Keith Reid

U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, right, and FBI Director Weysan Dun last year in Trenton on the day Mims Hackett was arrested.

NEWARK - The steps of City Hall.

That was the image U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie used to tell the bad ending story of former Assemblyman and Orange Mayor Mims Hackett, who twice pleaded guilty today: once in federal court to one count of attempted extortion, and once in state Superior Court to a charge of official misconduct.

Flanked in the U.S. Attorney’s Office by state Attorney General Anne Milgram and state FBI Director Weysan Dun, Christie made special mention of the fact that it was outside City Hall that Hackett took the bribe which started his fall.

"This is a public servant who decided that $5,000 was a good down payment for him to sell his office," said Christie.

The defiant U.S. Attorney recalled critics who questioned his office’s motives when Hackett and ten other elected officials first appeared in court last year to answer to federal corruption charges.

Keith Reid, who served as the Chief of Staff to Newark City Council President Mildred Crump until his arrest in October, was indicted today on charges that he took $13,500 in cash bribes to steer an insurance contract to an undercover FBI company. The Indictment also accuses Reid of conspiring with an Irvington Township official -- identified only as Irvington Official 1 in the Indictment.

Newark City Council President Mildred Crump says that Keith Reid, who was arrested yesterday on charges that he accepted a cash bribe to deliver a city insurance contract, has taken a leave of absence from his post as her Chief of Staff.

She says Reid requested the leave.

Rev. Alfred Steele is the Assembly Deputy Speaker and the Passaic County UndersheriffThe list of eleven public officials arrested today by FBI agents: Assemblymen Alfred Steele and Mims Hackett, Passaic Mayor Sammy Rivera, Passaic City Councilman Marcellus Jackson, former Passaic City Councilman Jonathan Soto, Keith Reid, the Chief of Staff to the Newark City Council President, Louis Mister of Pleasantville, and five current and former members of the Pleasantville Board of Education -- Jayson Adams, City Councilman Maurice "Pete" Callaway, James McCormick, James Pressley and Rafael Velez.

Callaway is the brother of former Atlantic City Councilman Craig Callaway, who was sentenced today to 40 months in a federal prison for taking bribes from an undercover FBI agent.

Soto, viewed as a rising star in North Jersey GOP politics when he was elected to the City Council in his early 20's, is the Passaic Republican Municipal Chairman.  He has endorsed Rudy Giuliani for President.