JERSEY CITY — A city attorney told City Council members last year that there was an external investigation into a recording that was at the center of contract-steering allegations during the 2017 mayoral race, sources with knowledge of the matter told The Jersey Journal.

Council members were briefed about the investigation during a closed-door meeting in June, the sources said. The council met for the closed caucus on June 11 to discuss the city’s contract with law firm Arleo & Donohue, a firm the city hired in 2014 for a Port Authority-related matter.

The sources, who asked not to be identified discussing a matter handled during an executive session of the council, said the city attorney told council members that Arleo had at least recently been handling the city’s response to the investigation into the recording, which revealed that two Fulop administration officials pressured some of their colleagues to award a contract to a favored bidder in 2014.

What the council learned during that meeting is at odds with what it heard two months prior, when the city’s former corporation counsel, Jeremy Farrell, insisted during a public meeting that Arleo was overseeing complicated public-records requests received by the city.

The sources said they are not sure whether the investigation the council was briefed on in June is still active.

About three months after the June meeting, Corporation Counsel Peter Baker issued a memo to city officials saying he was introducing a protocol for what they should do if they receive a document request or investigative subpoena from an outside government agency. Baker’s memo says officials who receive those requests or subpoenas should immediately notify the city’s law department.

City spokeswoman Kimberly Wallace-Scalcione said it would be inappropriate for her to comment on a discussion during a closed-door council meeting. She referred to a previous statement about the recording in which “the administration clearly stated that we had previously reported the issue to the appropriate authorities, and this is consistent with that statement.” The Fulop administration has previously said it alerted authorities to the recording’s contents in 2014.

Asked which authorities the administration reported to, Wallace-Scalcione did not respond.

The recording was made during Mayor Steve Fulop’s first year in office. Two Fulop associates are heard on it discussing the city’s effort to hire an energy consultant. One of them, Muhammed Akil, then Fulop’s chief of staff, can be heard telling the business administrator that one bidder, Good Energy, is “very important to us.” Another, Shawn Thomas, can be heard saying he signaled to a member of the committee reviewing the consultant bids that Good Energy was the favored bidder. At one point, Akil says, “What I don’t like about this, see, f***ing straight up, this is the kind of s*** where mother***ers go to jail.”

The contract was never awarded and a Good Energy spokeswoman has said the company did nothing to improperly influence the bid process.

Arleo’s work with the city stopped last year after the council refused to reauthorize its contract, which has been a source of criticism from some of Fulop’s foes.

When the council in March 2018 voted against renewing the Arleo agreement, Councilman James Solomon said he suspected the firm was “not doing what they say they’re doing.” At a 2016 council caucus, Bill Matsikoudis, who unsuccessfully challenged Fulop in the 2017 mayor’s race, quizzed Farrell about whether Arleo was actually hired to handle an investigation by the FBI or the U.S. attorney.

The 13-minute recording was a voicemail intended for a city official that captured the conversation between Akil and Thomas when the phone Akil was using did not hang up entirely.

Attorneys for the city attempted to get a judge to bar release of the recording in the weeks before that year’s mayor’s race. When it leaked, Akil explained his comments by saying he believed Good Energy had the best bid.

Terrence T. McDonald may be reached at tmcdonald@jjournal.com. Follow him on Twitter @terrencemcd. Find The Jersey Journal on Facebook.