Chris Christie, Former US Attorney, Claims He’s Still “Got” Federal Prosecutors, Talked with Them about State Jobs
Chris Christie’s ongoing ties with his old friends at the US Attorney’s office just got much worse.
First we learned that Chris Christie gave a highly inappropriate loan to one of his Assistant US Attorneys, Michele Brown, when he was her boss. Given his seeming magical coordination of campaign events with high profile busts by his former office, that "ongoing financial relationship" is highly suspect. Then we learned that DOJ’s Office of Public Responsibility is already investigating whether acting US Attorney Ralph Marra made inappropriate politicized comments when he announced the politicos, rabbis, and kidney busts last month.
In other words, there’s already growing evidence that Chris Christie is mobilizing ongoing relationships with friends at the US Attorney’s office to help his campaign against Governor Corzine.
But that was before we learned that Christie was filmed on February 28 at the Breakfast Bagels with Baroni event in West Windsor, promising to give his former AUSAs jobs throughout state government, speaking of them as if they were still "his" AUSAs, and admitting that he had already had a conversation about this with them about those jobs.
You know, we’re going to ferret out waste and fraud and abuse in the government. I think you know I’ll do that better than anybody. I’ve got a group of assistant U.S. attorneys sitting down in Newark still doing their job. But let me tell you, they are watching the newspapers. And after we win this election, I’m going to take a whole group of them to Trenton with me and put them in every one of the departments because they saw a lot of waste and abuse being investigated while we were in the U.S. Attorney’s office that didn’t rise to the level of a crime. So I told them, the good news is, when we get to Trenton we don’t have to worry about beyond a reasonable doubt anymore.
So here’s a poll. Which of the following Christie statements do you find the most damning?
- I’ve got AUSAs in Newark
- I’m going to take a whole group of them to Trenton
- I told them I was going to take them to Trenton
- We’ve agreed to do away with “beyond a reasonable doubt” when we get there
Enter your pick for most damning in the comments.
Don’t have to worry about reasonable doubt? Didn’t we get rid of these fuckers? Are the ignore the constitution republicans zombies that keep rising?
And the audience loved that line. Just disgusting…
Seriously, since we are on the topic, you’ve got nutjob repubs screaming to restore the constitution whilst their nutjob candidates are promising to throw out reasonable doubt protections – does that even jibe? Repubs also thought the idea of arresting a guy in his house for being disorderly was fine. Is this all code for we want old white guys back in charge of everything?
No. It’s code for we want old fat white guys back in charge of everything.
He doesn’t look so old to me.
[Mind, I’m pretty old…]
You gotta admit he thinks old.
Does it really surprise you?
Really, Chris?
I live in NJ. Anyone have any suggestions about what I can do about this?
From across the Delaware here in PA, we’re totally mystified by the byzantine politics in your state. Can’t offer any suggestions from this side.
I’ve lived in PA too. You must not have looked too closely at Phila. politics over the years.
A USA and AUSAs found proving their cases beyond a reasonable doubt to be too difficult a task for them to achieve, and now they think that NJ wants that kind of laziness in every department of its state government?
If Christie did have like-minded cohorts to whine with, then there was cronyism in the hiring practice and NJ needs to purge its AUSAs.
i don’t know anything about christie or n.j. politics,
(i find myself in this situation frequently; it never stops me from commenting, however).
but as the christie/brown loan story unfolds, i can’t suppress the thought that this guy is not very bright.
Chris Christie’s brother Todd is on the Board of Directors of St. Barnabas Medical Center (Network), the second largest employer in NJ.
Chris Christie’s family foundation has donated over $1,000,000 to the Medical Center’s nonprofit foundation over time.
In 2005, St. Barnabas paid a $265,000,000 penalty to the US Government, for a 10 year period where they seriously overbilled Medicare. It was the largest settlement in Medicare history. That $265M was only a portion of the actual $645M that was overbilled. The reduced penalty settlement was achieve so as ‘not to hurt’ the for-profit hospital (which has some for-profit and some non-profit features). The hospital never paid back the $180M difference it bilked from Medicare. The overbilling was deliberate, endorsed as strategy by management, profit-driven, and allowed the hospital to expand.
Christie’s USA-NJ office prosecuted the hospital and shepherded the 2005 settlement. Chris apparently recused himself, citing his family’s donations to the hospital, and placed deputy Marra in charge. At the time, I don’t think Christie mentioned his brother was a trustee of the Hospital.
(I’m now researching to see how long his brother has been a Trustee).
Presumably, Trustee brother Todd would have had access to the hospital’s strategy, plans and finances.
Wow. New meaning to the term “career prosecutor”.
I’m actually having a difficult time picking which line is most damning:
1) I’ve got AUSAs in Newark
2) I’m going to take a whole group of them to Trenton
3) I told them I was going to take them to Trenton
4) We’ve agreed to do away with “beyond a reasonable doubt” when we get there
You may submit your choice for most damning statement in a comment.
#3
Hey pal, I’ve got a nice paying slot for you in my administration as long as, you know, you stay one of “my” AUSAs till then, Kay?
I guess someone could solicit a comment from Fitzgerald on what Grover Cleveland is doing in his grave.
Or not.
Plus it adds a nice parallelism to the whole thing.
Chris Christie gets told in 2005 he can keep his job so long as he stays one of Karl’s USAs. Voila! A Menendez subpoena!
So now he tells “his” AUSAs they can have a job so long as they stay “his” AUSA.
Voila! Rabbis, kidneys, and Democrats!
Voila! Rabbis, kidneys, and Democrats!
LOL – something that not even a random word generator could have produced, proving truth is stranger than Sara Palin. *g*
In your list,
#2 is arguably a conspiracy to obstruct justice
#3 is a violation of the Hatch Act and a conspiracy to violate it
#4 is of a different nature, but the most grievous of the bunch. It’s grievous because it stems from the nature and structure of New Jersey government.
First, as to that “Resonable doubt” thing: He arguably is not talking about criminal prosecutions. In NJ, there are a lot of civil “fraud” statutes, to be enforced by the State AG office, which would only require a preponderance of the evidence standard.
Second, you have to understand the nature of the lawyering side of law enforcement in NJ. It is, in so many words, a unitary system. There are 21 county prosecutors (1/county), appointed by the governor for a 5 year term and confirmed by the Senate. But, the AG trumps all of them. In any investigation or prosecution, the AG can “Supersede” the local county prosecutor and direct the case from Trenton. There is no judicial review of a supercession by the AG. It’s written into the statute.
So, for example, let’s say there’s a Democrat who’s the prosecutor in a county with time left on his term. He’s investigating a prominent Republican, Mr. X, for some crime or another (Take your pick). The new Republican AG can write a letter to that county prosecutor and say “I’m superseding you on the Mr. X case. Send me the file.” The County Prosecutor must then send the Mr. X file to the AG’s office. Given that Mr. X is a Republican, that file would likely either (a) moulder until the statute had run or, to be a bit venal about it, (b) be held over Mr. X head to get him to do things for The Party. (Think of Deadeye’s VP vetting book which he used to such effect intra-Repug party.)
Another example. Let’s say there’s a Democrat who’s the prosecutor in a county with time left on his term. He’s investigating a prominent Democrat, Mr. Y, for some crime or another (Take your pick). It comes up that the investigation is a dry hole – no crime there, or a very marginal case. The new Republican AG can write a letter to that county prosecutor and say “I’m superseding you on the Mr. Y case. Send me the file.” The County Prosecutor must then send the Mr. Y file to the AG’s office. Given that Mr. Y is a Democrat, the investigation suddenly takes on new life, and he is prosecuted.
Another example. Let’s say there’s a prosecutor in a county with time left on his term. He’s gotten complaints from Republicans that too many Democratic votes are showing up – there must be voter fraud going on. He investigates and finds nothing but an effective GOTV operation. The new Republican AG can write a letter to that county prosecutor and say “I’m superseding you on the voting fraud case in your county. Send me the file.” The County Prosecutor must then send the voting fraud case to the AG’s office. Then the new AG starts prosecuting for voting fraud.
Bad enough?
Well, not really.
There was an amendment to the Constitution which created the post of Lieutenant Governor. This was in reaction to the whole acting governor sagas surrounding Whitman going to the Bush cabinet and then the McGreevy gay resignation. Ok.
But, a close reading of the amendment shows that in addition to what you’d expect of a Lt. Governor, there’s a twist. It says the Governor may appoint the Lt. Governor to be the Secretary of State without the advice and consent of the Senate.
Christie’s Lt. Gov. candidate is a woman, one of the county sheriffs from a very Rethug county. Relatively young. But before she was elected to be a sheriff, she was one of his AUSAs in Newark.
Guess what one of the duties of the Secretary of State is?
Certifying election machines, election results, and all the rest.
Bad enough, yet?
There’s more.
Under the New Jersey Constitution, there are only two cabinet officers both defined and required: the AG and the Secretary of State. The Constitution then gives the governor the power to organize the government into not more than twenty principal departments (among them the Department of Law = AG and the Department of State) and to assign functions and duties and authorities among them as he sees fit.
So, for example, if he wanted to, he could take all the people save a couple flunkies from, say, Environmental Protection, and assign them to … picking up trash on the beaches. Permits would get processed by the flunkies for friends of the governor and, due to a shortage of manpower, for no one else. Or similar chicanery. Let your imagination run.
And, as to appropriations – he has a line-item veto over appropriations.
This structure is a wet dream for a putative dictator.
Jay-sus.
Would you do me a favor and post that as a Seminal diary, with this YouTube?
Yup. In NJ, with 10 true believers in the Executive, you can run a full-up police state.
The 1947 NJ Constitution is Unitary Executive on Steroids.
On the “beyond a reasonable doubt” thing, I kind of looked at that reference more charitably and took it that he was saying that when he got “his” “AUSAs” into non-prosecutorial political positions with his administration, they could weed out corruption without having to prosecute it, so they wouldn’t need “beyond a reasonable doubt” to, for example, institute better controls and monitoring, quit doing business with tainted interests, etc. I don’t believe that’s what they’d do, because after looking at what DOJ has done the last 8 years there’s a lot more demons than angels dancing on their pinheads, but I think that’s the kind of thing he was trying to say.
On all the rest of your post – yikes.
i’d consider that except for the way everyone was laughing.
HOLY CRAP. What EW said, please, scribe, post this to The Seminal.
You need help, let me know before 5:55 pm EDT and I’ll be glad to assist.
Great comment. I second EW’s request.
Kim Guadagno was never one of Christie’s Assistant US Attorneys. When Christie was appointed as US Attorney, Guadagno was working as an Assistant Attorney General for the State of New Jersey. Her stint in the USA office was prior to that.
Other than that, I think you’re spot on.
And another example of why you can’t trust a guy with two first names.
Precisely.
Jeez. The only things he didn’t say were
1. “And I hold a mortgage on their houses, so they’ll do whatever I say.”
and
2. “The others owe me money, so I own them.”
and
3. “Unka Karl made sure that the ones I hired were true believers, each and every one of them.”
Thanks for your leads on items on earlier threads.
The mortgage thing has me confused. If he was going to use it as leverage against Michele, why bother registering the documents with Morris County?
– Assuming she’s paying the mortgage, if she stays current, the only thing she has to worry about is the below market IR. And that hurts both him and her if/when there is public relevation.
– Assuming she’s not paying the mortgage (and he’s subsidizng her), that hurts both him/her when there’s public relevation. And assuming he wants to take action for non-payment, he’s got a second lien, so she’d also have to be delinquent in paying her first mortgage before he stands to gain proceeds.
I really don’t see the upside to this arrangement or how it was handled… Unless “owing money” to this man comes with the threat of ‘broken kneecaps.’
I assume there’s no way for her to pay except by check and if he can’t produce those checks (or the regular deposit of them into his account) then he’s screwed.
She could have taken the ‘Norm Coleman approach’ of payment for his DC basement rental – using furniture and other items of value in barter…
You have to record the mortage for it to be valid as against subsequent mortgages and other creditors. If the mortgage is not recorded, it gets bumped down to the bottom of the list of the creditors in the event of, say, a foreclosure. And it might not even get picked up in one.
No, if she goes delinquent on the second mortgage, he could start a foreclosure. The first mortgage would get paid first out of the proceeeds, or (much more likely) she’d do a refinance and get out from under by paying off.
An important problem with the mortgage is we do not know what constitutes an instance of default – it could be that it’s written in that if she votes Dem, or whatever, that would be an instance of default.
The mortgage is a leash and collar around her neck.
Any chance that Michele extorted him?
She appears to be pretty smart. Paralegal working on the landmark tobacco settlement case, then went to Georgetown Law, graduated with honors.
As assistant to USA, she would have seen a lot, Chris made sure of it. And the mortgage thing (co-signed by his wife, no-less) makes him a whole lot worse than Michele.
Of course we seem to have pretty good evidence that her husband was pretty hard up for money.
No idea what motivated her to ask for money and him to give it. Yet.
Well, you’re still missing one. But that’s not discussed in polite company.
Yet.
It’ll get there. It’s already starting to be felt in the breeze.
I’m just hoping it doesn’t pop up until after Labor Day.
Probably true, but should be okay for here….
i think all five are offensive .. it’s more of the unholy republican/conservative blend of politics corrupting the practice of seeking justice ..
pun intended ??
#3 because if he said this before he stepped down in December then it proves he was planning on running for political office while still USA.
it’s clear from ew’s and other comments here that whatever details emerge about this story, sooner or later the story is going to wind its way back to a merge with the fired u.s. attorneys scandal of a couple of years ago.
only this case will be the “anti-fired u.s. attorney” case, a case in which someone who should have been fired was not fired – he was rove and bush’s kind of guy.
wikipedia summarizes some of the criticisms made of christie while he was u.s. attorney:
[…Criticism
Christie has faced strong criticism for several of the actions and decisions taken by the U.S. Attorney’s Office during his tenure; much of the controversy has centered on the several instances in which he awarded lucrative federal monitoring positions in no-bid contracts to friends, supporters, and allies.[15]
Questions first arose after Christie awarded a multi-million dollar, no-bid contract to David Kelley, another former U.S. Attorney, who had investigated Christie’s brother, Todd Christie, in a 2005 fraud case involving traders at the Wall Street firm, Spear, Leeds & Kellogg.[16] [17] Kelley had declined to prosecute Todd Christie, who had been ranked fourth in the investigation-initiating U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint among twenty traders who earned the largest profits for their company at the expense of their customers. The top three were indicted, as were eleven other traders.[18]
Christie was similarly criticized for his 2007 recommendation of the appointment of The Ashcroft Group, a consulting firm owned by Christie’s former superior, the former United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, as a monitor in a court settlement against Zimmer Holdings, an Indiana medical supplies company. The no-bid contract was worth between $28 million and $52 million.[19][20] Christie defended the decision, saying that Ashcroft’s prominence and legal acumen made him a natural choice. Christie declined to intercede when Zimmer’s company lawyers protested the Group’s plans to charge a rate of $1.5 million to $2.9 million per month for the monitoring.[15][21] However, these fees were found to be in line with similar services. [22] Shortly after the House Judiciary Committee began holding hearings on the matter, the Justice Department re-wrote the rules regarding the appointment of court monitors.[23]
Christie also faced censure over the terms of a $311 million fraud settlement with Bristol-Myers Squibb. Christie’s office deferred criminal prosecution of the pharmaceutical company in a deal that required it to dedicate $5 million for a business ethics chair at Seton Hall University School of Law, Christie’s alma mater.[24] [25] The U.S. Justice Department subsequently set guidelines forbidding such requirements as components of out-of-court corporate crime settlements.[26]
In June 2009, Christie was called before the House Judiciary Committee as part of its consideration of new regulations on the contracts known as deferred prosecution agreements. In his testimony, he defended his decisions to award no-bid, high-paying federal monitoring contracts to law firms that his critics say belong to his friends, supporters, and allies. Many Republicans claim that there were political motives behind the hearing because of his upcoming election against Governor Jon Corzine. [15] [27]
Democrats[who?] criticize Christie’s attempts to tarnish Democratic candidates facing election. The most notable instance of this was Christie’s well-publicized subpoenaing of Senator Robert Menendez during his contested 2006 campaign, just two months before the election. [28][verification needed] Christie’s aides have insisted that they initiated the action in response to an article that appeared in The Record of Hackensack, reporting that while Mr. Menendez was a U.S. Representative he had leased a building he owned to a social service agency that he had helped obtain federal financing. [29] The non-profit group paid Menendez more then $300,000 over nine years to rent the building. Mr. Menendez had, claims to have cleared the arrangement with the Congressional ethics office; however, the lawyer he spoke to who no longer works there said it probably happened but she doesn’t remember.[30] As of August 2009, nothing has come from the investigation.
In April, 2009, Christie came under fire from the ACLU for authorizing warrantless cellphone tracking of people in 79 instances. However, the U.S. Department of Justice did approve the practice. [31]
Christie prosecuted the Hemant Lakhani terrorism case, which some say points to entrapment. This is the subject of an episode of the public radio show This American Life, aired in 2005 and 2009.[32] ] …
that’s quite a list of accomplishments in a mere eight years.
can a (former) u.s. attorney be said to have a rap sheet?
Do “his” AUSA’s have any Federal ethics or Hatch infractions to worry about if they have talked to Christie the candidate about future job prospects, either as NJ state employees or state political appointees?
Have you seen his wife? Bless her heart.
I suspect that they met at a greek party in college. They are both legacies, and they were both drunk when they met.
I’d go with:
Coming from a lawyer, especially a former prosecutor, that strikes me as especially troubling. What frame of mind rejects that phrase?
ADDENDUM: Based on scribe @ 24, I’d say it’s the frame of mind that’s looking to sue people. Not so bad, perhaps, but if he’s using it as a way to stifle opposition or investigation, still bad enough.
For me, it’s the sequence and cumulative effect. By the time you get to #3, your mind is saying “Oh ^$%# — and after #4, your mouth is saying the same thing.
OT
Has anyone posted this yet?
Source: The Hill
Several Republican senators are urging Attorney General Eric Holder to scrap plans to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate CIA officials who interrogated suspected terrorists.
In a letter to Holder sent Wednesday, the nine GOP Senators, including Sen. Kit Bond (R-Mo.), the ranking member of the Intelligence Committee, said that the appointment of a special prosecutor could “have serious consequences, not just for the honorable members of the intelligence community, but also for the security of all Americans.”
The senators argue that the interrogation of Mohammed produced information that “was absolutely vital” to capturing other terrorists and preventing other attacks on the United States, such as a West Coast plot to destroy the Library Tower in Los Angeles.
The other signatories of the letter are: Sens. Jon Kyl (Ariz.), Jeff Sessions (Ala.), the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee, Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), John Cornyn (Texas), Tom Coburn (Okla.), Orrin Hatch (Utah), Chuck Grassley (Iowa) and Richard Burr (N.C.).
Read more: http://thehill.com/leading-the…..ins…
Least surprising news story ever.
I’d go with (5) [all the above], but also I’d be a lot more interested in what the New Jersey state bar licensing authority would answer.
And if right now I had any clients under indictment or notified of being targets of investigations by this USA office, I’d be thinking of taking out motions for them.
Such as the rabbis and the Democrats and the kidneys?
Yeah, that can just be saved as a template form on the old computer with blanks to be filled in the caption box.
Did anyone ever locate or confirm Michele Brown’s NJ bar association membership since yesterday?
Here’s another question.
WTF does Christie mean by this?
*putting on tin-foil mindreading hat*
“His” AUSAs are all Rove-tested GOP loyalists, and (reading the papers) there’s going to be a new Dem USA coming to town, so they are looking to leave.
“His” AUSAs are also loyal particularly to him, and (reading the papers) they see the polling that leads them to think that there’s going to be a new GOP Gov coming to Trenton, and they want to be there with him.
It means he has at least one reporter who’s really a cutout to pass messages to the US Atty’s office.
You wouldn’t know Christie has too many problems if you read some of the Jersey papers.
Sounds like Joe McArthey has been reincarnated
Beyond a reasonable doubt, Marcy, I’ll go with door number four.
This guy is dirty and he seems to think no one will notice or care. Horrible idea for him to be governor.
You know what really scares me? that there are many, MANY others like him and we haven’t identified them all.
The 8-plus USAs who were terminated are the exception, not the rule; how many are like Christie? in how many states are the rules stacked as scribe describes at (24) above?
Jeebus. I’m going to have nightmares from this.
wiki says “Christie served as one of the 17 U.S. Attorneys on Attorney General Alberto Gonzales’ advisory commitee.” This committee “helps formulate new programs for improvement of the criminal justice system and the delivery of legal services at all levels.” (wiki)
New programs like the Monica Goodling vetting process? Or like AGAG giving the power to fire USAs to two junior staffers?
Looking for the date of Christies appointment to the advisory board, I found that he was actualy appointed by AG Ashcroft on January 8, 2004. Given how Christie has been distancing himself from Ashcroft, it is significant to me that Christie’s me-for-governor web site and many many other places say he was AGAG’s advisor. Ashcroft resigned on November 9, 2004.
WASHINGTON, D.C.–Attorney General John Ashcroft today announced the appointment of six new members to serve two-year terms on his 2004 Attorney General’s Advisory Committee of United States Attorneys. The Attorney General’s Advisory Committee provides advice and counsel on law enforcement issues and provides a voice for the United States Attorneys in making Department policy. The new members are:
Michael A. Battle, United States Attorney, Western District of New York
Christopher J. Christie, United States Attorney, District of New Jersey
Karin J. Immergut, United States Attorney, District of Oregon
http://www.accessmylibrary.com…..945071_ITM
Not to be a one-note Johnny here, but I filed a Hatch Act Complaint (word doc hosted on my domain) against Christie last year – and OSC’s reply (pdf file hosted on my domain) said he only escaped an investigation by ditching his job.
I’d really like to get that into the on-going story here. He ditched his job early, and abruptly, to avoid a Hatch Act investigation…and now we know why.
Good for you, TH!
3–I told them I was going to take them to Trenton. That is political influence on all of them until the election. There is also the element of stupid grandstanding in 2)
(Stunned and pleased that Mary also picked 3)
If we all hang out here long enough, Mary’s going to teach us up real good.
Crossposted from BlueJersey.com
WTF does he mean by,
“So I told them, the good news is, when we get to Trenton we don’t have to worry about beyond a reasonable doubt anymore.
Damn, even Ferriero, Bush, Cammarano, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Coniglio are entitled to their constitutional rights! (The names you may not recognize are local NJ pols under criminal charges)
Now, of course, Christie will say that he was only speaking in broad metaphoric terms and that he wasn’t advocating an all out police state (which is what we would be without the constitution) but just the fact that this asshole could even say something that bone headed (at best) disqualifies him from the high public office if governor of NJ!!!
And on TOP of that, if what Christie admits to in this video is true, then he’s just blown the whistle on all of the government employees that he’s had these discussions with as the kind of political conspiracy he refers to is a direct violation of the Hatch Act.
There needs to be a special prosecutor appointed to investigate all of these evident illegalities that surround Christie. At the very least, we need a congressional investigation starting in September.
Did Christie really have all these conversations with all these assistant US Attorney’s that he claims that “I got..”? Who are they? Do they know that they are “got” by Christie? When did they get “got”?
What was the exact nature of the exchanges that leads Christie to believe that he’s “got” these people? WTF does he MEAN by “got”?
Again, Christie is toast.
Again – french toast.
Annoying OT–at least they don’t have to send Boggs out there anymore. Runs away
5. I was sleeping with the subordinate I gave a secret loan to.
Great video, EW
You know, I kept wondering why there weren’t more episodes of
Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Who knew Jeff Garlin was a US Attorney?
I’m going to add the “newspapers” line as the fifth choice and say that’s the stealth bomb in that little arsenal. It’s not unlikely he had Hart in mind.
I hear him saying it’s payback time for his critics who have spoken in the media.
But I’m thinking even more nefariously. Don’t AUSAs have access to all kinds of federal information-keeping at all security levels? It works closely with the FBI, which in recent years has been revealed to have been stockpiling all sorts of data on political enemies. It has a desk of computer hackers to track publicly anonymous people without subpeona, as well.
So, while most governors wouldn’t have access to personal information on political enemies and couldn’t get it, Christie will come in with a whole team of people loaded for bear on all critics.
Another thing always pops into my mind when I wonder about Christie. Somewhere in this talk did he throw in a gratuitous “fight terrorism” line? He usually does, and yet, it’s starkly obvious he did nothing in his term to target suspects in “the war on terror.” And NJ was the staging ground for the 9/11 hijackers and home to a good many of the victims and first responders.
The one terror arrest, the Dix Six, was a citizen discovery, not the FBI’s, and he didn’t do much in prosecuting them.
He never went after terror cells that I’m of a mind still foment here. Same with the Mafia, stronger than ever in NJ, imho. I think “Housewives of New Jersey” was the biggest tip so far on that.
He almost solely was a “political corruption” Johnny one note, while there is so much more federal criminal activity here.
The most damning thing for christie is his connection to hudson county republican chiarman Jose Arango. Arango political career is finish. he give spare republican funds to corruupt democrats in exchange for no show job. That greasy slime walk with christie in union city this month undressing every woman with eyes and winking like a fool with dust in his eye. we need real republican leaderss in nj and hudson county. not ones who say ‘do like I say, not like I do.’ christie lost my vote with Arango the fraud and rino. thiat is a republican in name only.