Remember Ma Laureys: Something about Bob
The View From The Virgin Islands
By John McCarthy
TMV Columnist
While Chris Christie was leaving for a vacation in Puerto Rico, Sen. Robert Menendez was making the front pages of a newspaper just 120 miles south of there.
The two men are joined at the hip – here’s how.
United States Senator Menendez (D-NJ) made the front page of the St. Croix newspaper because he was calling out the Virgin Islands Police Department for a perceived sluggish response to the murder of a 41-year-old New Jersey man in Chocolate Hole, St. John last month.
What you might not know is that eight years ago Chris Christie (R-NJ) – then a swashbuckling U.S. District Attorney – began a prosecution of Robert “Bob” Menendez, a six-term Congressman who had been appointed to a one-year term as Senator to fill a seat vacated by John Corzine (D-NJ) when he was elected Governor of New Jersey.
This is not a “French journal,” so with apologies to Ernest Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast” – there will be background.
The question is: why did Chris Christie begin a federal investigation into a Bob Menendez real estate deal just 60 days before the senatorial special election?
Menendez had run afoul of local Republicans who filed an ethics complaint against him for renting out a property he owned to a nonprofit agency that accepts federal funds.
Christie says the conflict of interest case went forward because it had already broken in the press and it was timed to prevent destruction of documents and other evidence. But looking back today, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writes: “Menendez’s claims of persecution now seem quite plausible.”
Christie was someone who weighed suing the government in order to run for political office before he reached the age of 18 – so he must have had higher political aspirations of his own at that time – the year was 2006 and the New Jersey heavyweight would be eligible to sit down in the mansion of Drumthwacket just three years later.
But Christie had somehow earned the ire of the “W.” Administration – one he had campaigned and lobbied for so successfully that he was appointed to U.S. Attorney for New Jersey despite never having practiced in a federal courtroom before. He proved George Bush right because within a short space of time he was one of the top two or three District Attorneys in the whole United States. All total, Chris got 130 convictions or guilty pleas in seven years. He lost none; no wonder “W.” called him “Big Boy.”
Not bad for a small firm attorney specializing in medical malpractice suits. But he was so good at securing convictions of corrupt politicians and obtaining deferred prosecution agreements (DPAs) from corporations – which allowed conglomerates to avoid prosecution altogether if they paid a hefty fine and agreed that they’ll never do it again – that the U.S. Department of Justice had to institute new rules to ensure that like-minded prosecutors wouldn’t also give $52-million dollar, 18-month contracts to their ex-bosses or $5 million to the law school they graduated from.
Just as Michael Jordan’s basketball wizardry brought about the “Jordan Rules” – a way to systematically defend the greatest player who ever played the game – the U.S. Department of Justice had to devise “Christie Rules” – new ways to guard against leaving it to future feds’ discretion as to which friends and organizations will benefit from these fines. Shakedowns are apparently questionable ethics even for U.S. Attorneys – but Christie’s groundbreaking tactic is still used nationwide today.
How Chris Christie got elected to the Freeholder Board of Morris County in 1994 is also significant – he did so by stating incorrectly – and very close to an election – that his incumbent opponent was under “investigation” for violating local laws. So he knew the dirty tricks Nixon political game – right out of the gate in his own career.
Which brings us back to Bob Menendez, the Cuban-American U.S. Senator from New Jersey who earned his chops by fighting political corruption in Union City as its mayor. It’s possible, just possible, that Christie thought that the town of New Jersey wasn’t big enough for two crime fighting McGruffs – so as a hedge that someone named Bob wouldn’t run against him as a Democrat for Governor of the Garden State one day …
The biggest question that remains is why – despite raising $350,000 for the election campaign of George W. in 2000 and achieving “pioneer” status with the Bush Machine – by the time 2005 rolled around “Big Boy’s” name was on a list of U.S. attorneys facing dismissal? Big time Democrats like Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) and Krugman were outraged. They crossed party lines and came to his defense on professional grounds.
Perhaps only long-time members of the Masonic Lodge subset “Skull and Bones” and former Christie backer Karl Rove know how Big Boy got on W.’s “enemies list.” Also, it has been widely reported that the Castro regime has long been looking to discredit Menendez for his pro U.S. sanctions stance against Communist Cuba.
But when the subpoenas were delivered to Senator Menendez’s offices two months before the elections that eventually ratified Bob’s appointment anyway, Big Boy was safely reinstated in his old job as corruption-fighting prosecutor. Menendez’s career; however, was badly tarnished by the federal witchhunt.
Oh, how the pendulum swings.
Now those same feds – in the office Christie once ran as an undefeated champion – is subpoenaing records of their former standard bearer.
And Menendez, despite setbacks of an underage prostitutes scandal in the Dominican Republic and an Ecuadorean bank scandal in Florida – has found time to wax rhapsodic about the hinterlands of the Virgin Islands.
“Remember Ma Laureys!” Some people in Morris County still say that today. The same way people in San Antonio say: “Remember the Alamo!”
Ma Laureys is the mother of 10 Big Boy slandered to get onto the seven-member board of the Chosen Freeholders of Morris County twenty years ago.
As Mark Twain said: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug.”
Big Boy said there was “an investigation” into Ma Laureys. It was actually just “an inquiry.” The difference between the two words is what put him into elected office in New Jersey for the first time.
The writing has been on the wall – or water under the bridge – for a long time on Big Boy.
And the bigger you are: the harder you fall.
Or is it bully for you and chilly for me?
How was your President’s Day holiday?
John McCarthy is an investigative journalist, artist and author who lives in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Please send comments to: johnfmccarthy807@msn.com or (340) 514-4087