| The ethical problems and conflicts of interest just keep rolling in and coming back to haunt Chris Christie. The so-called squeaky clean crime fighter is looking more and more like the same corrupt Republican whose motives and hidden agenda are more for protecting himself, his friends and his family than it is for the people he was supposed to be fighting for as US Attorney and who he is supposed to fight for if he is Governor.
While it is noble of him to issue guidelines for ethics reform, it would be nicer if he were to live up to ethical standards that would make Christie-the-US Attorney salivate in terms of investigating and prosecuting.
He now has to answer two sets of questions regarding questionable (at best) practices he engaged in while US Attorney that certainly would make anyone truly interested in justice and "the rule of law" question his priorities and loyalties. First, Congressmen Pallone and Pascrell introduced a bill that would regulate the use of deferred prosecutions - a practice that not only delays justice from being served in the first place, but one that Christie used in highly questionable circumstances as well as actions that have the appearance of a quid pro quo involving millions of dollars and his own brother getting away with serious crimes in a stock fraud case.
Consider the following series of events:
- Christie's brother was a top executive at Spear, Leeds & Kellogg ("SLK"), and was accused of making improper stock trades between 1999 and 2003;
- SLK settled for millions of dollars and a number of high and mid level employees were indicted or pled guilty to crimes associated with the stock fraud. Christie was the highest level individual who escaped indictment by Kelly;
- In September 2007 (while Christie was still US Attorney), he gave a millions+ dollar monitoring contract to David Kelly, who was the US Attorney that investigated the stock fraud case against SLK and Christie's brother.
- In 2008, Christie's brother settled with the SEC and wasn't charged with any crimes.
And what was Chris Christie's response to this major red flag? Christie said yesterday that he had never had a conversation with Kelly about his brother's SEC problems. He said he gave Kelly the monitoring contract because "he was a great prosecutor who ran one of the biggest offices in the country and I needed a tough guy."
Yeah, sure. I'm sure "Christie the US Attorney" would have let that explanation go without any investigation.
If that wasn't enough, he also gave a $27 - $52 million no-bid deal to his former boss, John Ashcroft's firm to do monitoring over another entity that he was investigating. And just recently, it was discovered that Christie accepted close to $25,000 in contributions from a law firm that he gave another lucrative no-bid contract to.
It's time that "no-bid Christie" cleans up his act and answers questions as to whether he would have investigated and prosecuted someone who had the above facts and actions. My guess is that if he says he wouldn't, then he is a liar as well as someone with hidden motives. |
