Once you do that, the Feds automatically have jurisdiction and so that's one of the things I have spent my entire career fighting against is, look, the individuals here, the little guys here, doesn't have a shot if the government wants to come at you. Now, Christie and Blagojevich are, in my opinion, a little bit different. I don't believe Blagojevich committed an actual crime.
Do I like the governor of my state making references between him getting a job in exchange for giving a senate seat away? Of course not. Of course I don't. But I don't think it's criminal until you take an actual act and do something. But if the government wants to say it is a criminal act and gave him fourteen years, a non-violent offense, he ended up getting fourteen years. That's why I was so passionate about it at the time, we have a government here that is in many instances over-zealous, over-burdensome and goes after individuals for things that aren't actual crimes.
The reason I think Christie may have a serious problem here, I'm not saying he does, but he certainly MAY have a serious problem here is it's even more explicit than what Blagojevich was charged with doing. There's now accusations here that you tried to trade Sandy funds for getting a job done and also at the same time, while that's occurring, the individual's law firm who is representing the party that is trying to get the project approved is somebody that you appointed to the port authority. Now that's pretty darn close, and who is involved in sending emails back and forth about getting the traffic problems for the city and the Mayor who went against the Governor. That's some pretty serious allegations here and misuse of power which is not what we had in Blagojevich.
R.K.: What is the decision tree in the Feds deciding to throw all of their resources against Christie? What would that look like?
S.A.: Now, (laughing) the truth is I honestly have no idea. I can tell you what they'll say is that there are no political implications in the US Attorney's office. They don't care whether he's a republican, he's a democrat, he's an independent, whether he's a green party, that's what they'll tell you. What do I believe? I believe that politics play a huge part in this.
I believe when it comes to Blagojevich I truly believe this, that at the same time that he got arrested was right when President Obama was coming in to be sworn in and they had to get Blagojevich arrested before that because Obama would not want coming from Chicago, coming from Illinois having dealt with Blagojevich and just coming in as a new president would not want the governor arrested.
So they had to act, Patrick Fitzgerald had to act under republican administration and went ahead and charged him anyway so that's politics playing. Now here? It all depends, my father has speculated that much of Christie's problem is coming from the extreme right wing of the party I should say, he believes the Koch Brothers have something to do with this.
Now these are all just speculations. He thinks because Christie came out with Obama and hugged him during the Sandy Hurricane Storm that that's what lost the election for Romney, that many on the very far right wing want to see this happen and are pushing this and maybe even help fund it. I can't make any speculations on that.
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