|
mnottertail -> RE: GOP Rep. "I Refused To Call Obama 'A Socialist' And I Lost" (8/11/2010 6:33:05 AM)
|
Yup, now here is the sort of porky lawyer we want to get america back in shape. Why do theneo-con want to force this country to become a socialist if not communist nation?
Christie has been accused by critics of using his office's role in crafting deferred prosecution agreements to award lucrative federal monitoring positions in no-bid contracts to friends, supporters, and allies.[20] Questions first arose after Christie awarded a multimillion dollar, no-bid contract to David Kelley, another former U.S. Attorney, who had investigated Christie's brother, Todd Christie, in a 2005 fraud case involving traders at the Wall Street firm, Spear, Leeds & Kellogg.[21] [22] Kelley had declined to prosecute Todd Christie, who had been ranked fourth in the investigation-initiating U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) complaint among twenty traders who earned the largest profits for their company at the expense of their customers. The top three were indicted, as were eleven other traders.[23]
Christie was similarly criticized for his 2007 recommendation of the appointment of The Ashcroft Group, a consulting firm owned by Christie's former superior, the former United States Attorney General John Ashcroft, as a monitor in a court settlement against Zimmer Holdings, an Indiana medical supplies company. The no-bid contract was worth between $28 million and $52 million.[24]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-24"[25] Christie defended the decision, saying that Ashcroft’s prominence and legal acumen made him a natural choice. Christie declined to intercede when Zimmer's company lawyers protested the Group’s plans to charge a rate of $1.5 million to $2.9 million per month for the monitoring.[20]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-25"[26] Shortly after the House Judiciary Committee began holding hearings on the matter, the Justice Department re-wrote the rules regarding the appointment of court monitors.[27]
Christie also faced criticism over the terms of a $311 million fraud settlement with Bristol-Myers Squibb. Christie’s office deferred criminal prosecution of the pharmaceutical company in a deal that required it to dedicate $5 million for a business ethics chair at Seton Hall University School of Law, Christie's alma mater.[28] [29] The U.S. Justice Department subsequently set guidelines forbidding such requirements as components of out-of-court corporate crime settlements.[30]
In June 2009, Christie was called before the House Judiciary Committee as part of its consideration of new regulations on deferred prosecution agreements. In his testimony, he defended his decisions to award no-bid, high-paying federal monitoring contracts to law firms that his critics say constitute a conflict of interest. Christie left the meeting after two and a half hours of questioning, against the requests of the Committee's chairman, stating that he had to attend to pressing business in New Jersey.[20]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-Christie_agrees_to_testify-30"[31]
[edit] Claims of partisan attacks
Christie at the swearing-in ceremony of Union City, New Jersey Mayor Brian P. Stack, May 18, 2010.
Christie has been criticized by some Democrats for what they say are attempts to tarnish candidates facing election; they point, for instance, to Christie's well-publicized subpoenaing of Senator Robert Menendez during his contested 2006 campaign, just two months before the election.[32]HYPERLINK \l "cite_note-Prosecutor_Makes_Meal-32"[33] Christie's aides have insisted that they initiated the action in response to an article that appeared in The Record, which reported that while Mr. Menendez was a U.S. Representative he had in 1994 leased his former home to a social service agency that he had helped obtain federal financing.[32] The non-profit group paid Menendez more than $300,000 over nine years to rent the building. Mr. Menendez claims to have cleared the arrangement with the Congressional ethics office, a step that had also been reported previously by New Jersey newspapers.[32] According to Menendez, just prior to signing the rental lease, he cleared it by phone with a lawyer on the staff of the United States House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct. Following the subpoena, the lawyer, who no longer works with the Committee, came forward to say that while she doesn’t recall the conversation, it probably happened—and that if she were advising Menendez now she would tell him, as she apparently did then, that there was nothing improper about the arrangement.[34] As of August 2009, nothing has come from the investigation.[32]
[edit] Cell phone monitoring and alleged entrapment
In 2005, Christie prosecuted the Hemant Lakhani terrorism case, in which the defendant claimed that he had been entrapped. In that case, Christie's office relied on an informant who had been dismissed by the FBI as unreliable for fabricating claims of terrorist activity. For more than a year, the informant, working with the U.S. attorney's office, solicited Lakhani for access to arms. Lakhani was unable to obtain anything until an undercover agent contacted him and supplied him with a fake missile. In an interview with the public radio program "This American Life,"[19] Christie brushed off suggestions that Lakhani was entrapped by law enforcement. Defending the Lakhani prosecution, Christie set forth the following theory of law enforcement:
Once you find someone who is that basically amoral, then whether or not he was actually able to do it, that debate ... who cares? I mean at the end, who cares? I don't have a crystal ball. And I don't know if this had fallen apart what Hemant Lakhani would have done next. ... I'm just not willing to take that chance. ... There are good people and bad people. Bad people do bad things. Bad people have to be punished. These are simple truths. Bad people must be punished.
In April 2009, Christie came under fire from the ACLU for authorizing warrantless cellphone tracking of people in 79 instances. Christie has stressed that the practice was legal and court approved.[18]
|
|
|
|
