That's what I think is very important here and that's what I think is going to be just like Blagojevich and the criminality portion of it is what they're going to use to develop other areas of corruption and Christie is going to have to sit down with his defense attorney and talk about all of these various areas. Now if I were representing Christie, there's two things I would do first. First thing I would do is have an open and honest conversation with him, if you can.
Well I've represented a number of politicians and that's one of the difficult tests is getting them to be open and honest with what's going on. Many of them don't understand how the Federal prosecutions work and how really the Feds can get you on anything, if they want to.
Second thing you have to do, in my opinion, because this is where the hook is, this is the problem in pay to play corruption investigations are, sit them down and go through his campaign contributions list for the last six to seven years. Anybody who gave a contribution or anybody who is related that gave a contribution to somebody who got a contract, the Feds are going to be looking at every single on of those contributions.
Every single one of the individuals who gave a contribution whether it's five dollars or fifty thousand dollars and that's where I think Christie is going to have to, at this point in time, now that this Hoboken Mayor has come out and said these other accusations, he's going to have to slow down, if we're talking legally here, not politically, try to be quiet on as much as he can, and sit down with a defense lawyer and figure out, were there contributions given here that look like pay to play politics.
Because now that this has come to light, he's going to have to answer every single question he can on whether or not this was pay to play.
R.K.: Now you mention Federal Prosecutions, how do Federal Prosecutions work in a case like Blagojevich or Christie?
S.A.: That's an excellent question. I have been doing this fifteen years and I have come to a real belief here that when it comes to investigating or should I say investigating crimes that haven't happened yet like when you're trying to set up a drug deal or you're trying to set up a political pay to play, the Feds are not very good at it. They bumble, they don't understand how things really work, these are people that come out of the highest and best law schools and they don't understand the ground game, but when it comes to investigating crimes that have already happened, there's nobody better than the FBI at doing that.
And that's why I think Blagojevich had such a problem with the investigations because they were only investigating crimes that had already taken place. Now the senate seat, well they got tapes on that issue, the senate seat was one of the problems that they had, was one of the things we hung them on in the trial because there were tapes that weren't being played that we had, because the Federal Government was setting these things up and I don't think they're very good at it, but on the other counts, that had already occurred, they had a very solid case, they had the paperwork down and we went through it and should I say they went through it in a very concise and effective way.
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