The Justice Department this week resumed its massive New Jersey political corruption “Bid Rig III” case with a trial that continues the self-inflicted damage from its 2006 political purge of U.S. attorneys.
The bribery trial of former state assemblyman Harvey Smith in Newark continues the DOJ’s disgraceful 46-defendant sting that New Jersey’s U.S. Attorney Chris Christie, right, concocted years ago in consultation with the Bush DOJ headquarters.
These actions helped Christie win his state’s governorship last year with the public image of being a crime-fighting, cost-conscious reformer. Similarly, he’s now positioning himself as a contender for the presidency in 2012.
But a review of the Bid Rig case illustrates the bipartisan way that Christie and other DOJ officials waste vast sums to help their cronies and themselves, and then cover-up for each other. For these reasons, the Bid Rig case helps show why President Obama shouldn’t have decided that his administration would “need to look forward, as opposed to looking backwards” on potential prosecution of the gravest Bush-era crimes. All criminal cases look “backward.”
Obama, Attorney Gen. Eric Holder, left, and the rest of their team have made a mockery of justice to exempt law enforcement from the tough review they routinely impose on others, as I argued at the beginning of his presidency in, “Probe the Past To Protect the Future.”