Did Christie REALLY go there?

by: Adam L

Tue Sep 01, 2009 at 09:30:00 AM EDT

The headline is one of the funniest of the unintentional irony scale, and reads "GOP candidate Chris Christie accuses Gov. Corzine of politicizing U.S. Attorney's Office"

Excuse me while I clean up after pissing myself.

Chris Christie is complaining about someone else politicizing the US Attorney's office?  But wait - it gets better.  Christie's concern is about criticism of acting US Attorney Ralph Marra and the investigation that his own bosses and the Justice Department are looking into with respect to Marra's own comments.  This is an internal ethics inquiry that Corzine had absolutely nothing to do with, and in fact, the only real criticism that Corzine or his campaign have said about the US Attorney office were with respect to the FOIA request that was being blown off.

And, rightfully so - given that the US Attorney (Marra) is under investigation for politicizing his own office, while recently-"retired" Michele Brown, an admitted close personal friend who is literally indebted to Christie one of the ones responsible for (not) complying with the FOIA request.

But let's get back to the politicization of the US Attorney office, shall we?

Christie admitted to having spoken to Karl Rove on numerous occasions about running for Governor while still a US Attorney (the Star Ledger even said that there is no legitimate reason for a US Attorney/Justice Department member to talk to a highly political figure in the administration.  Besides this being a likely Hatch Act violation, Karl Rove was knee deep (and lied about it) in the political firings of US Attorneys.  Christie was rated as "loyal" by the Bush administration in 2005, and saved his own job by getting off the list of US Attorneys to be fired with (1) suspiciously timed subpoenas of Senator Menendez right before the 2006 election (and right before getting off the list), and (2) a suspiciously timed cooperation by Solomon Dwek - someone who went from money laundering to political bribery right around the same mid to late 2006 timeframe.

The nondisclosure of the loan from Christie to Brown also leads to questions over whether he was tipped off by Brown to the timing of the arrests stemming from the Dwek cooperation - or what other ties he has to the US Attorney's office.  It was very recently that he also talked about how he "had attorneys" that he would bring with him to Trenton if he won - another questionable tie and association between a supposed non-political branch of Government and a political campaign.

But as we all know, what Christie says as far as what others should do and the "Christie rules" that only apply to him and his "friends" are worlds apart.