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The gravel of a funeral home parking lot could be heard crunching under the feet of two public officials from suburban Summit as they left a wake to privately compare notes on a worrisome federal bribery investigation.

During the March 2022 conversation, John Kosmowski, the Summit police chief, tried to tell his colleague and frequent drinking buddy, then-Public Works Director Bill Mundy, that a cash payment they’d received from a bar owner five years earlier was just a loan — and that neither he nor Mundy pulled any strings to get the owner’s liquor license transferred.

“Kris gave me the money as a loan. I gave you $3,000 because just, in general principle, you need the money,” Kosmowski said to Mundy, who was secretly wearing a wire for the

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