0 former secretary of state hillary clinton? you take all the time you need, girl power. >> yeah. >> girl power. >> yes, love. there you go. all the time. >> what did you think, donna? >> i love her. i love her. >> that was great. i'm don lemon. thanks for joining us. "ac 360" starts right now. don, thanks very much. good evening, everyone. tonight break news in the scandal involving america's busiest bridge. the gop's brightest presidential hope right now, chris christie, and evidence that his administration played the kind of bare knuckle partisan politics that he criticizes in others. we're keeping them honest tonight. also ahead in the program, her brain-dead body is being kept alive against her wishes, against her family's wishes because she's pregnant. we'll look at another very hard case at the intersection of life and death and the law. and later, medical marijuana. we know it helps some people tolerate cancer treatment. the question is, can it also be a cancer treatment by itself? in to be the's installment of our week-long series "gone to pot" the parents who want to take their child off chemo because they believe marijuana is curing their child's cancer. we'll look at the medical evidence. we begin tonight keeping them honest with breaking news. what started as a local traffic story became a state-wide scandal and now has gone national. at center of it all, the world's busiest bridge and the man seen by many as the republican party's leading hope to win the white house in 2016. the bridge in question is the george washington. the man is chris christie, the governor of new jersey. the scandal involves lane closings from the city of fort lee, new jersey, onto the bridge that tied up traffic so badly ambulance crews were complaining about being able to respond to emergencies and school buses were delayed for hours. the allegation is that christie's office and potentially the governor himself ordered those lane closings to snarl traffic as political payback because fort lee's mayor, a democrat, refused to join other state-wide democrats who were endorsing the governor. the implication that governor christie is not the bipartisan uniteder that his big re-election victory suggested and that he himself claimed to be. >> as your governor, it's never mattered to me where someone was from, whether they voted for me or not, what the color of their skin was or their political party. for me being governor has always been about getting the job done first. >> that was governor christie on election night promising to be governor of all the state of new jersey, everyone, whether they voted for him or not. and here he is slamming washington for not being more like himself. >> we watch a congress at war with itself because they're unwilling to leave campaign-style politics at the capital's door. >> all alone, though, critics have accused of the governor of preaching tolerance but practicing bare knuckle politics. e-mail messages obtained by cnn implicate some of his top staffers and appointees on those grounds. about a month before the lane closings that locked down parts of new jersey, the manhattan bridge, ann kelly one of three deputies on christie's senior staff, writes the following e-mail to christie appointee david willstein at the port authority that runs the bridge. "time for traffic problems in fort lee" she writes. the reply from will willstein "got it". we don't know who texted this to willstein. is it wrong that i'm smiling? no, the person responds. i feel badly about the unknown kids talking about the kids going to school stuck on school buses. i guess comes the reply from willstein. quote they are the children of buono's opponents. up until now governor christie has either dodged the question of responsibility or openly mocked it. >> i actually was the guy working the cones out there. you really are not serious with that question. >> this evening, though, he issued a statement blaming others. it reads quote i am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was i misled by a member of my staff but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge." the statement goes on, this behavior is not representative of me or my administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions." now, he does not in that statement include himself, even though the people now implicated are some of his top staffers and appointees. keeping them honest, when it comes to accountability the governor has high standards for others. >> when you make a mistake, you should own up to it and apologize for it. >> that's a governor childing president obama for what he saw as an incomplete apology for his broken health care promise. fort lee's mayor for one isn't satisfied. he spoke with wolf blitzer earlier this evening. >> wouldn't you expect him to start making some phone calls to at least apologize, even if he had nothing to do with it but his senior aides did? >> wolf, don't call me. do me a favor, don't call me but call the families who were waiting three, four times longer for emergency service agencies, when their loved ones were having heart palpitations or when their loved ones had extreme chest pains were waiting for ambulance to arrive. apologize to thousands of families whose kids were late for the first day of school and the three or four days that ensued thereafter. call our police department and call our administrators in the school system that had to deal with this. call the folks that had to deal with traffic armageddon here that week. don't call me. you don't have to call me. i give you a pass. don't call me. but call those families, call those kids and call everybody else. because fort lee didn't deserve it. >> lots to talk about tonight with senior political analyst david gergen, chief international correspondent john king and cnn legal analyst gloria borger. do you believe first of all that christie did not know about this? >> i think it's possible. but my experience going all the way back to the nixon days, i hesitate to make that comparison to his, that sometimes the boss does not order something but people who -- i don't know whether nixon ordered watergate but i can guarantee you that people who carried out watergate thought that's what he would have wanted. there's an environment in which you find yourself sometimes when you're on staff when things don't have to be said. you sort of know. >> even though he didn't know about it, the fact that everyone around him thought this is the kind of thing he would want says something about him about his leadership. >> i sure think it bears reporting on that very subject. because there's something about this that's so petty. and so vindictive. and it feeds into this narrative that has been building up sort of sub rosa that he's a bully. and i think he's now -- he's on the defensive. he's going to have to find some way to diffuse this to prove he doesn't run a shop like that. i hope for his sake his candidacy does not rise or fall on this issue. rather see it on more substantive issues. >> john, it's one thing to be seen as a bully for things th that -- that's a whole other matter. >> now you have the suggestion that perhaps first responders were delayed. perhaps they were late getting an ambulance to a 91-year-old woman having a heart attack. so you have petty, you have vindictive, you have harsh, you have mean. these are the words being thrown around, anderson, not just by democrats but republicans who don't like or don't trust chris christie. so he is at a defining moment. how he handles this in the next 24 to 48 hours in terms of firing those responsible because he said he would and then as the investigation unfolds he'd better be i'll use the word damn sure that there's nothing that ties him to this. if he handles it decisively and sits down and calmly answers questions and doesn't berate the reporters who ask them he has a chance to be a leader who dealt with a crisis and moves on. but if that perception starts to stick, in that's not a presidential temperament and that's bad for him nationally in his perspective and as he starts his new term in new jersey and bad for him with the audience he needs to care about most politically long term at the moment that's the republican base that he wants them to make him their nominee. >> gloria, you're looking to those ems allegations. what are you hearing? >> four ema responses were delayed considerably as a result of all of this traffic. and as john just mentioned, there was a death of a 91-year-old woman who had a heart attack. now, we do not know whether the delays really contributed to that outcome or not. but this is a very direct letter from the head of ems saying essentially, what is going on here? our paramedics can't get to the people that they need to help. >> and david, to echo john's point, how he handles this the next 24, 48 hours will be critical. i mean, who's going to be fired, who's going to be held responsible. >> his problem is proving the negative. i didn't know anything, i didn't do anything. to some considerable extent this is going to depend on the people who were in his office who did apparently order this. having some kind of interviews that will have lie detectors involved and other things. if a woman died, if a woman died here, he's in dope deep trouble. >> right. >> i don't care what it was the buck stops at his desk. he knows that. he's a big boy. to have something like this happen f happen, if a woman dies he's in deep trouble. >> anderson, there's an investigation now by the legislature which started all of this. i called up the former republican governor of the state of new jersey, tom cane today. i asked him, so what should they do. he said, look. there are partisan democrats who are out to get chris christie. but this story makes absolutely no sense. he said that chris christie i'm quoting the former republican governor here said he's not accepting responsibility. he didn't answer the questions. what he suggested, in order to get it all out there, is to have a bipartisan investigation in the state legislature in new jersey, let christie go and answer questions, let his staff go and answer questions. because don't forget, as the mayor of fort lee told wolf blitzer earlier today, there could be criminal issues here. >> and john, if there are investigations and looking into corruption or whatever it is, in terms of presidential chances, it certainly takes kind of the shine off of chris christie for many. >> again, every governor who runs for national office has to deal with something. and how he deals with it is critical. if there's any connection to him or any gray in the idea of did he know about it then he's in trouble. but consider, there's a policy which is this investigation. why did they do this? who did it? who was responsible? how does the governor respond and how does he hold them account accountability. what did the investigators find? then there's politics. he's startsing his second term. he's going to go to some 30 states this year raising money and helping republican candidates for governor. at every one of those stops the local press is going to want to talk to him. he's going to be trying to raising money. the democrats are trying to make him a lightning rod now and make him baggage to hurt his political viability not only in 2014 helping candidates but in the long term of 2016. so he needs to find a way to end this chapter. and that depends on him and how he handles it. >> david gergen, thanks very much. gloria borger, john king as well. thanks. let me know what you think about the story. do you believe the governor didn't know about what his staff was up to? up next a very tough story no matter how you look at it. the question, does the state have the right to keep a brain-dead woman, this woman, alive against her wishes, against her family's wishes as well, if that woman is pregnant? she was pregnant. the hospital refuses to take her off life support as her family wishes, as her family says she would have wanted because she's pregnant. later, the video itself is troubling enough. a cursing toddler with grownups egging him on. get this, though. it was posted by local police organization. they say to educate the public. the question is, who's looking out for the child? details coming up. aflac! aflac! got 'em. ♪ yeah, he's clean, boss. now listen to me, duck. i have an associate that met with, uh, an unfortunate accident. while he's been incapacitated, somebody's been paying him cash. now, is this your doing? aflac? now, if i met with some such accident, would aflac pay me? ♪ nice. this is your stop. 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