Blue Jersey Wrong Again About Chris Christie

Blue Jersey blogger, “huntsu”, is still on a quest to prove U.S. Attorney, Christ Christie, is a partisan hack. This time he’s taking on The Trentonian's Jeff Edelstein for writing that Christie’s office has charged and convicted 105 people for public corruption.

Sorry, Jeff. But Christie only claims 125 cases including investigations, indictments and convictions as of yesterday, and not the 105 convictions Edelstein claims. If this weren't a column in the Trentonian a retraction would be in order for such a wild exaggeration of fact.

Sorry “huntsu”, but Christie didn’t “claim 125 cases including investigations, indictments and convictions as of yesterday”. A reporter, not Christie, cited a number in the link you provided. There is no mention in the article about the number of public corruption investigations undertaken. Here’s the quote from the linked piece:

Critics have charged that Christie has pursued Democrats to help his party. But his 125 public corruption cases have targeted officials from both parties.

“Hunstu” continues conflating investigations, indictments and convictions. The number of indictments can be determined, but the total number of investigations are not a matter of public record and therefore are unknown. Not every investigation ultimately leads to a person being indicted and of course not everyone indicted will plead guilty or be found guilty at trial. But, so far Christie office has won every case that has reached the courts.

“Huntsu” hasn’t provided the number of people indicted for public corruption, but has arrived at a total of those convicted. We’ll assume his conviction total includes all public corruption cases brought to a conclusion while Christie has been in office. But who knows, “huntsu” hasn’t provided a list. Here’s what he’s come up with:

A review of the NJ US Attorney's Office press releases provides just 59 convictions, 21 of Republicans, 37 of Democrats and one we could not determine a party affiliation for. That leaves another 46 for Edelstein to find. Or retract.

But Edelstein's number was about investigations, so let's see if that proves the point.

Edelstein's number did not include “investigations”, just indictments and convictions as is quite clear from his column.

“Huntsu” also lays this on his readers:

Of the 150 people we found who have been investigated, indicted or convicted only 33 are Republicans and 112 are Democrats. Five are unknown.

We'll do a more in-depth analysis in a later post, but the preliminary review shows that Democrats are 300 percent more likely to be investigated than Republicans, a number far out of whack with the true ratio of party identification or elected officials. Dems are only 175 percent as likely to be convicted.

First. There is no way to know the number of Democrats and the number of Republicans who have been investigated by the U.S. Attorney’s office. The vast majority of investigations only come to light when someone is indicted or the media reports that subpoenas have been issued.

The number of subpoenas issued does not equal the number of criminal investigations underway. Hundreds of subpoenas can be issued in the investigation of just one person’s possible wrongdoing. And one subpoena may be all that’s necessary to prosecute hundreds of people.

Second. Investigations are launched on the basis of information and evidence of possible wrongdoing, not on a party affiliation quota system. The same holds true for indictments.

Third. Public corruption cases include those involving public employees of every stripe, not just elected officials.

Fourth. This is speculation on our part, but we’ll go out on a limb and say the number of public employees who are Democrats far outweighs the number who are Republicans. If we’re correct, it stands to reason a far greater number of people in position to commit corruption offenses are Democrats and therefore, more likely to get caught committing an offense.

Fifth. Certainly there are people who have been indicted, but yet to be found guilty or not guilty. That would be because their case has yet to come before the court. However, every person charged with political corruption, whose case has come before the court, has been convicted. That would be 100% of Republicans and 100% of Democrats.