Might Sharpe get off?

Like President Nixon, Sharpe James is “not a crook.”

So his defense lawyer assured the federal corruption jury yesterday.

In opening arguments, Thomas Ashley maintained the former mayor and state senator “didn’t do it.” There’s no evidence of it, in fact.

The “it” is selling out the city’s best interest for a [cough] businesswoman old enough to be the 72-year-old pol’s daughter — or granddaughter. Not that age got in the way of what Tamika Riley described as an “intimate” relationship with the crusty power broker. And not that age got in the way of James allegedly getting the city to sell her parcels of land at bottom basement prices. As Newark is now one of the few places in New Jersey where real estate prices are actually going up, Riley had no trouble flipping those properties weeks later for more than $600,000 in profit.

Yes, betrayal of public trust. But after five consecutive terms as mayor of a corrupt city, is this all prosecutors could get on Sharpe?

Even more troubling is how Assistant U.S. Attorney Phillip Kwon framed his opening arguments yesterday. The Ledger’s Bob Braun writes that Kwon “repeatedly warned jurors this would not be a story easy to understand, his version of the story. He warned about getting ‘bogged down’ and ‘lost in the weeds,’ and said: ‘You’re not going to get evidence in a straight chronological order.”

Oh, boy. Might Tricky Sharpe get off?