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Trenton Mayor Tony Mack meets with the press in his City Hall office on Thursday, August 15, 2013 before addressing city council regarding crime. Martin Griff / The Times of Trenton

TRENTON — Federal wiretaps revealed evidence that Mayor Tony Mack was involved in an attempt to collect kickbacks from city employees in exchange for keeping their jobs, taking payments to squelch efforts by a code enforcement officer, and directing a contract to a T-shirt vendor in exchange for money, a filing by the U.S. Attorney's Office alleges.

Joseph “JoJo” Giorgianni was involved in these illicit activities, as was former water meter reader turned FBI informant Charles Hall III, government attorneys said today.

The new information, which has not resulted in any charges, is included in a government brief opposing giving Giorgianni a separate trial from Mack and his brother Ralphiel in an alleged bribery conspiracy case involving a parking garage project.

The Mack brothers and Giorgianni are scheduled to go to trial together Jan. 6 in connection with the alleged extortion scheme that was an FBI sting. The defense attorneys asked U.S. District Judge Michael A. Shipp in October to take Giorgianni’s case separately because they feared cross-examining Hall would allow information about a separate narcotics case involving Giorgianni to leach into the proceedings.

“Any mention of drugs in the instant case, involving as it does, an elected public official and a high school football coach and guidance counselor, would inevitably and unfairly prejudice the jury against these defendants,” the defense attorneys wrote in their own motion, also filed yesterday. “No curative instruction is sufficient to remove the prejudice associated with drugs themselves to defendants of this nature.”

The FBI alleged that Hall was a key player in a prescription pill ring run out of JoJo’s Steak House in North Trenton. Giorgianni was indicted on the drug charges but the Mack brothers were not. The U.S. Attorney’s Office said that fact alone should allow a jury to make the proper distinction between the defendants.

“The jury easily could compartmentalize Giorgianni’s narcotics dealing with Hall as separate from the bribery scheme,” the government argued. “Indeed, neither of the Mack defendants is charged with narcotics crimes and the jury can be instructed to this effect.”

While all three defense lawyers signed off on today’s court filing, the motion itself reveals a division between attorneys for Ralphiel and Tony Mack and Giorgianni’s attorney, Jerome Ballarotto.

Ballarotto has said that Giorgianni could still be tried alongside the Mack brothers, albeit with strict instructions to the prosecution that they limit their questioning of Hall. Under Ballarotto’s proposal, he would be free to discuss Hall’s criminal history, Hall’s “extensive involvement in separate conspiracies, including those involving Pennsylvania drug activities; his extensive personal public corruption; his involvement in loan sharking, including as a collector,” as long as Giorgianni was not mentioned, according to the filing.

Hall pleaded guilty to one count each in the drug and corruption cases in February. He is awaiting sentencing, which the defense attorneys claim will likely hinge on how much value he is to the government at trial.

According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Giorgianni and Hall worked together in bids to shake down companies providing dirt and toilet paper for the city along with insurance fraud and loansharking. Those schemes and the drug case are necessary to show the close relationship of trust between the two men, they argue.

Yet when it comes to the corruption case where the mayor and Giorgianni are indicted, the government alleges Giorgianni said that the “ground rules were put down by Tony,” which is why public officials like Mack and Hall could not take bribe money from the purported parking garage developers.

"Nobody in the administration touches nothin'," Giorgianni allegedly said. "They can't."

Shipp did not indicate when he will make his decision on whether to separate the trials, but a hearing to determine whether Giorgianni is mentally competent to stand trial is set for Dec. 13.

Contact Alex Zdan at azdan@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5705.

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