Craig Carpenito

Carpenito worked as a white-collar prosecutor under Chris Christie, helping to secure a key conviction in a major accounting fraud case a decade ago. As a defense lawyer, he represented Christie in a lawsuit arising from the scandal known as Bridgegate, which led to the convictions of three Christie allies and helped to ruin Christie’s approval ratings. Carpenito helped to prosecute former Cendant Corp. Chairman Walter Forbes for leading an accounting fraud in the 1990s that foreshadowed larger scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. Christie put Carpenito on the case after jurors convicted one executive but deadlocked on Forbes. After a second mistrial, Carpenito and another prosecutor won a conviction of Forbes at a third trial in 2006. They attacked the claim by Forbes that he was a visionary who was ignorant of company finances and operations. While at Alston & Bird LLP in New York, Carpenito handled internal investigations and represented clients under scrutiny by the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he once worked.