you know, the american people have started the discovery process, right? with their 2016 presidential candidates. and they all know that chris christie positions himself as a different kind of politician. right? and it s okay if you have a guy who is strong and tough, when he s fighting for you. right? but the problem is, in this particular case, that his people were strong and tough and bullying when they were tying up traffic. that rjt yeah. that worked against the people of the state of new jersey, and also people of the state of new york. obviously. so if you re going to be a bully, they want you on their side, not on somebody else s side. the problem for him as a presidential candidate, quite frankly, is that now is the time when you line up your big money, you line up your visible supporters. and you know, this could hurt him along those lines. i think people are kind of hanging back, and they re just
that. i m going to do my part. all right. i ve got to ask another question here. there is a class action lawsuit against christie that is brewing from people whose lives were completely disrupted by the traffic jam and all of that. could it actually be that state/federal laws were broken because of this? reporter: well, that s the million-dollar question, if you will. what state and federal laws, if any, had been broken. the lawsuit is very interesting, suzanne. i ve got to say. they re trying to get class action certification. it has a bunch of different things in there. it claims official misconduct, it claims conspiracy. and it s also largely a negligence lawsuit. so all of these things stemming from people who say they were inconvenienced and they lost money, they lost time, what have you. sure. but the larger question about the federal government, there is an investigation at least starting preliminarily. that s the fbi, department of justice. and they re going to take a l
could appeal to your sort of blue collar voters. your hockey moms. in places like new jersey, wisconsin, iowa. so those are two names i think come up a lot. and we ll be watching as this develops, as we know it will. peter han bee, thank you. there s a lot of unanswered questions about the bridge scandal and its impact on governor christie and the 2016 presidential race. joining us now from miami, cnn political commentator and democratic strategist, maria cardona and from dallas, cnn political commentator, ben ferguson. christie is adamantly denying he knew anything about this plot to block traffic in ft. lee, new jersey. i m going to ask you this first, ben. how could such a hands-on guy not know what key staff members are doing? and if he didn t know, what does that say about how his staff does business? well, his staff members didn t want him to know they were doing this, because it was a stupid move and a prank by some narcissistic staff members that have no power, without th
captions by vitac www.vitac.com >r hip hi ther> r in for wolf blitzer. we wip we will start with chapter in the chris christie traffic scandal. at any momentp at any mome jersjersey state jersjersey stat assembly i expectp expected expected 9p 900 of pages of docue so-callso-called traffic studyd oour jop our joe johns joi with this. what example . reporter: we aren t expecting aranp any bombshells, t pofficia officials suppose release that pages at best, which could shed some light on what happened in the bridge controversy, coming from the same committee in the new jersey legislature that s been at the center of the storm from the start. told not to expect again any bombshells, just a little more
unless they betrayed his trust. so if you look at his actions, he got rid of people he trusted. that s not good for him long-term, politically. the traffic wasn t good for him. that s why i don t believe he knew about it of the he had two bad apples, fired those bad apples. it s going to have to replace people he doesn t know, as well. that s not good for him politically. he didn t want any of this around him. he fired them. maria, what do you say about that? you re talking about he did get rid of a guy who some people said, if chris christie ran for president, and this is the guy who would manage his campaign. that is a big move. no question about that, brianna. but he had no choice. at this moment, he had to do that. or it certainly would be the end a lot quicker than what he would want. but here s the problem. his other very close friend, david willstein, i believe is his name, pleaded the fifth yesterday, when he was being