Gov. Chris Christie. | AP Photo/Mel Evans Citing DNC emails, Christie wants probe of lawmakers who led Bridgegate inquiry

Gov. Chris Christie on Tuesday called for a potential criminal inquiry into two Democratic state lawmakers who investigated the George Washington Bridge scandal, saying leaked emails show one of the legislators conspired with the Democratic National Committee to undermine him.

The Republican governor demanded that Assemblyman John Wisniewski and Sen. Loretta Weinberg, the co-chairs of a legislative committee that looked into the lane closures, hand over any emails they exchanged with the DNC since the time they began their investigation.


“I believe we need to see whether or not taxpayer money was used to advance the DNC’s political agenda to attack me right after my re-election,” Christie said during a statehouse press conference. “I think we need to see whether Senator Weinberg and Assemblyman Wisniewski used legislative staffers in order to be able to promote the DNC’s political agenda. I think there has to be a full investigation of this.”

And, Christie added, “where appropriate, they should be charged.”

The governor has not released some of his own emails and text messages from the time of the bridge scandal. The episode involved several of his allies conspiring to close lanes leading to the bridge to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, who refused to endorse Christie’s re-election bid. One person who was close to the governor has already pleaded guilty and two others, including Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, are set to stand trial in September.

The DNC emails, released late last month by the website WikiLeaks, show committee staff prepared a statement for Weinberg in which she was to call for the governor’s resignation after he was named chairman of Donald Trump’s presidential transition team. Weinberg considered putting the statement on her own state letterhead, according to the emails, but ultimately decided not to release the statement at all, saying she wasn’t comfortable doing so.

Those details were reported on Monday by the news website PolitickerNJ, which is owned by the New York Observer. The article was written by Ken Kurson, the editor of the Observer, which is published by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and a close political adviser.

After Weinberg declined to call for the governor’s resignation, the DNC staff drafted another statement for her, NJ Advance Media reported on Tuesday. Eventually, Weinberg did release a version of the statement, published on May 11 in POLITICO New Jersey Playbook, in which she said Christie should “refrain from using any taxpayer dollars” as he travels in support of Trump. The governor has a State Police escort everywhere he goes, and says he has no say in the matter.

Christie said Weinberg’s use of a DNC statement was telling, and he attacked reporters for not covering her aggressively enough.

“I think it’s completely outrageous. I think Sen. Weinberg gets a free pass from you people day after day, after day, after day, for seven years,” Christie said in his outer office. “We have evidence that she was verbatim taking statements from the Democratic National Committee and putting them on her own letterhead. And we’re supposed to believe that that happened when I was named transition chairman, but it didn’t happen when the bridge investigation started and throughout the entire bridge investigation?

“It’s time for Sen. Weinberg to come clean about her association with the Democratic National Committee. It’s time for her to release each and every email she’s had with the Democratic National Committee.”

In a lengthy statement Tuesday evening, Weinberg said she’s “not afraid of transparency” and listed four other email exchanges she and her staff members had with the DNC since January 2014, when the official legislative inquiry began. The only messages from that first year, according to the release, involved the senator asking the committee about “the possibility of her granddaughter lighting the menorah at the White House Hanukkah party.”

Weinberg tried to turn the table on Christie, calling on him to release emails and text messages from the time of the Bridgegate investigation and when he was serving as the chairman of the Republican Governor’s Association. She sought to paint him as a hypocrite.

“Regardless of how many tantrums the governor throws behind a podium, I am not going to back down from my criticism of his policies or of his treatment of the residents of the state as a backdrop to his campaigns for national office,” she said. “I do find it kind of peculiar that during the entire Bridgegate scandal, from the day it happened to now, the governor never asked the Attorney General or any member of law enforcement to look into it. But he is now calling for an investigation into a press release.”

Senate President Stephen Sweeney, a Democrat and close ally of Weinberg, said Christie’s comments were unwarranted.

“Loretta Weinberg is the most honorable honest person that I've met,” he said during a separate press conference at the statehouse. “In fact, she’s fought for open government, she's the ethical voice of the Senate. She's obviously been a thorn in the governor’s side, but Sen. Weinberg doesn't do anything wrong. And he has a right to say what he wants to say, but I tend to support Sen. Weinberg.”

Wisniewski, a potential candidate for governor next year, said in a phone interview that he did not take direction from the DNC about the legislative inquiry. The Assemblyman was a member of the committee from 2008 until recently, when he was removed over his support of Bernie Sanders. Because of his role in the organization, Wisniewski said, he probably received numerous emails from the DNC about Bridgegate. But he "never coordinated with the DNC on my investigation."

“No, never happened," he said.

He also said Christie's comments Tuesday were ironic, given that much of the legislative investigation focused on how one part of the governor's office was being used as a tool to win political support.

“It’s smirk-worthy. He’s a governor who had the entire office of Intergovernmental Affairs employed as gofers for endorsements and trading government favors in return for it," Wisniewski said. "Not my suspicion – the email traffic shows that. They were keeping tallies on who they could get, and they were doing press conference and bestowing gifts on these elected officials who chose to endorse the governor. They turned IGA into a state campaign office.”

In June, POLITICO New Jersey reported on emails that appear to show the governor himself knew about that work. Former aide Bill Stepien, who led the IGA and then Christie's re-election campaign, sent the governor an email in which he said staff had put the Democratic mayor of Belleville “in the end zone” for an endorsement.

-- Additional reporting by Katherine Landergan. This story has been updated with comment from Weinberg.