Chris Christie May Have Own Email Problems Now That Account Can Be Searched

You thought that Hillary Clinton was the only one with email problems?

Think again.

A judge ruled this past week that Gov. Chris Christie's personal email problems can be searched as part of the continued interest in the Bridgegate political payback scandal.

Perhaps the situation was best summed up for Chris Wallace, the Fox News host who interviewed Christie about his surrogate role for Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump a couple weeks ago.

“You’ve had your own problems" with email, Wallace told Christie during their televised interview.

At issue is the fact that Christie's personal email account was one of several things missing from the federal investigation into Bridgegate, which led to one guilty plea and indictments for two aides who allegedly helped develop a payback scheme against the Fort Lee mayor who didn't endorse Christie's 2013 re-election run.

Indeed, jury selection in the trial of William Baroni, former deputy executive director of the Port Authority, and Bridget Anne Kelly, former deputy chief of staff to Christie, began this week. Both were indicted in connection with the scandal involving the illegal closing of George Washington Bridge lanes.

NPR reported that among the missing items were a cellphone in Christie's pocket during the 2013 George Washington lane closures; text messages the governor sent and received during the ensuing legislative investigation; and a personal email account he used as the scandal.

Christie has insisted that both his personal and government email accounts were searched by investigators, and nothing would connect to the lane closures scheme. But recently filed court documents indicate that a personal email account he shared with his wife, Mary Pat, was never searched, and he used that account to send at least one Bridgegate-related government email, according to the report.

That email went to David Samson, the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a Christie confidant who was allegedly involved in the Bridgegate scandal and pleaded guilty recently in a continuing but unrelated criminal investigation.

It's not clear what kind of impact - if anything - any new revelations about Christie's emails would produce. Indeed, federal investigators have suggested that the Bridgegate probe is closed - for now.

But journalists have taken a particular interest. Judge Mary C. Jacobson of Superior Court in Mercer County ordered Christie’s personal email accounts be searched to comply with an Open Public Records Act request filed last year by the publisher of The Record, according to the publication.

In his recent interview, Wallace noted that 12 text messages sent between Christie and one of his top aides had been deleted during the Bridgegate scandal, and that the governor had conducted government business on a private Yahoo account, which goes against state regulations.

Christie, however insisted that his business was conducted on a government email account, and that anything from his private account were sent “inadvertently.”

Christie said there was no comparison between his situation and Clinton's use of a private email server, which has drawn a lot of controversy and was subject to an FBI investigation.

"We can’t compare that to have national security secrets, we’re really not, Chris, are we?," he said to Wallace.

Patch file photo