S.A.: Well as a defense lawyer I can tell you that certainly one of the areas that if he ends up being indicted or just during the course of the investigation can sink or save him. I don't know, I can't tell you truthfully because I don't know the individuals personally involved and I don't know what they're saying to the Federal Government as they're investigating but it can save him or sink him.
The reason I say that is even if he, let's suppose Christie didn't know anything about this and these individuals acted on their own. Let's say for the sake of argument that's true, then those individuals can save him. They say look we did these things ourselves, the governor never knew these things, and while they look bad I don't care how it looks this is the absolute truth. If fifteen of fifteen people that they subpoena or bring in to the grand jury say that and there's no evidence to the contrary then it can save him, no question about it.
He is surrounded himself with people who did bad things but also didn't apprise him of what was going on. But the opposite is true too, it only really takes one of them to break the chain down. If one of them comes forward and says listen, he and I got together on this and discussed this. He and I, he always told me he's not going to sign anything, to keep it away from him, but he knew what was going on, that can start the domino effect and all those other individuals can come forward and say the same thing.
Now because of the pressure of facing federal indictment, because of the pressure of going to jail, those individuals come and testify against him, that's even more powerful than if he signed off on certain things because now you have individuals who had these conversations with him who are going to testify to those conversations and it looks suspicious. As I have learned as a criminal defense attorney many times what looks suspicious is much more important than the actual physical evidence in and of itself because you can explain away a lot of these things but circumstances are a very tough case to beat because most folks believe in the principle and when they come and sit on a jury they have it, that if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, well heck it must be a duck.
R.K.: So you have got these people who surround Christie like David Wildstein who has already pleaded the fifth, how will the Feds use these people to get to Christie?
S.A.: Okay. That's a very important question but it needs to be broken down just a little bit. We don't know, and I want to be clear on this, we don't know if Christie did anything and I am not going to say he did, but let's assume for the sake of argument, just for this discussion that he did, this is how they'll use Wildman.
Wildman has already been very clear about this. He came forward, Wildstein I think is what it is. Came forward and said listen I will stand on the fifth amendment. I have a right not to incriminate myself. However if you give me immunity I'll tell you everything I know. Now I am here in Chicago which is been considered for a long time one of the most corrupt political states and cities in America and I have said this over and over and over again, while I am a criminal defense lawyer, I myself have defended the Governor Blagojevich and mayors here, I am tired of political corruption and so the way I would handle it if I was the US Attorney in this matter is I would start offering out immunity like candy to a baby.
If you truly believe that Christie is involved, first you have to sit down and look at the information you have and at some point you're going to have to have either absolute evidence or use your gut. Do I believe Christie is involved here and is this something that I want to root out? If you take the stance that yes Christie is involved here you go forward and you start offering immunity just from the things that you're telling us.
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