body, the joint committee that issued these subpoenas and have moved to compel the production of documents from both bill stepien and bridget kelly be probably go to a judge, a superior court judge in new jersey and ask a judge to intervene and force the turnover of any relevant documents. so we could be seeing a process that plays out over months going forward. let me ask you about these personal relationships. the governor s defense, maybe it s consistent with his personality, i don t know, has been to say i m not going to help you. i m going to stonewall. i don t know nothing. his statements of denial of any real relationship with people like david wildstein, he has had two points. either i don t know the person or i m dismayed by their behavior. it shocks me. it seems like he is so unaware of the people around him and unaware of the people around him even that he does know a little better of what they re up to. is this credible given what you know about his governorship? well,
and save up to thirty percent. welcome back to hardball. despite what some would have had you believe, the christie scandal is not a creation of democrats or the big national press eager to pop the christie balloon. the story has been doggedly pursued by reporters in his own backyard, and those reporters continue to take the lead on this unfolding story. here is how david carr of the new york times laid it out today. it started with the publisher of the bergen record, a newspaper in northern new jersey that tipped off the newspaper s editor that getting on to the george washington bridge from ft. lee was taking hours. the editorialist passed it on. he began placing calls to local law enforcement. later a reporter at the record who covers the port dug in and tried to find out what was behind the lane closings. after a number of articles, on december 28th he wrote that e-mails show that officials at
it s not his attitude, it s fa that he is involved in what look likes a cabal, and the governor says it s just his attitude i don t like. wait a minute. whose government is this? chris, for governor christie to get mad with anyone because they referred to someone as an idiot already doesn t pass the laugh test. you just looked at the clips at the beginning. that was the way he talked about people. so why wouldn t he expect his aides to talk that way, and if they did, what s the big deal? we still have not just the legislative investigation that we talked about with citing kelly for contempt and other subpoenas, what we won t see much of is the criminal investigation where remember patrick fitzgerald investigating scooter libby. right. he gathered a loft information. it didn t come out in hearings. it didn t even leak. it wasn t produced until a trial there really are two tracks going there that really has people like kelly, stepien,
because the governor s office hasn t said. but one of the undercurrents here is how does these are not cheap lawyers. these are high-powered attorneys that are circling everywhere you look in this case. very expensive. and for an individual to pick up why it is they don t get a free ride? the question really is what is the governor s attorney what was he hired to do? on paper it says an internal review of the office. presumably, to make the office more well run so that this doesn t happen again. yesterday we learned that the same attorney has asked dawn zimmer, the hoboken mayor, who has leveled some of the most explosive allegations against the governor, for her to turn over documents that she already provided to federal authorities. so the question remains, is this a defense attorney? is this someone who is doing an internal review, or is this someone who is digging into the background of the governor s critics to undermine their credibility? rough stuff.
wildstein caught in the middle. and for chris christie to be dumping on these people, i m telling you, he better be really confident they have nothing on him because all they have to trade is what they know about him. you know what strikes me as totally unfair, the governor s legal fees are apparently being picked up as official business. and the people that he has called liars and idiots and stupid like bridget kelly, she has to find a lawyer. she is just a public official, with four kids, an unmarried woman. i don t know if her partner is making any money besides the money she doesn t make she she is out of work now. these people have to come up with their own legal fees with a very expensive, you know, pretty high flight case here. and where are they going to get the money? yeah, that s a huge question. we do know that several people have requested that the state pick up their legal bills. we don t know exactly who yet