What’s a little exaggeration among friends?
The Newark Star-Ledger and PolitiFact called ex-U.S. Attorney turned N.J. Gov. Chris Christie on his exaggeration the other day.
Christie said at a town hall meeting that as Newark U.S. Attorney he put behind bars 10 percent of the state legislature for various crimes. The figure is actually less than 3 percent, the story says.
“Really?” Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak said in an e-mail responding to the challenge by the paper. “Every other person in the audience understood the Governor was making a rhetorical point about his extensive record in combating political corruption as U.S. Attorney and not, as you seem to be suggesting, citing, with great exactitude, some baseball statistic.”
“The Governor was emphasizing, conversationally, the gravity of the corruption which in those years reached into the highest levels of the legislature as well as high-ranking party bosses and operatives, and former legislators across this state – an extensive and politically powerful rogues gallery. Honestly, if you were actually in attendance at the town hall, heard his tone and inflection when he made this remark — and were around in those years in New Jersey — you would know that,” Drewniak said.
Still, the paper wrote, the “governor can make a point about his record on corruption without saying he put 10 percent of the state Legislature in jail. That’s just not true.”
OTHER STORIES OF INTEREST
