Jeff Smith (@JeffSmithMO) is assistant professor of urban policy at The New School in New York City, and a former Missouri state senator. He is the author of Ferguson in Black and White and the forthcoming Mr. Smith Goes to Prison (St. Martin’s, 2015).

The good news for Chris Christie is that some of the country’s most prominent pundits believe that nearly three months after the George Washington Bridge scandal first broke, the New Jersey governor is in good shape.

“You go around and you talk to Republicans, and they like Chris Christie more today than they did three months ago … other than Jeb Bush, he still has the clearest path to this nomination,” said “Morning Joe” host and Politico columnist Joe Scarborough last Tuesday, apparently not as an April Fool’s joke. Scarborough reasoned that the liberal media’s Christie pile-on might have endeared the governor to some conservatives put off by his post-Hurricane Sandy embrace of President Barack Obama.


The bad news for Christie is that unlike some pundits, federal prosecutors are not persuaded by white-shoe law firms’ “independent” investigations or confrontational press conferences during which politicians are said to have regained their “mojo.” Political pundits don’t tend to think like lawyers; they’re focused on the horse race. It’s no wonder the narrative thus far has downplayed legal liability.

I noted this divide in January, when I predicted that Christie’s real problem was legal, not political, and that he would ultimately be brought down not by Bridgegate itself but by an unrelated investigation stemming from it in the same way that Monica Lewinsky had nothing to do with an ill-fated Arkansas land deal called Whitewater and Al Capone went down for tax evasion. Federal prosecutorial tentacles would make an octopus envious. And so despite two marathon press conferences, a 360-page report produced after an internal investigation by Christie’s lawyer Randy Mastro and beheadings for much of his inner circle, Christie is actually in worse shape than he was in when the scandal first broke.

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The first reason for this is simple. As I know all too well, having gone to prison for charges related to campaign finance violations, years can elapse between the time federal agencies first begin probing a target and the time they actually bring charges, and the deliberate, exhaustive nature of federal investigations is legend. (To take one example, when I reported for my post-conviction interview with agents, they knew the dates I had visited a casino and amounts of money I had withdrawn from an ATM a decade earlier, despite this being totally unrelated to the investigation.) Just ask Vincent Gray, the soon-to-be former mayor of Washington, D.C., who has been on the defensive after a multi-year federal investigation into his campaign finances. The recent lull in the Christie case (briefly interrupted Friday afternoon by the appearance of Christie press secretary Michael Drewniak before a grand jury) may be just an illusion—a glassy ocean surface with vicious activity occurring in the depths. No one who talks to the feds would breathe a word, for multiple reasons, from the obvious (prosecutorial orders/fear of an obstruction of justice charge) to the more subtle (the shame of snitching on a beloved boss and patron).

Christie’s continuing travel and exceptional fundraising as Republic Governors Association chair and likely presidential candidate is aimed in large part at combating the impression of a weakening governor with all avenues of political advancement quickly closing. But given the length, breadth and opacity of federal investigations, this is like a surfer in the eye of the hurricane exhorting his pals, “Rain’s stopped – surf’s up!”

Perhaps there’s even a whiff of denial on Christie’s part : If I just pretend that everything’s back to normal, and wow the national Republican audiences who like me more than ever, maybe this will all fade away.

I know the psychology well: After the feds knocked on my door the morning of my re-election kickoff fundraiser, I gritted my teeth, raised $100,000 that night (on the advice of counsel, who recommended that I proceed as if nothing were amiss) and wished the successful event could make it all go away. (I ended up returning all the donations.) But while a federal target is traipsing around with billionaires in Orlando and Las Vegas, the gears of justice continue grinding away with a singular focus. When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail; and for federal prosecutors focused on public corruption, the bigger the public figure, the larger the scalp. Of course, the only thing sweeter than bringing down a front-running presidential candidate would be nabbing one who made his name prosecuting public corruption as a U.S. attorney.

The second reason Christie may be in worse shape now is the accumulation of troubling information about David Samson. The Christie-appointed Port Authority Commission chairman’s continued silence in the face of emails suggesting that he wanted to “ retaliate” against Port Authority staff who re-opened the lanes is disturbing enough. In another e-mail, Samson accused the authority’s executive director, Patrick Foye (who was appointed by New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat) of “stirring up trouble” by talking about the lane closures. Both of these contemporaneous emails strongly indicate that if – as Christie has maintained – Samson denied knowing the reason for the lane closures, he was lying. If Samson, per the emails, knew the truth then and told Christie, the governor has been lying. Neither option suits Christie, which may explain why the internal investigatory report essentially ignored the emails.

But far more problematic from a legal perspective are the myriad conflict of interest questions raised by the involvement of Samson’s law firm, Wolff & Samson, in Port Authority business. First came Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer’s allegation that New Jersey Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, a Christie ally, threatened to withhold hurricane recovery aid to Hoboken – one of the state’s hardest hit cities – unless Zimmer agreed to support a billion-dollar development project spearheaded by a Wolff & Samson client. Guadagno strenuously denies that accusation as “false” and “illogical,” but MSNBC’s Steve Kornacki obtained emails related to the project sent from a Wolff & Samson attorney representing the developer to a Hoboken city attorney, pressing Hoboken’s attorney to speak with Samson and copying him on the email. If the Port Authority chairman’s law associate was trying to muscle the city into green-lighting a development—and keeping him in the loop on his activities—that would obliterate the line between Samson’s personal business interests and his public role as chairman.

U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman is investigating this alleged incident as a potential violation of the federal “honest services” fraud statute, and has interviewed several Hoboken city officials including Mayor Zimmer, who offered contemporaneously written diaries to prosecutors. Last week, Hoboken’s City Council waived the city lawyer’s attorney/client privilege, freeing him to speak to the grand jury investigating and potentially corroborate Zimmer’s account of events; reports indicate that Zimmer contemporaneously told four other people of Guadagno’s threat as well. Given the very real possibility of prison for Zimmer if the diaries or her allegations are demonstrably false, it seems unlikely that she would concoct this story and come forward voluntarily. If a grand jury believes that Guadagno made the alleged threat and was instructed to do so by Christie or Samson, Guadagno (and anyone who directed her) would be in legal peril.

What does all this mean for Chris Christie? The available evidence suggests that Samson is in real danger of an indictment, and Christie and his lawyers’ desperate effort to shield him from any blowback indicate that they are acutely interested in keeping him quiet. Christie implied in announcing Samson’s resignation that the 74 year-old may simply have wanted to relax, but assuming that prison is not the ideal retirement community, Christie must be concerned about Samson’s exposure—and potentially his own. And based on my knowledge of federal investigations, if Samson is indicted, the only way he’ll likely be able to avoid prison is by revealing knowledge of wrongdoing by Christie – knowledge that, as the governor’s longtime mentor and close ally, he may be uniquely situated to possess. As Christie knows better than anyone, the feds don’t hand out immunity like pediatricians hand out lollipops. And neither judges nor parole boards appear to resist elderly incarceration; indeed, seniors are the fastest growing generational cohort in federal prisons. So if Samson is indicted and wants to die a free man, he probably has to give up something meaningful – i.e., Christie.

The third reason Christie is in worse shape is that after two press conferences, one email to supporters trashing Wildstein and the Mastro report—in which he has not only thrown two once-close associates, David Wildstein and Bridget Kelly, under the bus but backed it up over them in an attempt to destroy their reputations—his former underlings have an even greater incentive to talk.

In an earlier Politico Magazine essay, I argued that Wildstein and especially Kelly, a single mother with four children, were likely to flip. (Wildstein, having been embarrassingly forward in his public plea for an immunity deal, is now cooperating with the feds, according to Esquire.) Several people responded to me that Kelly’s choice of an attorney close to Christie meant that she would remain loyal to him, while others suggested that neither she nor Wildstein committed actual crimes during Bridgegate, minimizing the pressure prosecutors could apply.

However, Wildstein, Kelly and perhaps Bill Baroni—another Christie-appointed Port Authority official who resigned last December as the scandal heated up—and Samson, may be criminally liable under New Jersey statute 2C:30-2, which states that “a public servant is guilty of official misconduct when, with purpose to obtain a benefit for himself or another or to injure or to deprive another of a benefit … commits an act relating to his office but constituting an unauthorized exercise of his official functions, knowing that such act is unauthorized or he is committing such act in an unauthorized manner.”

To get a sense of the width of this statute’s past application, see the case of former Assemblyman and Hackensack Police Chief Ken Zisa, who was sentenced to 5 years under this statute for helping extract his girlfriend, whom police suspected had been drinking, from the scene of a traffic accident. If the feds found credible evidence that Christie had broken state laws, they could refer the case to state prosecutors. But since Christie appoints county prosecutors, who report to the Christie-appointed attorney general (his ex-chief of staff), it is possible that either an independent prosecutor would be appointed, or federal prosecutors would decide to intervene and take over the state investigation.

Federal wire fraud and conspiracy statutes could also be construed expansively if they intersect with interstate commerce—an easy case to make, given that the George Washington Bridge is an interstate river crossing. (One irony here is that Christie himself, as state attorney general, pioneered broader ways of construing the wire fraud statutes, for instance, in his prosecution of former Essex County executive Jim Treffinger.)

The question then becomes: Do Wildstein and Kelly have information that could damage Christie? Circumstantial evidence suggests that they do. With the Mastro report’s careful language (For instance: “Even if Wildstein had told Christie about the bridge closing on 9/11, it is doubtful that Christie would have remembered it…”), Christie has all but admitted that Wildstein told him about the lane closing on Sept. 11, 2013. Assuming that is the case, Wildstein was close enough to Christie that he felt comfortable revealing political dirty tricks.

My sense is that while Wildstein has no information about Christie criminal activity – if he did, he wouldn’t have begged for immunity so publicly – there is a little known federal statute called “misprision of a felony” ( 18 U.S.C. § 4), which could be used against Christie if Wildstein can prove that he told Christie of the bridge closing contemporaneously. The statute, used against people who fail to report knowledge of a felony to the appropriate authorities, is generally only applied against those in a special position of authority. Kelly’s recent response to the Mastro report, in which her attorney wrote that she could arbitrate a he-said/she-said dispute regarding Christie’s contemporaneous knowledge of the bridge closing, strongly implied that Kelly’s involvement in the affair came at the behest of superiors as she sought to “pursue the goals of the Office.” With the Mastro report and the governor himself having now thoroughly trashed Wildstein and Kelly in a pre-emptive attempt to erode their credibility, they have precious little to lose by telling all.

The fourth reason Christie is in worse shape than ever is that he can no longer employ his usual tools to modify others’ behavior. Given Christie’s penchant for hardball and the number of roaches that have already come out of the woodwork, three of the main reasons people might have had to stay quiet are evaporating. The first reason is fear of being stranded as the only accuser – a fear no longer. The second reason is fear of retribution. Now, in his politically weakened state and under the white-hot scrutiny of the press and prosecutors at multiple levels, Christie has scant capacity to retaliate against anyone who might betray him. The third reason people might have stayed quiet was the tacit promise of a reward to come, either in New Jersey or even from a potential President Christie. Again, with Christie under intense scrutiny – especially for rewards to anyone to whom the governor might be indebted – and a substantially decreased likelihood of political advancement, few will stay quiet with the expectation of future fruits.

The fifth, and final, reason Christie is far from rehabilitated is the fact that a potential rival presidential candidate across the Hudson may hold the keys to his fate. Remember that December phone call in which Christie, according to the Wall Street Journal, asked Cuomo to put the kibosh on any inquiry into the lane closing? So does Cuomo – and he’s not talking. But he could – and who knows, there is a chance prosecutors could even ask him about that phone call – which could cast doubt upon Christie’s story of ignorance about the lane closing, since it would test the bounds of credulity for Christie to claim both that he a) didn’t know why the lanes were closed and b) desperately wanted to avoid any inquiry into the lane closing. Governors don’t call other governors to do things that staff could handle, so we can assume that whatever was said on this call was sensitive, and has the potential to disprove Christie’s entire story, pulling the thread that could make his story unravel. Cuomo clearly wants to be president, and even if he doesn’t view Christie as a formidable opponent any more, Christie would cannibalize Cuomo’s own Wall Street donor base in any future run. No one whose frenemy possesses such sensitive information can feel too secure.

To get a sense of just how nervous Christie is about this, watch the terms of Port Authority split Christie has proposed. Assuming Christie wants the contents of that phone call to remain secret, the terms will be very favorable to New York. A possible sign of the degree to which Christie is taking care not to antagonize Cuomo? Christie vehemently denied doing anything to encourage Cuomo’s leading prospective opponent – a curious move for an ambitious RGA chair looking to make his mark on the national stage in 2014.

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Taken together, these five issues are significant enough to end Christie’s White House dreams. They are surely more than enough to knock him off of his frontrunner perch. Only those unfamiliar with the intensity, duration and breadth of federal investigations or those who willfully ignore the preponderance of evidence would think otherwise. As a wise man once said, no man’s life can withstand a full examination. Chris Christie is testing that proposition, and so far, he and his intimates are showing themselves to be eminently human.