A New Jersey lawyer is facing a three-month suspension of his license for pledging in 2007 to use a concocted connection to Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff to get lenient treatment for a client in a criminal case.

Gerald Saluti’s boast that he would prevail on Chertoff to open “the appropriate door” at the Department of Justice to arrange a deal for the client was a “gross exaggeration,” the Disciplinary Review Board said in an opinion made public Tuesday.