page consistently and unwaveringly identified the crime to the jurors as one that had not been presented to the grand jury.”

In his brief, Vartan asks, “At this point, how would we know what the jury would consider for conviction: a theft