U.S. Attorney Philip R. Sellinger and members of his staff will meet with residents in Camden next week at the third in a series of planned town hall meetings.
The town hall series is a Sellinger initiative to engage directly with citizens’ concerns with the hope of ultimately improving public safety in New Jersey.
The town hall will be held on Monday, May 22, 2023, with doors opening at 6:00 p.m. with the program beginning promptly at 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Tabernacle of Faith Church of God in Christ, 115 N. 5th Street, Camden, New Jersey, 08102.
Sellinger will discuss the work of his office in a variety of areas, encompassing federal civil rights enforcement, including bias and hate crimes, environmental justice, violent crime, opioid-related crime, and post-incarceration programs.
This is a community event and is open to the public.
Sellinger is responsible for overseeing all federal criminal prosecutions and the litigation of all civil matters in New Jersey in which the federal government has an interest.
Including the offices in Newark, Camden, and Trenton, Sellinger supervises a staff of approximately 155 federal prosecutors and about 130 support personnel.
Before his 2021 appointment by President Joe Biden, Sellinger was a member of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee for Morris County and a prolific fundraiser for such politicians as Menendez and Sen. Cory Booker.
A check of the Federal Election Commission records show that Sellinger has personally contributed $332,595 to federal candidates over the last 20 years, mostly to Democrats but some Republicans, notably John McCain in his 2008 race against Barack Obama.
About $92,000 of that was contributed to Biden and other Democrats in the two years leading up to the election that preceded Sellinger’s appointment to the state’s top law enforcement position, which continues the appearance that the presidential appointee ‘bought his job’ jut as did Chris Christie, a one-time Bush Republican fundraising pioneer who used the U.S. Attorney’s Office as a launching pad for his gubernatorial campaign.
Sellinger reportedly earned more than $2.6 million in 2022, as the co-managing shareholder of the New Jersey office of Greenberg Traurig, a multinational law firm that is the 9th largest in the United States.
His financial disclosures show that Sellinger represented such large corporate clients as Microsoft Corporation, Canon Inc., Bed Bath & Beyond, Verizon, Live Nation, Global Tel Link Corporation, Berger Group Holdings, Marriott Ownership Resorts Inc., Weinberger Group, Adler Development, Physicians Reciprocal Insurers, and MMM Healthcare, Inc., as well as Canadian billionaire Abraham Reichmann.
Sellinger previously served as an assistant federal prosecutor from 1981 to 1984.
Another Sellinger client was RCN Corporation, the sixth-largest U.S. cable operator, which began rebranding as “Astound” in 2022, after a $8.1 billion acquisition by Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners, a private equity firm.
Sellinger may have received tax benefits by filing a Certificate of Divestiture regarding the sale of 20,275 units of Delaware Business Trust-Ab Global Research Insights Series, shares in a hedge fund with about 850 beneficial owners and $425.5 million in assets under management. The sale transaction was valued between $500,001 and $1 million.
Documents filed with the Office of Government Ethics also list a multi-million stock portfolio, including shares in defense contractors, fossil fuel companies and other controversial businesses.
Sellinger and his wife, Barbara, reside in the Morris Township mansion named Sunnymede, which was the site of a prostitution raid in 1998, that resulted in the arrests of 15 men and four women, among them former Playboy bunny Judith Kelly Dempsey, once known as the “Morristown madam” for turning her mansion into an all-hours bordello called An Afternoon Delight.
Sellinger hosted then-Vice President Biden at the 20-room Georgian Colonial home for a pricey March 19, 2012 fundraiser benefitting President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign.