Congressman Scott Garrett (R-5th Dist.) and his opponent, Josh Gottheimer, both issued cease and desist orders over each other's advertisements.
HACKENSACK -- Both candidates for the 5th congressional district said Wednesday that their opponent has released false and misleading advertisements and vowed to take legal action to get them off the airwaves.
Rep. Scott Garrett (R-5th Dist.) said that he is sending a cease-and-desist letter to local television stations over an image used in advertisements by his opponent, Josh Gottheimer.
Gottheimer said he would send a similar letter over an ad that he claims mischaracterizes a lawsuit filed years ago in which he was a named party.
The 30-second anti-Garrett ad in question claims that the congressman is under investigation for bribery and corruption. It shows a letter allegedly from the Office of Congressional Ethics.
Garrett said that the commission didn't find reason to investigate the claims further and called the charges "outrageous." The letter in the ad, Garrett's campaign said, is the original request sent by a watchdog group to the Office of Congressional Ethics requesting the matter be reviewed.
"There is no such document as he is showing and forged in that advertisement," Garrett said. "Josh falsified it, Josh forged it."
The accusation is rooted in a request made last year by the watchdog group to the Office of Congressional Ethics to investigate whether Garrett accepted campaign donations from the payday lending industry near the time when he acted in support of the industry.
The Office of Congressional Ethics doesn't disclose if an investigation is occurring and the process is only made public if an investigation is submitted to the House Committee on Ethics for further review.
An official with the Gottheimer campaign confirmed that it had produced the ad. The Gottheimer campaign official said after publication that the image used in the ad was a visual representation of what office the complaint was filed to and that it didn't manipulate an image.
The Gottheimer campaign also argued that Garrett had also manipulated images in anti-Gottheimer ads.
Fifteen minutes before Garrett's press event, Gottheimer scheduled his own miles away in Paramus to demand more answers to the accusations that Garrett was bribed. He also stated that he was sending a cease and desist letter for an ad that misrepresented accusations made in a 2007 lawsuit in which he was named.
"What is galling about all of this, of course, is that Congressman Garrett is currently running an ad against me that he knows is unequivocally false," Gottheimer said.
In 2007, a woman living in a condominium in the D.C. area accused a number of people of mistreatment, including Gottheimer, who was on the condo's board. Court documents show that the woman accused Gottheimer of waving his finger in her face questioning her "in an intimidating manner."
The Garrett campaign provided reporters with a paper stating that a "stipulation of a dismissal" was filed and agreed to on March 2008. A Gottheimer campaign official argued that the description was a standard filing term for the paperwork, and repeated that none of the parties had settled.
"Unlike our cease and desist letter, which is supported by facts, his letter has no basis in reality, as there is a public record of his assault and settlement," said Garrett campaign manager Sarah Neibart, in an emailed statement. "We're happy Josh's campaign thinks our cease and desist letter was such a good idea, but the facts simply aren't on his side."
Sara Jerde may be reached at sjerde@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @SaraJerde.