Ashcroft agrees to testify on his role in no-bid contracts

TRENTON - Former Attorney General John Ashcroft has agreed to appear at a federal hearing looking into no-bid contracts he and others received to monitor out-of-court corporate settlements, including a New Jersey deal in which Ashcroft stood to make millions of dollars.

A House Judiciary subcommittee announced the agreement with Ashcroft yesterday, the day before it was to consider authorizing its chairman to issue him a subpoena.

The hearing was hastily postponed after Ashcroft said he would voluntarily testify.

The former attorney general is considered a key witness in the inquiry into lucrative federal monitoring contracts awarded by federal prosecutors to hand-picked monitors to oversee deferred prosecutions.

The House hearing was prompted, in part, by complaints from two New Jersey Democratic congressmen, Frank Pallone Jr. and Bill Pascrell Jr., after Christopher Christie, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, awarded a contract said to be worth $27 million or more to Ashcroft to monitor a maker of medical devices that had entered a deferred prosecution agreement with federal prosecutors.

Such agreements have been increasingly used by the Justice Department, including several times by Christie in recent years for medical device makers, a pharmaceutical company and a hospital.

The House hearing is among several inquiries under way in Washington regarding the standards for creating monitorships and selecting monitors.

Christie, who has defended the practice as a method to correct corporate misbehavior while preserving jobs, was once Ashcroft's subordinate.

Christie apparently will not have to testify.

Judiciary Committee spokeswoman Melanie Roussell said the Justice Department would send a U.S. attorney from Georgia to testify rather than Christie.

"I would like to see both Ashcroft and Christie testify," said Pallone, who has proposed legislation tightening oversight on deferred prosecution agreements. "I think you need to have input not only from Ashcroft, the appointed monitor, but from Christie, because we need to know the processes involved in selecting these monitors, the basis and substance of these agreements."

Christie, considered a leading Republican contender for New Jersey governor in 2009, did not return after-hours messages for comment.

Ashcroft attended a September news conference in Newark where Christie named him as monitor for Zimmer Holdings Inc., of Warsaw, Ind., one of five makers of replacement hips and knees that agreed to pay $310 million and accept federal monitors to settle concerns over doctor kickbacks. Ashcroft's Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, The Ashcroft Group LLC, stands to make from $27 million to $52 million over 18 months, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.