0 would be president of the united states by 2008. he made his big move in 2001. he ran for governor. he was an odd duck in the state republican party who put up their own candidate to oppose him and he won anyway. he was one step away from the governorship and from there that shot at the white house. it was all lining up for bret schundler and then, well, it didn't work out. he lost to a democrat named jim mcgreevey. you probably know his name. probably know his story. and schundler tried again in 2005. this time he didn't even make it out of the republican primary. he had been the great conservative hope that big career making breakthrough he needed was elusive. by the time 2009 rolled around, he'd been eclipsed. chris christie by that point was the next big thing in new jersey republ republican politics. he made his name prosecuting crooked politicians and in 2009 the gop made him its candidate for governor and he won that fall which meant that as the new governor he had jobs to give at this point, that the truth wasn't told. told a lie to the governor. >> that's what chris christie said at that press conference. the number one rule in the administration is you don't lie to the governor. now here is why i'm telling you this story. because when i listened to chris christie this week go on and on, and on and on, about how floored he was that someone would lie to him, completely unaware he'd been of what was going on down at the george washington bridge, when i listened to all of that i thought of what happened next in the story of bret schundler because, remember what i said, whatever you think of his politics, bret schundler is an honest man and a proud man, and he didn't like being called a liar. and, also, he had e-mails. so he wait add few days. he put them all together and then he went public with proof that he had been totally up front with the governor's office all along about what had gone wrong with the race for the top. what had gone wrong at that hearing. how he bungled it. the primary for governor in 2009 and said this week that he sees shades of richard nixon in the bridge scandal. also at the table new jersey state senator, a democrat who believes the u.s. attorney's office should be looking into all of this. we'll ask him about that. and a national perspective from a staff writer at the "daily beast." thank you all for joining us. heather, i'll start with you just reporting on this. a the lot of the commentary i heard this week in the wake of that press conference that chris christie gave was this is a guy who would never have made the emphatic statements he made if he wasn't sure that there's nothing out there that could link him to this. the story i just recounted makes me wonder if that's necessarily the case. i know you've been covering him. what do you make of that? >> well, it's been interesting as we've seen in these documents released that the initial batch on wednesday and we got further ones on friday and it does seem there's more and more layers of the administration that seem to know about this. so the question is how long can you be insulated from this? what weigh don't know from the toumts is, you know, particularly the one you talked with about yesterday. did she talk about this with him? >> that is his incoming chief of staff. >> one of ten senior staff members. they had regular contact with the port authority. she was forwarded an e-mail where they expressed to the port authority staff member from new york he was so concerned about the bridge closure, said there were state and federal laws that were violated here. she was forwarded that e-mail from bill baroney. what does she do with that? we don't know that. there are still a lot of questions to be answered now, the most inner circle of his staff were aware of this. >> and that jumped out at me because i had been saying all week that i had thought there was sort of a gray area, and there still may be a gray area of it's not that he hatched the scheme and knew all about it from the beginning, that he was completely duped, that he was willfully ignorant. when i see that an e-mail marked priority high from pat saying the new jersey guys may be breaking state and federal law is forwarded to regina, someone that close to the governor, back on september 13, this had to have come up with these specific concerns at a very early level. >> for sure. and the liar in chief is chris christie and the obstruction of justice is what is going to be his biggest problem. i don't believe he was involved in the lane closures itself, but those lane closures violate federal law. then he circled the wagons, had a phony story about a traffic study no one could believe. low an lo and behold the morning we found out it was a phony story he found out. what he found out was that we found out. >> and you had been calling for a federal investigation, the u.s. attorney for new jersey announced last week they are preliminarily starting to look into this to see if there's a case. my thought when i saw the news was, wow, if chris christie was still the u.s. attorney for new jersey, a democratic governor in a situation like this, we all know chris christie would be -- subpoenas would be flying by this point. what is your read? what is your read on that situation? do you expect him to pursue this with any kind of the same aggression christie would have? >> no. he is much more cautious. much more reasonable and, quite frankly, more responsible public official. i will pursue it but it will take time. in the meantime, the assembly investigation will continue. his subpoena power will be reauthorized and that's when we'll see more and more evidence come up that chris christie is just not telling the truth. >> that's a big part of this, too, we had wisniewski on the show saying he was still in doubt whether that subpoena power would be renewed. i guess it's the power of up, the incoming speaker said maybe something else. he said a few hours later that power will be renewed. jamelle, what strikes me how many tracks are sort of in motion right now to get more information. we're talking about the state assembly committee, the u.s. attorney in washington. we're talking about jay ro rockefeller and the commerce committee having interest in this. there are so many different fronts where more information can come out. >> right. and with so many different new information coming out, when i saw that press conference, i was willing to give chris christie the benefit of the doubt. after thinking about it a little more and seeing that even within the press conference there were a bunch of contradictory things he's claiming, that he could have never imagined anyone not telling him anything, something will come out. i think, you know, i don't think he ordered it from above but i think he had something he knew this was going to happen. when had this comes out do any of these investigations, he's done. he was so emphatic about not knowing anything that any bit of information that he had any inkling about what's going on i think finishes him. >> and so, you have quite a history with chris christie. just to start with, your comment in the press this week was to make the comparison to richard nic nixon and sort of what jamelle is say iing ties into it. when it came out how much knowledge richard nixon actually had of what was a relatively seemingly petty crime. that was the undoing and, of course, it unearthed all sorts of other things but talk about that comparison you made this week. >> well, it's a bit uncanny actually. first, it's important to understand this scandal is only in the first quarter. so we really don't know what's going to come out. if you went back to, for purposes of comparison, watergate and you looked at the first quarter of that scandal, what did the white house say? we didn't have anything to do with this. we don't know anything about this. this went on completely outside and then, of course, they were forced to retreat, retreat, retreat. what i saw as a sim is late is looking back to richard nicxon' time he was riding high in the polls for re-election as a popular incumbent republican. he didn't need to do anything untoward and yet he couldn't help himself. it was the thin skinned vindictive anywnature that propd this whole thing and it did him in. when i look at the current situation i see, again, a very popular republican incumbent running for re-election far, far ahead of his democratic opponent in the polls. personal his administration didn't need to do anything at all to secure his win, and yet we have this, what i would call juvenile behavior, perhaps illegal activity. it's not major comparison. the comparison draws itself. >> you use the term vindictive. you talked about that in the press this week saying that you sort of saw something like this coming. i want to talk to you more specifically about your history with chris christie, what you've observed both close up, running with him in his early days in morris county and what you've observed. we've heard all sorts of stories how christie and his administration meddled in a way other governors haven't. some specifics that maybe you can talk to that. we'll pick it up right after this. it's made with the vine-ripened sweetness of fruit, so you can serve up deliciously sweet treats without all the sugar. get recipes at intheraw.com. still running in the morning? 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