Officials said that while there had been no accusations of wrongdoing on the part of Mr. Christie or Mr. Ashcroft, aides to Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey were concerned about the appearance of favoritism.
Whatever could raise such concerns?
When the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey needed to find an outside lawyer to monitor a large corporation willing to settle criminal charges out of court last fall, he turned to former Attorney General John Ashcroft, his onetime boss. With no public notice and no bidding, the company awarded Mr. Ashcroft an 18-month contract worth $28 million to $52 million.
It's good to hear, however, that Christie keeps up his GOP cred with his steadfast refusal to join the reality-based community:
Mr. Christie has disputed accusations raised by Democratic lawmakers in New Jersey that it was a conflict of interest for him to direct large, no-bid contracts to former colleagues and friends …
5 comments:
I am completely tired of the way certain positively guilty persons with ties to the current administration seem like they will get off acot free even with the criminal acts they have committed. If only their law-breaking acts got more attention than a certain former mousekateer who may or may not be sane.
As formidable as the GOP machine is in New Jersey... the Democratic party bosses in Union, Passaic Essex and Union counties (home to Elizabeth, Paterson, Newark and its Environs and Jersey City, the last of which is home to our *cough* *cough* esteemed Senator Bob Menendez) make Tammany Hall look like the local 4-H club. You ever seen The Wire? Well, no, you haven't. But imagine that kind of Democratic Party stronghold and its associated machine politics and multiply by 10. The Republicans (especially in NJ) have no monopoly on corruption.
I'll be the last to say the Democrats have clean hands. However, that doesn't make the deal with Ashcroft any less repugnant.
I'd also say it seems worse, in the sense of reaching beyond the swamps of local politics, all the way up to the national level.
Plus, it's Ashcroft, a form of slime so repugnant that he only looks good when compared to Alberto Gonzales.
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Sornie:
Stop lyin'. You know you're signed up with Google Alerts, keyword "Britney."
Well at least the corrupt Bushies will be gone beyond 2009... the local machine in New Jersey has been up and running for half a century.
So what the local fetid swamps lack in national reach they make up for in staying power. Also, the local machines in largely Democratic urban areas are more directly responsible for human misery, I'd argue, than the Bushies. Katrina was bad, no doubt, but take the disaster that poor black New Orleans was for decades before Katrina and multiply it across all of the ghettos across the country and I think the problem of local corruption is in a way much more insidious. And it won't be gone after the next election cycle.
Adam:
I can't argue with your points about the long-lasting aspects of local corruption, and to repeat, I do not have any illusions about the Democrats in this regard.
I don't at all agree with your claim that the corrupt Bushies will be gone soon, though. I mean, Ashcroft, for one, has been out of office for three years now. Tom Ridge has also gotten himself a lot of sweetheart deals that he could only have gotten from his erstwhile job as Director of DHS. I'm sure the list goes on, and I have no doubt that it will be added to after 2009.
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