Another day, another Chris Christie scandal:
Barlyn says that after he secured an indictment in 2010 against Hunterdon County Sheriff Deborah Trout, a Republican with political ties to Christie, he was fired and the case hastily killed by Christie’s appointed attorney general at the time, Paula Dow. The real story isn’t the mundane crimes that were alleged: hiring without proper background checks, making employees sign loyalty oaths, threatening critics and producing fake police badges for a prominent Christie donor. It’s the possible abuse of power by the administration’s head prosecutor.
Barlyn is now trying to compel the state Attorney General’s Office to release the grand jury transcripts to prove his case had legs.
He’s not the only one who says so: Four grand jurors and other dismissed prosecutors have come forward to agree. A judge even ordered the release of the transcripts — yet still, the state is refusing to comply. It has filed a torrent of briefs in an effort to suppress the grand jury record, and will continue this fight at a hearing Tuesday.
Christie’s appointed attorney general is also seeking a gag order on Barlyn and his lawyer, in the event these transcripts must be handed over. Which makes you wonder: What is the administration trying so hard to hide?
Scarborough, Rothenberg, Halperin and the rest will tell us “playing dirty is part of politics”. Well, so is having your presidential ambitions crushed when you get busted playing dirty. It’s all in the game.
Violet
It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup. Again. And again.
Amir Khalid
True enough, but to acquiesce to that is to conflate “is” and “should be”.
Tractarian
If this guy is still in office by Labor Day, I’ll eat my hat.
KG
there is a difference between “politics” and “governing.” It’s one thing to run negative and/or attack ads, to take a quote out of context, and to impugn one’s character by proxy. It is a wholly different thing, once elected, to use the power of office to protect cronies and punish political opponents.
MikeJ
And simultaneously whine that Obama is forcing all these Republicans to commit crimes so he can persecute them.
GregB
Yes, they will defend Christie for using a hatchet on his political enemies from one corner of their moths and from the other corner they will attack Democrats for being so partisan in attacking Christie.
Fuzzy
@Violet: Every time. If they thought they’d get caught they wouldn’t do it. “If you can’t do the time don’t do the crime” does not come into these assholes way of thinking because they are privileged don’t ya know.
RSR
Uh, oh.
John Arbuthnot Fisher
None of these scandals are new if you’ve been paying attention rather than giving Christie a handjob. Just Google Michele Brown, she knows firsthand.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
I remember this from when the NYT covered it. It wasn’t even subtle to take over a county prosecutor’s office and then dismiss charges. I figured it was just rough New Jersey politics as applied to law enforcement, since it seemed to never get the notice I thought it deserved.
KG
@Fuzzy: it’s not even that… when you get caught just fess up, “mistakes were made, we are trying to fix the problems” and move along.
burnspbesq
Although I’m a member of the NJ bar, whatever small amount of state administrative law I learned in order to pass the bar is long gone. No idea whos’s right in the current pie fight over releasing old grand jury transcripts.
That said …
State AGs aren’t supposed to be primarily political actors. They’re supposed to have some degree of independence from the Governor’s Mansion. This fails every smell test known to man.
trnc
Sure, and will remain so as long as they provide cover for it – same way that 10 year old Joey will keep beating the crap out of 7 year old Bobby as long as dad says, “Kids will be kids”.
DougJ
@burnspbesq:
Yes. I’m actually a bit surprised by this, given that in NYS, there is frequently some friction between the governor and the AG.
ranchandsyrup
To the Village, the thought that not every U.S. citizen loves a Daddy GOPer as much as they do is incomprehensible.
KG is right on the money. Politics and governing need to be separated. Different audiences, different incentives.
WJS
This is good news for Chris Christie!
Gin & Tonic
@burnspbesq: This fails every smell test known to man.
It’s NJ. Bad smells are part of the landscape.
JoyfulA
@DougJ: In PA, the AG is independently elected. The county chief prosecutors are the district attorneys, who are also independently elected in their respective counties.
srv
This all pales in comparison to the uninvestigted JFK, LBJ and Obama’s election thefts.
Woodrowfan
meanwhile, here in Virginia the righties are in full ah-poc-o-lisp mode because our new Democratic AG is declining to defend our blatantly unconstitutional anti-Gay marriage ban in court because, well, because it’s blatantly unconstitutional. Delegate “Sideshow” Bob Marshall had a full meltdown on a local radio show over it.
Woodrowfan
@Gin & Tonic:
Old joke with the punchline “so he drove her to New Jersey”
OzarkHillbilly
@Tractarian: You want some ketchup with that?
jus sayin’….
Meg
@burnspbesq: Except New Jersey is one of those few states that the AG is appointed by the governor himself, and not an elected official.
JGabriel
Slighty OT, but, well, you’ll see. TPM:
There it is again, 27%, The Crazification Factor! John Rogers and Tyrone are bloody geniuses.
srv
@JGabriel: There needs to be one site where all the 27% results are referenced.
Nemo_N
I thought conservatives hated Chicago-style politics.
OzarkHillbilly
@Nemo_N: They do, but they love NJ style politics. If you are having a hard time telling them apart, you’re not a conservative.
Belafon
@Nemo_N: They do. There are no serious blah men in Republican politics.
Chris
@JGabriel:
There is hope, after all.
Polls of the American people regularly make me despair for the country, whether it’s those that show a resolute half of the country flat-out refusing to “believe” in anything other than creationism, or those that show Reagan as the highest ranked president in American history, or those that show a majority continue to think of the media as “liberally biased” no matter how far they bend over backwards to give blowjobs to the likes of Christie, Romney, McCain, Palin, Ryan, Paul… Apparently, they at least know who’s fucking things up in Washington.
Jewish Steel
@Nemo_N: @OzarkHillbilly:
Da Right Honorable Richard J Daley was just the kind of hippie skull cracking Democrat my Republican grandparents could get behind.
drkrick
@JGabriel: I thought everything went back to 23? Perhaps Burroughs made some kind of rounding error. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_enigma
drkrick
Loyalty oaths? To who?
Roger Moore
@GregB:
This. Somebody needs to point out the double standard.
Howlin Wolfe
@Nemo_N: Only because the Chitown pols are usually Dems. You, know, IOKIYAR.
Ash Can
I remember the entire Watergate imbroglio. I was in high school at the time and watched with both fascination and disgust as the whole thing played out. I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing when Nixon announced his resignation, and I remember the feeling of relief I (and many, many other people) had upon hearing his announcement.
That all seems so quaint in comparison now. One lousy break-in. One. And it led to the president’s resignation. Christie and his administration is being fucking bombarded with one scandalous report after another, each one of which could have knocked Nixon out of office if investigated like the Watergate break-in was.
The conclusion of the Watergate post-mortems was that Nixon did himself in through his hubris, by placing himself above the law. Now here we have Chris Christie, who’s made a fucking industry out of it.
When Sandy slammed New Jersey and Christie went straight to work with Obama on cleaning up the mess, I praised his response, but knew that once again, in the future, he’d give us reason to want to kick his ass. And, once again, I underestimated just how bad that future ass-kicking behavior would be..
raven
@Ash Can: One lousy break in? You better buck up on your history.
mdblanche
Have a heart, will you? Can’t you see how desperate those guys are? The walls are closing in on them. Without their daddy Christie, they don’t have anybody to save them from the mean old Cruzes and Pauls and Santora who think that just because they make up the vast majority of the GOP that gives them some sort of right to pick its next presidential nominee. Who will save them now? Paul Ryan? Jeb [last name redacted]? Sure, it would be nice if they faced their impending doom with dignity but I think people trapped on an exploding zeppelin without any means of escape are entitled to panic a little.
Ignaz Playel
Spitzer resigned for less. Yeah, he had one of those issues with state police entourage abuse of power. And he brought a prostitute across state lines. But he did in fact resign.
Betsy
@srv: I thought this site was it.
jl
‘ Scarborough, Rothenberg, Halperin and the rest will tell us “playing dirty is part of politics”. ‘
Oh, do they now? I missed that when they get all googoo outraged over Obama dirty Chicago thug machine politics and worry about how voters will react to the stench of Nobummer corruption. (Edit: Which, as we have seen repeatedly, is nowhere near as bad or as common as GOP SOP)
These guys are partisan political hacks from start to finish, it is just that some of them (Scarborough mainly) are more subtle and nuanced in tactics.
catclub
@raven: Yep.
Plus CREEP, plus enemies list, plus plumbers,plus IRS targeting,…
Mandalay
@Ash Can:
!!!???
I think you need to clarify your comments.
BGK
Meanwhile, here in my district…
jl
@JGabriel: Good to see those numbers. As a great GOPer past once said “you can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot foll all of the people all of the time”
I guess the 27 percent are the ‘some of the people all of the time”, and some of those are eager to be fooled so they can sulk in their fantasy white person 1950s world.
Citizen_X
@mdblanche:
Sure, and I’m entitled to intone “Oh, the humanity” in as bored a voice as I can manage.
LanceThruster
In the 2012 race, my born-again Xian Rethuglican sis would answer who she thought of as a credible Gooper POTUS candidate was as, “Chris Christie.”
I wonder what she would make of her dream top of the ticket star now.
shortstop
@LanceThruster: Let’s prank call her right now and ask.
ET
The bridge thing for Christie was bad not for the situation itself so much, but for the fact that it opened to door or gave permission for people to look a lot closer than they might otherwise have.
He and his allies have expended a lot of time and energy building up a persona that they likely knew wouldn’t necessarily stand up against the dirty (or at least dingy) dealings that used to develop and sustain that persona.
Now people smell blood and perceive weakness and all bets are off.
jl
The Bridgeacolypsegatepaloozaganza (we need name as big and wide as Christie himself) will be interesting. Looks like they are having trouble finding a Jersey GOPer can serve on the committee who wasn’t involved somehow.
Edit: I am sure I will hear an interview with GOP ‘political consultant’ on the news who will explain counterintuitively that you really need a GOPer who was involved in the scandal to be investigating, since that way you get real inside knowledge. Or, maybe that will be in Slate.
Welcome to New Jersey, Edition #456
JOSH MARSHALL, JANUARY 27, 2014, 3:44 PM EST9
…State Sen. Kevin O’Toole will remain on the investigating committee even though it appears that David Wildstein, the guy at the center of the scandal, was consulting with him about what to do during the cover-up phase of the scandal.
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/welcome-to-new-jersey-edition-456
the Conster
Every drip of info about Christie just confirms the whole NJ Tony Soprano narrative – it’s fun to watch Tony Soprano move through his world from a distance, but no one ever thought “now that’s a guy that would make a great president”.
Shakezula
This is sounding like Palin Follies all over again.
@Woodrowfan: Yeah could you do something about the shrieking? It is keeping your neighbors in MD awake.
p.s. Congrats on your new Gov. and AG.
Keith G
@Mandalay: To give Ash Can the benefit of the doubt, it was the break in that allowed the dozens of other incidents to bubble up to the notice of the press. That smorgasbord of dirty tricks, ratfucking, and various illegalities might have become public knowledge without the break in, but maybe with not enough time or power to force Nixon out of office.
I am thinking AC knew that, but just was not clear. YMMV.
dedc79
Speaking of dirty
Chris
@Ash Can:
Nixon is the father of the modern Republican Party. If not in its ideology, then in its methods (winning at politics is everything; nothing is more important; not stopping politics at the water’s edge, not upholding constitutional principles, nothing), in its membership (most contemporary Republican politicians, if memory serves, got started under him), and in who it chooses to appeal to and how (a glibertarian he wasn’t, but all the cultural anxieties against nonwhites, against non-Christians, against intellectuals, against hippies, that was all him). No surprise that everyone’s been building off of his legacy.
LanceThruster
@shortstop:
She’d call my dad and complain that I’m picking on her [and we’re both ‘adults’ over 50].
xD
ranchandsyrup
That fucking fuck Scarborough straight up lied about the latest WaPo Obamacare numbers this morning–without being challenged as usual. Kept flogging the 37% approval number when the poll shows 46/47% approval.
shortstop
@LanceThruster: Our families sound remarkably similar.
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
No one in the Village will. They are, after all, the ones who actively promote the double standard, via the “both sides do it” meme.
Wipe them out. All of them.
Ash Can
@raven:
@Mandalay:
The break-in was the focal point of the investigation and had the greatest shock value in the eyes of the average American at the time. It was unthinkable at the time that an American president could be involved in a lowly breaking-and-entering, and the closer the investigation got to Nixon himself, the more shocking it became. Everything else that emerged during the investigation was piling onto the coverup, with the burglary remaining the centerpiece. In Christie’s case, besides the coverup silliness (so far), we have several incidents that by themselves could stand alone as central points of a Watergate-style investigation. An embarrassment of riches, in a perverse way.
Mandalay
@Ash Can: Gotcha.
JGabriel
LanceThruster:
I’m not in a position to mock her. For the first two months of 2008, I still liked John Edwards — which, to be fair, he was the only one, at the time, talking about poverty and offering a health plan.
geg6
@DougJ:
Are AGs elected in NY? Apparently, in NJ, it’s an appointed by the governor office.
I find that a bit shocking.
LanceThruster
@shortstop:
As you can imagine…there’s no talking sense to a Gooper.
When she gets flustered she cries, “You have no right to tell me what to think!” as if correcting her many factual misrepresentations (she’s plugged into the FAUX matrix) is the same thing as being “thought police.” Sad and strange thing is she’s currently underemployed thanks to the economic destruction of the Bush years (good job, too little hours in an architectural firm), but does not make the connection.
She’s a borderline Teahadist (I think she thinks of Huckabee as a Xian voice of reason).
[sigh]
LanceThruster
@JGabriel:
I backed the same horse…and a lot of us would be eating crow had he gotten further and then had the truth come out.
And I would have copped to not knowing enough about other aspects of his character. Christie is pretty much lauded for his “character.”
Next time I see her (it would be cruel to make contact just to rub her nose in it) I’ll find out if she defends him, blames the MSM, or realizes he was not the pinnacle of muscular manliness (thank you Brit Hume) and virtue she had him pegged for.
geg6
@LanceThruster:
My one GOPer BIL has finally learned to just keep his mouth shut during family get togethers. Of course, he’s one of those “moderate” GOPers, but he used to try to argue with the rest of us all the time. After he was confronted at every family holiday or gathering with fact after fact after fact that proved everything he said to be just wrong or a flat out FOX lie, he decided to just shut up.
I like him much better now. ;-)
geg6
@LanceThruster:
I laugh every time I see someone quote that asshat. I mean, are people like Brit Hume so delusional that they really see him that way? Seriously?
LanceThruster
@geg6:
My sister cops an attitude of “don’t try to confuse me with the facts!” and therefore *any* discussion is seen as a personal and vicious attack on her.
I leave her alone pretty much out of pity. I like doing ‘battle’ in the arena of ideas because it helps fine-tune my own views and allows for correction of my own errors when appropriate.
You’d think everyone would want to be engaged at that level.
Instead, they just want to stay safely inside their own bubble.
geg6
@LanceThruster:
Well, my BIL has no choice but to go out of the bubble. He’s married to a flaming liberal.
Ash Can
@Chris: I agree, especially in that it was pretty much Nixon Admin retreads who opened the door to the John Birch Society under Reagan and paved the way for those wackos to gain control of the GOP. Hindsight is 20-20 regarding Jerry Ford’s pardoning of Nixon. At the time, it came in the direct wake of the shock of the Watergate investigation, with all its unsavory revelations and culminating in the then-unheard-of resignation of a sitting president. It came also in the only slightly less direct wake of the Viet Nam War, which was a real trauma for the American people due to the draft — huge numbers of families across the nation were directly affected by the ordeal of having a young adult male relative serving and quite often being maimed or killed in the war. The general feeling at the time was “make it all go away, already,” and Jerry did. I think it’s also safe to say that he was way too close to the potential targets of investigation to realistically expect him to go after (at least) Nixon. I wouldn’t have been surprised if half of his own inherited administration had ended up sent up the river under those circumstances. I can certainly see how he would have wanted to avoid something like that. It’s just a damned shame that the circumstances of the time were what they were.
LanceThruster
@geg6:
Said with an feigned air of gravitas while sounding like he has a mouthful of slobber.
He is such a pathetic shill. He’s most likely first in line breathless awaiting Roger Ailes’ marching orders.
LanceThruster
@geg6:
Like Matalin/Carville?
[now there’s a marriage made in hell – I can think of no other reason for the pairing than their ‘hired gun’ function].
mdblanche
@Citizen_X: I may not agree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it. In this case though, I do agree.
Randy P
Spot on. And as part of making it go away, he also pardoned all the draft dodgers hiding out in Canada.
Nixon resigned in 74. Those TV images of the last choppers fleeing Saigon with desperate people crowding into them or hanging off them were from 75.
geg6
@LanceThruster:
*shudder* No, he’s not quite as bad as Matalin. He considers himself more of an old fashioned Rockefeller Republican. As I tell him all the time, the only Rockefeller around today is a Democrat.
LanceThruster
@geg6:
Yeah. It’s like trying to compare Goldwater to the crop today.
LanceThruster
@geg6:
Luca Brasi: Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that you have invited me to your home on the wedding day of your daughter. And may their first child be a masculine child.
xD
Irishguy
@Violet: Responding to the very first comment in the thread: It is BOTH the crime and the cover-up.
This whole, “Not the crime, but the cover-up” line was born in Watergate. What was Nixon supposed to do? Say, “Yeah, I sent a crew in to fix the broken bug we already put in the DNC Headquarters. So what?”
Likewise, what was Christie supposed to do? “Yeah, the whole idea of screwing up traffic in Fort Lee came from me.”
Americans are forgiving people. But they are not that forgiving.
drkrick
@the Conster:
No one ever thought that? I wish I was as sure as you that that was true.
drkrick
@Randy P:
Carter was the one who amnestied the Vietnam era draft evaders in ’77.
I didn’t think Ford had much choice but to pardon Nixon at the time. If you could have found 12 people in the same jurisdiction who hadn’t made up their mind about Nixon and Watergate by then I’m not sure you would have wanted to trust them with such an important decision. A lot of us regret the precedent that was sent in hindsight, but I also have to wonder how much more revenge crazed the GOP hardliners would have been in the ’90’s and now if Nixon had been convicted or jailed.
Villago Delenda Est
@LanceThruster:
How can Carville stand it, when he knows that Bellatrix’s true love is the Dark Lord himself?
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
@JGabriel:
I appreciate that you have acknowledged this, on more than one occasion, I believe.
I will still point and laugh.
JoeShabadoo
@drkrick: The GOP has proven again and again that backing down doesn’t stop them. If the Dems do something they use it as an excuse and if the Dems don’t the GOP does it anyway.
LanceThruster
@Villago Delenda Est:
On Bill Maher’s show she implied that it’s because she knows what a man wants.
[Ulp!]
CaseyL
@LanceThruster: Well, she knows what one particular man wants, and I think we should just leave it at that.
(IIRC, at some point some years ago, one or the other of them said that what kept them together was the amazing sex.)
Smiling Mortician
@CaseyL: Just couldn’t leave it at that, though, could you? Ew.
Faux News
@JGabriel: Damn that 27% is like the number 666. Both are the work of the Devil. Or Cthulhu, or both.
Faux News
@srv: You forgot Clinton. Also, BENGHAZI!!!
CaseyL
@Smiling Mortician: Hey! I didn’t speculate on particulars! That’s a place I do. not. want. to go.
brantl
@srv: ? Seriously?
RSA
@KG:
Great point. I remember John DiIulio, way back in the W. days, discovering that with today’s Republicans there’s no difference between politics and policy.
brantl
@LanceThruster: Goldwater was just as freaking crazy as the current crop, but there weren’t many like him, at the time.
Cervantes
@Ash Can:
How do you square those notions with the following?
1. Bob Hartmann, one of Ford’s top aides, yelled at him after hearing that Ford had met with Al Haig to discuss the possibility of a resignation in return for a pardon. (In other words, Haig had offered Ford a clear path to the Presidency in return for the pardon.) Ford’s own press secretary — a friend of 25 years’ standing — resigned “as a matter of conscience” upon hearing about the pardon the day before it was announced.
2. The public’s reaction upon hearing about the pardon — immediate outrage. Gallup announced that, overnight, Ford’s approval rating dropped 21 points. A majority felt the pardon was part of a secret deal (and not in a good way). Even Ford acknowledged that out of thousands of letters he received in the week after the pardon, only about seven hundred praised him for it.
3. A week later, when Ford held a press conference, 75% of the questions from the press were about the pardon, most of them voicing disbelief or public anger.
4. The reaction in Congress: there was an official investigation into the pardon to see if (or how) corrupt it was.
How could these (and many similar) things have happened if “[t]he general feeling at the time was ‘make it all go away, already'”?
Cervantes
@DougJ:
Completely different scenario. New York has elected its attorneys general since before the Civil War. New Jersey’s AGs have always been appointed. Expectations differ accordingly.
Supposition aside, NY’s and NJ’s AGs are political in different ways.
Cervantes
@Chris:
Maybe. From that same TPM article:
Read it and weep.
Matt
I am shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that one of Shrub’s crooked US Attorneys would then turn around and hire an AG that was so crooked he had to go through doors in two steps. ;)