Published: October 19, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/20/nyregion/20brown.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&bl

When news broke in August that the former United States attorney, Christopher J. Christie, had lent $46,000 to a top aide in the federal prosecutor’s office, he said he was merely helping a friend in need. He also said the aide, Michele Brown, had done nothing to help his gubernatorial campaign. 

But interviews with federal law enforcement officials suggest that Ms. Brown used her position in two significant and possibly improper ways to try to aid Mr. Christie in his run for governor.

In March, when Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s campaign requested public records about Mr. Christie’s tenure as prosecutor, Ms. Brown interceded to oversee the responses to the inquiries, taking over for the staff member who normally oversaw Freedom of Information Act requests, according to federal law enforcement officials in Newark and Washington. The requested information included records about Mr. Christie’s travel and expenses, along with Ms. Brown’s travel records.

In mid-June, when F.B.I. agents and prosecutors gathered to set a date for the arrests of more than 40 targets of a corruption and money-laundering probe, Ms. Brown alone argued for the arrests to be made before July 1. She later told colleagues that she wanted to ensure that the arrests occurred before Mr. Christie’s permanent successor took office, according to three federal law enforcement officials briefed on the conversation, presumably so that Mr. Christie would be given credit for the roundup.

The federal law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were barred from speaking on the record.

Ms. Brown declined to be interviewed for this article. In an e-mail message to The New York Times, she called the allegations “outrageous and inaccurate,” but declined to answer further questions. Through a spokesman, Mr. Christie stood by his earlier assertions that Ms. Brown had not assisted his campaign in any way.

News of Mr. Christie’s loan to Ms. Brown broke in August, dealing a blow to his candidacy, and he apologized for failing to report it on his tax returns and ethics filings.

Less than two weeks later, Justice Department officials told Mr. Christie’s interim replacement, Ralph Marra, to remove Ms. Brown from acting as coordinator of the Freedom of Information Act requests about Mr. Christie’s tenure because of the obvious conflict of interest, according to a federal law enforcement official briefed on the communications. Ms. Brown resigned from the prosecutor’s office the same day, the official said.

She took a job at a law firm with close ties to Mr. Christie — a firm that represented one of five companies identified as targets in his office’s investigation of kickbacks among makers of artificial hips and knees. Ms. Brown had led the case and, with Mr. Christie, negotiated a settlement in which the company paid a fine and avoided criminal charges.

Allegations that Mr. Christie played politics as a prosecutor have dogged him; reports that he discussed a run for governor with Karl Rove in 2006 led Democrats to assert he had violated the Hatch Act, which forbids candidates from “testing the waters” for a run for office.

The possibility that Ms. Brown may have helped Mr. Christie’s campaign from inside the United States attorney’s office casts a new light on their relationship and on the prosecutor’s office. Federal law and Justice Department policy prohibit prosecutors from using their “official authority or influence for the purpose of interfering with or affecting the result of an election.”

The arrests of 44 people in the corruption and money-laundering case on July 23 drew national attention and put a spotlight on New Jersey’s reputation for corruption. Mr. Christie had built his reputation battling public corruption, and the case served to remind voters of his record and underscore that corruption remained a persistent statewide problem, one that could require a new governor to root out.

As it turned out, there was no need to hurry up the corruption arrests to ensure that they would redound to Mr. Christie’s credit: the Obama appointee who replaced him, Paul J. Fishman, was not installed until last Wednesday.

Mr. Christie has said he and his wife are close friends of Ms. Brown and her husband. The couples live a few hundred yards apart in Mendham, N.J.

She had been a prosecutor for 11 years when he took over the office in 2002. The next year, he promoted her to counsel, the No. 4 position in the office. In early 2008, Mr. Christie gave her another promotion, adding the title of executive assistant. Shortly after he resigned in December, she was promoted to first assistant, the No. 2 job.

In explaining his loan to her, Mr. Christie said Ms. Brown and her husband, Michael Allen, ran into financial trouble after Mr. Allen lost his job.

Mr. Christie gave Ms. Brown a $46,000 mortgage in September 2007, which she was to repay with monthly payments of $499 over 10 years.

In August, Mr. Marra defended the office’s handling of the Freedom of Information requests and denied that Ms. Brown oversaw the process, saying she only supplied records relating to herself.

Yet only after Ms. Brown’s departure, five months after the requests were submitted, were the first two voluminous batches of records released.

Those records, which the Corzine campaign has parceled out to news organizations, have already proved embarrassing to Mr. Christie. News stories last week said the records showed Mr. Christie often stayed at expensive hotels on the taxpayers’ dime, routinely exceeding per diem rates set for Justice Department officials.

Additional records provided in raw form by the Corzine campaign and analyzed by The Times show that Ms. Brown accompanied Mr. Christie on 16 trips, the bulk of them in 2007 and 2008. They were often accompanied by a junior prosecutor, Kevin O’Dowd.

In August 2008 Mr. Christie’s wife, Mary Pat, joined him, Ms. Brown, and Mr. O’Dowd for a trip to London, where Mr. Christie spoke at a meeting of compliance officers at another one of the companies involved in his office’s investigation of makers of artificial hips and knees. Mr. O’Dowd left early, while the Christies and Ms. Brown stayed two more days for another meeting. Mr. Christie paid his wife’s airfare, but the government covered the couple’s and Ms. Brown’s $401-per-night lodgings. Mr. O’Dowd declined comment.

Mr. Christie and Ms. Brown also traveled to the Venetian casino hotel in Las Vegas last year, where he addressed a sales convention of still another one of the hip and knee makers.

Mr. Christie’s in-state travel has also been questioned. He put in for more than $20,000 in mileage reimbursements during his seven-year tenure, including many trips that his public schedules indicate were made for personal or political reasons.

A die-hard Mets fan, Mr. Christie put in for $73 in mileage costs for a drive to Philadelphia on a night his schedule noted an away game against the Phillies.