Is New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie through as a serious contender? Despite Christie arranging and paying for lawyers to look into the “Bridgegate” scandal that resulted in a report that (surprise!) exonerated him of wrongdoing, he has been hit but a new political blow: the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey has conveened a grand jury to look into the issue. And already some savvy political analysts are suggesting that in terms of 2016 Presidential hopes Christie is t-o-a-s-t.
The grand jury news is bad news for a political figure whose national numbers were soaring until “Bridgegate” sent his national numbers tumbling down:
The U.S. Attorney in New Jersey has convened a grand jury to investigate the involvement of Governor Chris Christie’s office in the George Washington Bridge scandal, ABC News has learned.
Twenty-three jurors convened in a federal courthouse in Newark today to hear testimony from a key staff member, Christie press secretary Mike Drewniak, whose lawyer, Anthony Iacullo, said Drewniak was not a target of the investigation.
“We’re here to answer questions and that’s what Michael did today,” Iacullo said.
The convening of the grand jury is evidence that the U.S. Attorney’s investigation has progressed beyond an inquiry and moved to the criminal phase.
And a grand jury would not have been convened if the U.S. Attorney didn’t feel he had grounds to do so. This will be a probe that will gobble up a lot of Christie’s time and provide lots of headlines:
The grand jury, which will meet for up to the next 18 months, has the power to indict, subpoena and interview witnesses without their attorney’s present.
This marks for the first time confirmation that what started out as a preliminary inquiry into the governor’s office has now become a criminal investigation into the activities that led to gridlock traffic across the bridge from Manhattan in Fort Lee.
Drewniak was inside the courthouse for more than two hours.
Iacullo, who spoke exclusively with ABC News, said, “I’m not going to get into the specifics as to what would be discussed in the grand jury. I would say though that Mike is a witness and we have been assured that he continues to be a witness throughout these proceedings and Mike has continued to cooperate as requested by the government into this inquiry.”
He declined to comment about anything regarding whether Christie had personal knowledge or direct role in the shutdown of the lanes.
ABC News has also learned from two officials briefed on the investigation that a team of state prosecutors — tapped by Christie’s own attorney general — are monitoring the federal case and are prepared to continue the investigation on the state level if the feds turn it over to them.
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, perhaps one of the smartest political analysts in either party, is now calling Christie a non-factor in the 2016 Republican Presidential nomination sweepstakes:
Former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell is dismissing Gov. Chris Christie as a non-factor in the presidential race because of the controversial closing of lanes to the George Washington Bridge. He named Jeb Bush as his favorite GOP contender.
“Not only can Chris Christie not win, I think he may have trouble finishing out his term,” Rendell said Tuesday at the Rebovich Institute at Rider University. He added later: “There’s absolutely no chance that he didn’t know this was going on if he didn’t order it or OK it. So I think he’s not a factor.”
Like Christie, Rendell is known for a combination of charm and blunt talk.
“I mean, I look at it from the perspective as a very activist governor, which I was and he is,” he said. “There is no way that eight people in my administration would be part of something and I wouldn’t know about. There is no way they would dare do something like this without getting clearance from me.”
Rendell, a Democrat and former mayor of Philadelphia, also scoffed at how an internal report commissioned by Christie’s office blamed the entire Bridgegate debacle on two former aides, and absolved Christie.
“And besides that, the trashing of David Wildstein and Bridget Kelly indicate that they are setting up a ‘he said, she said’ battle,” Rendell said. “They’ve trashed her. They’ve trashed women with this idea that she was emotionally unstable because she broke up with a man. Heaven forbid that breaking up with a man would make you do something mentally unstable like closing down four lanes of a bridge.”
Indeed, this is coming across loud and clear — and many analysts and cartoonists are picking up on it:
And he’s getting a mixed bag when it comes to voters in a new poll:
New Jersey voters are deeply skeptical of Gov. Chris Christie’s internal report on the George Washington Bridge scandal, a poll released today found.
At the same time, the poll showed that Christie’s poll numbers – which had been declining for months – have stabilized.
The Monmouth University/Asbury Park Press poll of 690 registered voters found that despite the findings of a law firm commissioned by the Christie administration that the governor was not involved in the closing of local-access lanes to the bridge, just 28 percent said it was a fair and unbiased investigation, while 55 percent said it was done to help Christie’s reputation.
The poll also found that 62 percent of voters said Christie has not been “completely honest” about what he knew of the incident, while 32 percent said he has been; 47 percent said they thought Christie was personally involved in the decision to close the lanes compared with 39 percent who said he was not; and 78 percent rejected the report’s claim that only two people planned the lane closings.
“Considering the governor does worse among those who know about the Mastro investigation, it’s possible we could see a negative impact on Christie’s rating as more New Jerseyans become aware of the report’s contents,” said Murray.
There is some good news for Christie in the poll, which was conducted Sunday through Tuesday: He has stopped the bleeding in his approval ratings. Fifty-one percent of voters approve of his job performance, while 43 percent disapprove, a statistically insignificant improvement from February, when 49 percent approved and 46 percent disapproved.
No matter how this is spun the bottom line is this:
Chris Christie has baggage.
And it’s not likely to get LIGHTER in coming months.
This could create problems beyond legal problems for Christie, if he wants to be serious competitor for the GOP Presidential nomination: As blogger Martin Longman puts it:
Who wants to dedicate their life to a guy who might get indicted before the Iowa Caucuses even get started? How much money would you be willing to commit to someone under this kind of cloud?
Remember John Edwards? Well, imagine that we knew about that ahead of time. Or, imagine that everyone strongly suspected it and a prosecutor was looking into it.
Assuming Christie can find a Scooter Libby to take the fall for him, he’s still damaged goods, even if he’s still going through the motions of running for president.
Parties usually try to find people to head their ticket in Presidential election years who aren’t damaged goods.
And damage may be just beginning for Chris Christie.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.