tactics these days, here s a clip when issa literally shut down a hearing in a middle of a statement being made by the democratic ranking member, elijah cummings, which issa later apologized for. let s take a look. for the past year, the central republican accusation in this investigation we re adjourned, close it down. directed by the white house. before our single document. thank you. i am a member of the congress of the united states of america! i am tired of this! we have members over here, each who represent 700,000 people. you cannot just have a one-sided investigation. there is absolutely something wrong with that, and this is absolutely un-american. here, here. well, u.s. congressman elijah cummings joins us now, democrat from maryland. thank you for coming on, as always.
here s what s happening. now we re going to take you back to hardball. welcome back to hardball. late this afternoon, a big development in the chris christie bridge investigation, the legislative committee investigating the lane closures lost its bid to force bridget kelly and bill stepien, two key figures in the scandal, to comply with subpoenas for documents. the judge s ruling appears to be a break for governor chris christie and he could use it following the results of a new quinnipiac poll. as we reported a lot over the past weeks, randy mastro
when you re looking at criminal charges or you don t know where that investigation might go, they can start asking other questions or people can offer up other things that aren t related directly to this, but are related to the chris christie administration. well, i guess the question, look at this poll now that shows basically 51% of the people in new jersey believe the governor was aware of what was going on. that s the way people are looking at it. 51% say the governor s aware, 42% say the aides acted alone. by the way, do you think he s a bully or a leader, 48% say he s a bully and 48% say he s a leader. that s a close call, chris cillizza. your thoughts. that second question, chris, is sort of fundamentally, let s say he gets beyond this. i think this is a big distraction for him no matter what happens with these two investigations, because some of his top political aides are focusing on testifying, doing other things, not focusing on iowa, new hampshire, same thing with him.
and i think the voters are now saying when they are polled about it say, well, that s a white wash. i m not sure it s a white wash, but anybody that thinks it s the whole story is missing the whole story. your thoughts? i don t think it s a white wash, but if chris christie, i think what the poll numbers show is if chris christie thought this report would be the end or sort of sewing up the last suture on that political wound, we re not there yet. i actually think the news today from the judge not saying that two of the main bill stepien, bridget kelly having to relate documents related to bridgegate, that s a big deal in that clearly is something that this legislative committee wanted and they are not going to get, at least currently. but i would remind people, there are concurrent investigations going on. there s a federal investigation going on, there s also this within the new jersey legislature investigation going on. that ruling pertains to the new jersey legislature.
you know, i continue to think that this is going to not get better for chris christie for a while. it s going to be hard for him to go beyond it, but look, the legislative committee not getting access to anything bridget kelly and bill stepien did is a victory for the christie forces. let me go to you, steve kornacki of our network, who s been all over this story, his analysis, which i m sure he s going to offer on the air, is basically the reason that the judge wouldn t come forward and support the subpoena is because the federal agents, they are investigating this at the federal level and they don t want to get in his way. yeah, i think what this actually shows is there s going to be a constant drip, drip, drip, which is really the problem politically for chris christie, right, while this was a small victory in terms of letting the criminal investigation actually, you know, take place, you done know when they are going to be letting out more information, so he can t really contro