New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Chris Christie left the campaign trail Thursday to trade punches with congressional Democrats, who — in a transparently political attempt to bloody the Republican front-runner — called him to testify about lucrative monitoring contracts he awarded while he was the state’s U.S. attorney. And it was punchy.
 

Christie’s testimony before the House Judiciary subcommittee on commercial and administrative law, in which he defended a contract worth up to $52 million to former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s consulting firm, exceeded all expectations, in terms of raw shock factor.

We’ll begin at the end.

After two and a half hours of sparring, Christie up and left the hearing, at 1:30 p.m., as Chairman Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) shouted in his wake, refusing to excuse him. (Christie had a 2 p.m. train to catch, he said.) Outside the committee room, Christie spared a few seconds to explain to reporters that he and the chairman had previously agreed on his departure time. That’s at least half true – Christie did indeed tell the committee in this letter that he had to leave by 1:30 p.m. It would seem, however, that Cohen didn’t agree to his timetable.

The hearing featured a window-dressing panel of scandalously underused experts, including Hogan & Hartson partner Chuck Rosenberg, the former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia; Gary Grindler, Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Eileen Larence, director of homeland security and justice issues at the Government Accountability Office; and Vikramaditya Khanna, a professor at University of Michigan Law School.

But it was all Christie, defending himself, his office, the efficacy of non-prosecution and deferred prosecution agreements, and his Italian-American heritage. Christie’s chief antagonist was Cohen, who called the Ashcroft contract “outrageous.”

“Even if you took steroids and hit 70 home runs, it’s not worth $52 million,” Cohen scoffed.

Um, yeah.

The contracts in question derived from five NPAs and DPAs Christie’s office brokered with manufacturers of hip and knee replacements. During a three-year investigation, Christie’s office uncovered a massive kick-back scheme. Rather than prosecute the firms, which, Christie said, would have led to their demise and the loss of about 47,000 jobs — think Arthur Anderson — the office went the monitor route. Ashcroft and his firm made $28 million to $52 million  in 18 months for monitoring Zimmer Holdings. Cohen accused Christie, who worked under Ashcroft at Main Justice, of steering the contract to his old boss.

“You gave them an offer they couldn’t refuse,” Cohen said, referring to Zimmer.

At this, Christie took great offense.

“First of all, it is an ethnically insensitive comment to an Italian American. Secondly, you were not in the room in this situation,” Christie said. (Cohen, backpedaling, backpedaling, backpedaling, said he was unaware of Christie’s ethnic heritage.)

Christie said the monitors were recommended on merit, and each company had a chance to object after meeting with them. He recalled that representatives of Zimmer, after meeting with Ashcroft, “came back and said, ‘We got the best monitor.’”

Later, the company’s counsel at Fulbright & Jaworski would complain that Ashcroft’s rates were unreasonable. When they appealed to Christie, he shooed them away. ”Take another stab at resolving the substantive issues raised in your email directly with the monitor,” he wrote in one email to Fulbright partner Rick Robinson. (Democratic staffers handed out the email exchanges at the start of the hearing.)

“If a U.S. attorney got inolved in every dispute between monitor and companies their monitor, the U.S. attorney would have no time to do anything else but moderate those disputes,” Christie said, when Cohen raised the issue.

There were other choice moments in the hearing. Although Christie is leading in the polls over Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine in a high-profile race, Rep. Bill Delahunt (D-Mass.) told Christie that “until today, I did not realize you were a candidate for governor.” 

Sigh.

Delahunt said the Ashcroft contract highlighted the problem of an appearance of a conflict of interest, as much as an actual conflict.

“I’m not suggesting you did anything improper, but appearances are important,” Delahunt said.

A bill pending in the House Judiciary Committee would add a layer of judicial oversight to agreements. The Justice Department opposes the bill on the grounds that it would diminish prosecutorial discretion. Since 1992, DOJ has entered into about 150 DPAs and NPAs. Last year, the department added new guidelines to the U.S. Attorneys’ Manual for entering into DPAs and NPAs, selecting of monitors and ensuring compliance with the agreements.

Click here, here, and here for our previous Christie coverage.

With polls showing Republican Chris Christie ahead in the New Jersey governor race, House Democrats have asked the former U.S. Attorney to testify about a contract worth up to $52 million his office awarded former Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Christie hasn’t decided whether he will appear at the June 25 hearing, but his campaign confirmed he’d been asked to appear, the Associated Press reports.

The hearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on commercial and administrative law was postponed last month after the Christie campaign complained it was intended to embarass him in advance of the June 2 Republican primary. Christie defeated conservative challenger Steve Lonegan in the primary. He now faces incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine (D) in a Nov. 3 general election.

Read our previous coverage here and here.

Corzine is struggling in New Jersey. Polls show voters blame him for the bad economy and are angry that property tax rebates have been canceled.

On Wednesday two New Jersey Democrats, Sen. Bob Menendez and Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr., held a conference call with reporters to criticize Christie, saying his leadership of the U.S. Attorney office in New Jersey

“I have serious questions that he could’ve put his whole campaign together so suddenly, and never engaged in conversations about politics while he was U.S. attorney,” Menendez said, according to the Newark Star-Ledger. Pascrell, meanwhile, is co-sponsor along with Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) of a bill to reform the court-monitoring process. The legislation was introduced in 2008 after revelations that Christie’s office had awarded the firm of his former boss, Ashcroft, a contract worth up to $52 million to monitor a company’s compliance with a DOJ settlement.

The legislation aims to take selection of court monitors away from U.S. Attorneys and establish professional guidelines for awarding them.

Christopher Christie, the Bush-appointed former U.S. Attorney in New Jersey now running for governor, has been asked to testify at a hearing on Capitol Hill about a controversial court-monitoring contract he steered to his former boss, ex-Attorney General John Ashcroft. The May 19 hearing before a House Judiciary subcommittee will take place two weeks before New Jersey’s June 2 GOP primary.

Chris Christie (gov)

House Democrats have been investigating the so-called deferred prosecution process under which Ashcroft and other court monitors have been awarded lucrative contracts for some time. But the timing of the hearing reeks of political hardball.

Allies of embattled Democratic incumbent Gov. Jon Corzine are trying to knock Christie out of the race by helping boost the former prosecutor’s more GOP conservative challenger, Steve Lonegan. Christie is considered a serious threat to Corzine, the former Goldman Sachs chairman whose popularity has been battered by the recession.

New Jersey Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell Jr. and Frank Pallone, who have co-sponsored legislation to reform the deferred prosecution process, will also testify at the May 19 hearing before Judiciary’s commercial and administrative law subcommittee. A Government Accountability Office investigative report on the court-monitoring contracts is expected to be unveiled at or shortly before the hearing.

Ashcroft’s contract to monitor an Indiana medical supply company as part of an out-of-court settlement was worth between $28 and $52 million. The company, Zimmer Holdings, had been under criminal investigation by the Christie-led U.S. Attorney office. The company hired Ashcroft’s consulting firm in 2007 at the direction of Christie to monitor its compliance with the settlement.

At a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing last year, Rep. Linda T. Sanchez (D-Calif.) blasted Ashcroft’s contract as a “back-room sweetheart deal.” 

“There is not a conflict; there is not an appearance of a conflict,” Ashcroft fired back, according to the New York Times account. Christie was asked to appear at the same 2008 hearing but declined, saying he would do so only under direction of the Justice Department.

Christie called the upcoming hearing  ”a concerted Democratic effort to try to affect our primary.” In a conference call with reporters, he added: ”When and if I get some type of formal invitation from the group I’ll consider it in light of my schedule and respond appropriately,”according to the Newark Star-Ledger.

The Star-Ledger reported:

However, a copy of the letter sent to Christie by Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Michigan) is dated May 5. In the letter, Conyers invites Christie to testify May 19 and to provide the committee with an advance copy of his written testimony.

Christie wouldn’t say whether he would testify if a subpoena was issued, the Star-Ledger added.