[ed.note: Be sure to see ‘Latter Update’ below.]
We’ve still got the on-going questions about whether NJ Gov candidate Chris Christie pushed political prosecutions as US Attorney to keep on Karl Rove’s good side and pave the way for his run for governor. Now comes word that the hold-over acting US Attorney who took for Christie (a Bush era appointee for the ‘acting’ slot) is himself now facing an internal investigation into whether he politicized a recent corruption investigation to aide Christie’s campaign and hurt Gov. Corzine.
Late Update: A further detail. According to the notification at the time of his appointment, Marra, the Acting US Attorney, is actually a registered Democrat. He was, however, Christie’s top aide since 2002.
Latter Update: I was not clear enough on this in my initial post. According to the report from the AP, the investigation is not into the conduct of the investigation itself but rather into public comments Marra made at the news conference announcing the investigation. The question being whether his comments (you can see the precise words here) were aimed at or had the effect of spinning the indictments as a rationale for Christie’s campaign against Corzine. That’s plenty worth investigating but is certainly qualitatively different, if true, from politicizing and thus tainting the investigation itself.
