Christie: Media cuts Clinton slack on emails

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) accused the media on Thursday of giving Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton a preferential amount of leeway on her State Department email controversy.

“If I had come out the day after the ‘Bridgegate’ thing was announced and said, ‘By the way, um, all my emails are on a private server, and I deleted a whole bunch of them and destroyed the server and you have to take my word for it, the emails had nothing to do with the bridge stuff,’ can you only imagine what the reaction would have been?” Christie asked on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

{mosads}Critics charge that as secretary of State, Clinton blocked transparency for her public communications by using a private email server during her tenure.

Christie’s “Bridgegate” scandal began in 2013, when aides in his office allegedly closed traffic lanes on the George Washington Bridge as political retaliation against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich (D) for not endorsing Christie’s gubernatorial reelection efforts.

Christie’s possible role in the controversy has threatened to undermine his potential 2016 GOP presidential bid.

“Can you imagine if it were me who deleted my emails?” the New Jersey governor said. 

“Yet today, we don’t even talk about the email situation with Secretary Clinton anymore,” he added.

The New Jersey governor also noted that the media had an “absolute bias and a rush to judgment” toward Republicans.

“I mean, I was guilty; I was guilty,” he said of the media’s portrayal of him during the “Bridgegate” furor.

The trial for two former aides involved in the scandal was delayed this week until November, casting a shadow over what would be campaign season for Christie, should he run.

Christie said his 2016 candidacy remains theoretical for the time being.

“Is it right for me, is it right for my family, is it right for the country?” he asked. “The answer has to be yes to all three.”

Clinton, meanwhile, has faced her own public backlash, with many wondering aloud what she was trying to hide on the server.

The House Select Committee on Benghazi is particularly interested in the communications.

House Republicans vowed they would spend an hour of floor time on Thursday hounding State for all documents related to the deadly incident.

Their efforts come amid revelations that a close friend of Clinton’s blamed the terrorist assault on an anti-Islamic online film before recanting that statement a day later.

Questions over Clinton’s transparency have dogged her 2016 campaign. The Democrat has drawn criticism for appearing inaccessible to the media since announcing her Oval Office bid on April 12.