A warning at this point. All the conclusions that follow from here are supposition and there is no evidence that these conclusions are true. It is just that there are a number of points that coincide between what the New Mexico's Iglesias refused to do and what Chris Christie did do.
Chris Christie is a former Republican Freeholder from Morris County who had the honor to be a Bush "Pioneer" in the 2000 election. Pioneers are people who raised $100,000 or more for Bush Cheney 2000. After Bush took office in 2000, Christie was appointed US Attorney for New Jersey. Christie was also widely rumored to be a leading Republican candidate for Frank Lautenberg's Senate seat, and is the leading Republican to take on Jon Corzine for Governor in 2009. In short, he has been a powerful and long-time partisan Republican, and has aspirations to enter politics again as a Republican some day in the future.
He has also prosecuted Republican and Democratic politicians in his time as a US Attorney. He had a high-profile prosecution of almost a dozen Republicans and a couple Democrats in local Monmouth County politics, and nailed Jim Treffinger (the leading 2002 Republican candidate for US Senate before he was indicted). This has, largely, insulated Christie from complaints of playing politics with his office.
But Christie is not the only US Attorney to go after Republicans as well as Democrats. Carol Lam of California brought down Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in 2005, an early blow to the hopes of the Republican party to shed the corruption label. She was forced to resign as US Attorney last fall.
According to the reports on Iglesias he was forced out after getting pressure to start playing politics with his allegedly non-partisan office. There have been other suggestions that these replacements are political retribution, as well, such as the replacement of Little Rock US Attorney Bud Cummins by former Karl Rove aide Tim Griffin, and of course the Lam debacle. The US Attorney who was forced out in Seattle, also is rumored to have lost his job for failing to help Republicans win an election in 2004: One of the most persistent rumors in Seattle legal circles is that the Justice Department forced McKay, a Republican, to resign to appease Washington state Republicans angry over the 2004 governor's race. Some believe McKay's dismissal was retribution for his failure to convene a federal grand jury to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the race. It appears that US Attorneys who prosecute or get in the way of Republicans are getting fired. Christie still has a job.Christie's prosecutions of Republicans were all before the passage of the amended USA Patriot Act that gave the Bush administration new powers to replace at will. In fact, they were fairly early in his tenure.
This brings up the question: how many US Attorneys were leaned on to use their office for political gain? And how many of those gave in to the pressure in order to keep their jobs?
Again, this is all conjecture, and the fact that Christie was not forced out in no way suggests that he got or acceded to political pressure.
But over the past seven months his office has been leaking more information against Democrats than in the past.
In September, Christie issued a subpoena on a non-profit regarding their rental of a building from Democratic Senator Bob Menendez as he was in a rough campaign with Tom Kean Jr. The subpoena came in what appeared concert with the Kean Jr. campaign's post-Labor Day putsch on corruption issues, and knocked Menendez off message for weeks.
The subpoena was not issues quietly, either.
"The big issue of the subpoena is that, while ordinarily they are kept confidential, it was quickly known by everybody that this was issued," said Rick Thigpen, a Democratic strategist. "You would certainly wonder was there anything so significantly pressing that it couldn't wait till after the election."
In fact, there was a lot of press regarding the subpoena - including comments from Christie - before the election and then a seeming silence since then. This could be simply a loss of interest after an election, but there has also been no move on Menendez. There was a very public subpoena and then it quieted down.
Recently Christie has been ratcheting up the pressure. He issued subpoenas on the NJ Legislature, including the Office of Legislative Services, leaders of both houses (controlled by Democrats), and the Majority and Minority offices for each house. This is in an effort to identify if there were corrupt deals made to issue "Christmas Tree" grants in recent budgets. The targets will, most likely, be Democrats as they have controlled the legislature for the past few years.
This week we hear that Christie has sent subpoenas to Governor Jon Corzine's office covering Jim McGreevey (D), Dick Codey (D) and Corzine. Not Whitman or when the Republicans controlled the entire government and produced their own Christmas Tree items.
The subpoenas for the legislature came right while the Democrats were making noises about passing major tax reform and corruption reform legislation, blunting the political gain to be made and bolstering the Republican press release machine.
The subpoena for the Governor's office came just after he released a budget proposal that included no new taxes for the first time in years, and increased aid to schools along with a new tax relief program. But the positive political benefit from that was again blunted by the subpoenas and the related taint of corruption.
There is surely no fire here, and maybe only a scent of smoke from far away. But the actions and subpoenas of the past seven months are exactly what a US Attorney who was told to put pressure on the Democrats would start doing. Every time a Democrat starts gaining points, hit them with a subpoena. Every time a Republican needs to score points, make an announcement.
Chris Christie may be the most honest US Attorney in history, but he is also a powerful Republican partisan who is beholden to a powerfully partisan Bush White House for his job while others in the same position are losing theirs. |
