Two years after racist campaign flyers circulated in a New Jersey town, officials are taking an unusual step to try to answer the lingering question: who sent them?

The flyers — which arrived in Edison Township mailboxes less than a week before November 2017′s Election Day — featured photos of school board candidates Jerry Shi and Falguni Patel, stamped with the words “deport” and “Make Edison Great Again!”

Shi, who is Chinese-American, and Patel, who is Indian-American, previously told NJ Advance Media they have no knowledge of who sent the flyers. Both won the school board election.

Concerned Edison officials appealed to the state Attorney General to investigate who was behind the incident.

In August 2018, NJ Advance Media reported that the Attorney General’s office was quietly investigating the incident, identifying at least one person of interest but no clear suspects. When asked for an update on the investigation on Friday, a spokesperson said he could “neither confirm nor deny” if it existed.

Unsatisfied with the lack of an answer from the state, the township council in Edison made the somewhat unusual decision in late February to form a “Committee of the Whole” -- a legislative body that can investigate the incident through a series of public hearings.

A local government can form a Committee of the Whole when everyone on the council is interested in an issue, Marc Pfeiffer, Senior Policy Fellow at Rutgers, said, as is the case in Edison.

Under New Jersey law, a Committee of the Whole can subpoena people to interview them about the incident in question, Pfeiffer said. Those interviews must be conducted in a public setting. (It’s often a little less formal than normal council meetings; some groups might not record minutes or open up for public comment, he said.)

Edison’s Committee has already tried issuing a subpoena to Patel. She refused to come in, and her lawyer said she already cooperated with the Attorney General’s investigation. The Committee then withdrew its subpoena, John O’Reilly, Patel’s lawyer said.

The Committee had two meetings in April, which were both highly attended by the public. There, councilmen questioned people about the flyers. They brought in Postal Inspector David Comer on April 23, who provided documentation of what he discovered concerning how the flyers were mailed, including the fact that whoever sent them tried to mail about 1,000.

But, other people were no-shows, causing some councilmen-turned-amatuer-investigators to feel frustrated.

“We are not the FBI up here,” said Robert Diehl, who is one of three councilmen leading the Committee. He urged “everybody who has anything to share” to come forward so they could get to the bottom of it.

Councilman Samip Joshi revealed that the Committee recently subpoenaed a bank account that may be associated with a person who paid for the stamps on the flyers. But they haven’t received any information back from the bank yet.

It is unclear what happens if a person or an entity ignores a subpoena from the Committee, Pfeiffer said. If a court issues one, the person who ignores the subpoena can be held in “contempt of court,” which would put sanctions on that person. But a Committee of the Whole isn’t a court, and its power is limited, Pfeiffer said.

If and when the Committee does find answers, the same group of people can turn back into their roles as normal councilmen and refer their findings to a law-enforcement body like the county prosecutor’s office or the State Attorney General, according to Pfeiffer.

However, it is unclear what, if any, criminal or civil charges the people who sent over the flyers would face. Joshi said it is possible they could be charged with breaking election laws, since they failed to note on the flyer who paid for it.

Cassidy Grom may be reached at cgrom@njadvancemedia.com Follow her at @cassidygrom. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips.

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