LEGAL EAGLE TRIED TO BROKER LAST-MINUTE DEAL

New York Post ^ | 8/17/04 | RICH CALDER, STEFAN C. FRIEDMAN and ANDY GELLER

[kattracks]

August 17, 2004 -- A New Jersey lawyer emerged last night as the powerbroker in frantic, 11th-hour talks to reach a deal between New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey and ex-aide Golan Cipel. Two sources said lawyer Timothy Saia arranged a meeting between attorneys for McGreevey and Cipel last Tuesday, two days before the governor announced his resignation.

"It was a bizarre meeting," a source close to Saia said. "Heading into it, Saia looked at the whole situation as a disaster and concluded there was no good solution."

The talks he set in motion, which included a demand the governor help Touro College establish a medical school in New Jersey, failed — but they lasted until 20 minutes before McGreevey announced last Thursday that he was quitting because of the "circumstances" surrounding his extramarital affair with a man.

Saia, 41, who lives in Chelsea and works for a Livingston, N.J., law firm, declined to comment.

The Saia source said the lawyer is an acquaintance of Cipel.

[conservative in nyc]

Later in the article, the source says that Saia's not gay and didn't have a relationship with Cipel.

This keeps on getting curiouser and curiouser. The firm Saia works for is Morgan, Melhuish, Monaghan, Arvidson, Abrutyn & Lisowski. According to the firm's profile, they do some work for the State of New Jeresey.

According to his bio, before Mr. Saia joined the Morgan firm, he worked in the "environmental consulting firm of Gershman, Brickner & Bratton in Washington, D.C." "Environmental" consulting is a nice way of saying "waste management" consulting or "garbage hauling" consulting. They list a bunch of New Jersey counties and governmental agencies as clients.

Something stinks about this story. Was some New Jersey Demoprano party chief staging a coup on the CORRUPT American?

Stay tuned.

[randita]

Something stinks about this story. Was some New Jersey Demoprano party chief staging a coup on the CORRUPT American?

In a word, yes.

[Ann Archy]

20 minutes.....and the wife and the parents were there in 20 minutes??? NOTHING about this smells right. The lawyer for Cipel sure does SEEM gay!!