it's poison. >> 6 it's poison. >> 6 6 >> 6 0% of their time. >> katrina vanden heuvel, sam cedar. "the rachel maddow show" starts now. thanks to you at home for joining us this hour. happy snow day. the administration of republican north carolina governor pat mccrory has just been subpoenaed in conjunction with a federal criminal investigation. now, this is not new jersey. this is a whole different governor. but the language is starting to feel familiar by now. you are commanded to appear in this federal court. you are commanded to bring with you the following documents. it's not clear yet who exactly is being investigated and for what potential crime, but the u.s. attorney's office for the east district of north carolina, the federal prosecutor in north carolina is making the general terms of this thing very clear. "an official criminal investigation of a suspected felony is being conducted by an agency of the united states and a federal grand jury."

this is a surprise development today. i'm not sure anybody knew this was coming. this subpoena is dated monday of this week, that is presumably the date it was served as well. but the "associated press" and local state wral just broke the news of the subpoena today when they obtained the document and published it. so maybe this was more comfortable for governor mccrory when the subpoena of his administration was still a secret between monday and today, but it did become news today and it became news today on a day that was already a really tough one in the state of north carolina. this news of this federal criminal investigation lands on a day when governor pat mccrory and his administration are already being criticized, not just in the state of north carolina, but nationwide, for essentially a botched response to the huge snowstorm that has brought the whole southeast and the east coast to a standstill. you remember two weeks ago when greater atlanta turned into a horror movie starring hundreds of thousands of cars stacked up

on the interstates, major atlanta roads unable to go forward, unable to go backward. people trapped in freezing conditions in their vehicles for 3 hours, 4 hours, 10, 15, 20 hours, running their engines for warmth until they ran out of gas and could not run them anymore. ultimately abandoning their cars in huge numbers, grabbing the kids, the coat, grabbing whatever else you could and walking off down the road in search of shelter. shelter like, say, maybe at a home depot for the night. that was two weeks ago in georgia. and with that terrible failure fresh in everyone's minds, you'd think that this even larger storm that started yesterday, and we had plenty of warning about it, you'd think this even larger storm would have put elected officials in the region through the mindset of not repeating georgia's mistakes. atlanta, georgia, learned the lessens from its own mistakes

for this storm. this time trauma, drama, zombie-like apocalypse was avoided. instead of georgia this time, we got it in raleigh, north carolina, charlotte, north carolina. tonight north carolina is in a bit of a mess. if you want to see what i mean, check out this sort of trying to be helpful advice from the "news & observer" from that newspaper telling the readers what you can try to do today to try to find your car, recover your car if you had to abandon it in the ice storm gridlock traffic disaster yesterday. if you levft your car on the rod or side of the road, the state of north carolina probably towed it away, but maybe not. to find it, according to the local press, you should call "a variety of agencies depending on where you think your car might be." so, good luck.

yeah, north carolina has got its own very pressing problems right now that are weather and weather-related policy driven. but the u.s. attorney's office apparently did not shut down this week in north carolina in anticipation of this winter disaster because reporters today have obtained and published this federal grand jury subpoena for the administration of governor mccrory. specifically it's for the agency that's supposed to oversee environmental issues in the state. even more specifically, subpoena directs the agency's general counsel to testify before the grand jury. sets a date and time for that testimony. they're not just demanding the administration hand over records, although they are doing that, too. they also want in-person testimony. the pat mccrory administration told us they will, "cooperate with the u.s. attorney's investigation." when we asked if that means they will send people to testify in person before the grand jury in raleigh, the agency's spokesman told us today, "i can't comment on the specifics."

what it is about is this. this disaster in a town whose name sort of breaks your har to even say it now because it's called eden, north carolina, and it is a beautiful place, but eden, north carolina, has a really big problem because this is what has happened to it. eden is up by the virginia border. it's about 100 miles from the capital of north carolina. and as you can see here, this is a huge spill. this is the third largest spill of toxic coal ash in american history. we were supposed to be shocked as a nation into being super careful about this coal ash stuff after the largest coal ash spill in american history which was in 2008. that one happened in kingston, tennessee, about 300 miles away from the new coal ash spill. that tennessee spill is still being cleaned up now six years later. the cleanup costs for the tennessee bill, well over a billion dollars. that was supposed to be a

wake-up call for us about the risks of storing giants amounts of this toxic sludge, especially right near waterways. but two weeks ago, on super bowl sunday, we did it again. or rather, duke energy did it. it was their plant. it was their coal ash. it was their spill. that company is confirming they, too, have received a federal grand jury subpoena in this federal criminal investigation that we found out today, along with the mccrory administration's subpoena. and in the first instance, it's going to have to be that company, duke energy, and that agency, the environmental agency, who are going to have to answer for what happened here. and the bigger picture, though, the questions are for north carolina governor pat mccrory. for the government he leads. before he was sworn in as north carolina governor, pat mccrory spent 28 years working for duke energy. the "ap" reports he's received over $1 million in campaign contribution from duke energy and now that duke energy has dumped 73 olympic-sized swimming

pools worth of toxic sludge into north carolina waterways, how has the governor from duke energy handled the matter? well, the spill began on super bowl sunday, february 2nd with tons of coal ash gunk just glunking out from the 48 inch storm water pipe at the downriver power plant. the sludge contain lead and arsenic and mercury and all of that stuff flowed out of the pipe for nearly a week. the people of north carolina were not told anything was wrong until a day after the pipe had ruptured and then both the company the and the state failed to relay accurately just how big the leak was. governor pat mccrory did not make any public statement about this disaster until four days after it happened. it happened on sunday. he didn't say anything on sunday. didn't say anything on monday. didn't say anything on tuesday. didn't say anything on wednesday. thursday, oh, there's the governor. finally. on day four, he showed up at the spill site and talked about how tough he's been on the industry. and how they're going to have to clean this mess up. he put out a press release that

day, governor mccrory directs duke energy to bring coal ash spill under control. the governor's press release telling people, "as of thursday afternoon, downstream municipal water supplies remain unaffected and reporting that drinking water in their communities is safe to drink. ""that was from governor mccrory's office four days in this spill. well, now state health officials are saying not only do not drink water from the dan river, do not touch water from the dan river. certainly do not eat fish that have been in it. beware of the arsenic, copper, iron, aluminum in the water at levels above state standards for surface water quality. if you were going from pat mccrory's advice, safe to drink, everything's fine. it's hard to believe it's more unsafe now than a week closer to the spill when he said everything was safe. hey, maybe you can undrink anything you might have drunk and untouch any watter you migh

have touched in the ensuing week. the bigger picture here may or may not be what federal prosecutors are going after, but the "ap" bombshell this week about how the governor with his past at duke energy, how this governor handled duke energy since he's been governor is a pretty jaw dropping story. there dumps of this coal ash stuff like the one that spilled in 2008, the one that spilled into the dan river two weeks ago. all over north carolina. since pat mccrory has been governor, environmental groups sued to try to gtake these safe. in both instances these lagoons of toxic stuff that duke was maintaini ining at these sites, those lagoons of coal ash were contaminating the groundwater. under the clean water act, you can't contaminate the groundwater. people can sue you if you do. both of the cases, though,

mccrory stepped in and blocked the lawsuit. even though those kinds of suits worked in other places, like duke energy, to clean up sites like that, in north carolina pat mccrory's administration stopped the suits. they stepped in. they used their prerogative as the state to step in and replace the plaintiffs in those cases. and instead, they, as the state, negotiated a settlement in private with the company. the state's proposed settlement for contaminating the groundwater in asheville and contaminating the ground swwaten charlotte is duke would have to study the issue of how they were contaminating the groundwater in places like that. but they would not have to clean up any of the contamination that they had caused. and they would not have to stop con tam nating the groundwater or do anything digfferent at those sites. they would have to pay a fine of less than $100,000. a one-time fine, and that would cover both sites. if you're keeping track at home, that's a fine of les than 10% of what duke energy has given pat

mccrory in campaign contributions over the years. they're a $50 billion company. the "associated press" today says among the material the u.s. attorney is seeking with these subpoenas is the correspondence between the state and duke energy about that sweetheart proposed settlement. after the "ap" ran this blistering expose on that deal this past sunday, the next day on monday this week, the state asked their proposed settlement in that matter be put on hold at least for now. after those two environmental cases, the asheville one and the charlotte one, environmental groups tried to sue one more time. but when they tried to sue one more time, the state moved in and this time they blocked the environmental groups not only from suing about another coal ash pit in north carolina, they blocked them from suing about any of them. any of the 30 of these things that duke energy has across the state. well, now the state is going to have to answer for that to a federal grand jury. at least that's what it looks like in this surprise development today in snowy, snowy, snowy north carolina.

joining us now is michael gerard, professor of environmental law at columbia law school. thank you very much for being here. >> thank you. >> in north carolina, the u.s. attorney subpoenaed both the company involved in this spill and the state government as the appropriate regulator here. is that typical? how unusual is this for an environmental matter? in this is unusual. epa starts about 300 criminal investigations a year for environmental issues. only a fraction of them go directly to a federal grand jury, and only a small fraction of those involve subpoenas to government agencies in addition to the companies involved. >> in terms of the subpoena, itself, it's -- when i'm looking at that, i'm looking at the specific documents that the government is being ordered to turn over. it seems tightly focused to me on this spill. this spill was only a couple weeks ago. only happened on february 2nd. is that a very fast turnaround for an indictment? excuse me, not for an indictment, but for an act of furtherance like this today? >> they're moving very quickly

on this. it's not an indictment yet, but they're looking into it. >> on the matter of what direction this investigation is going, is there anything you can tell from looking at the subpoena in terms of what they're trying to discern, what they're trying to find out, and what federal laws might be at stake here? >> well, spills don't become criminal automatically. spills become criminal if there was serious misconduct before the spill or serious misconduct after the spill. the u.s. attorney may be investigating whether the company knew that there was a problem, that there was a pipe that might leak. it may be investigating whether the company made full disclosures afterwards. we just don't know. we can't tell from the subpoena. it's the clean water act that's involved. >> the context that i gave from that "ap" story is about clean water act lawsuits being brought against duke energy for coal ash pits contaminating groundwater. and the state using its prerogative as the state to step

in and essentially replace the plaintiffs in those cases. i understand that's not a very unusual phenomenon for the state to come in and take over an individual plaintiff or group as plaintiff in a case like that. what seems eyebrow raising about that reporting and about those proposed settlements is how gentle the proposed settlement is toward duke energy. am i reading that right? that's my sense of it. how do you see it? >> the clean water act says before citizens can bring a lawsuit against companies, they need to give 60 days' nose and the 60 days' notice gives the state a chance to step in. $100,000 is a relatively modest fine for an event of this sort. >> when the state decided this week, "ap" story came out on sunday, the state announced on monday that it was withdrawing its proposed settlement of those

first two cases. the $100,000 fine and basically nothing else for those two incidents. withdrawing a proposed settlement, asking the judge to no longer consider that to be the prosecution's offer, is that strange? >> that is very unusual. usually the state will think very carefully about what kind of penalty is appropriate and will stick to it. >> the suits that have been brought in north carolina have been effectively blocked, at least that's what the environmental groups would say by the state's actions here. have suits like that actually been effective at changing energy companies' behavior around coal ash? other states? >> not necessarily about coal ash, but this suit is common since the clean water act was first passed in 1972 and it's turned out to be an effective way to get companies to clean up. they know that they are vulnerable to certain kinds of lawsuits that makes them a lot more careful. >> very clarifying to have you here to talk about this. thank you, michael gerrard,

professor of environmental law at columbia law school. thanks for helping us understand this. i appreciate it. >> thank you. we have much more ahead including the "associated press" tonight getting their hands on five hours of audiotapes from emergency dispatchers during the manmade purpose-built traffic shutdown on the george washington bridge this past fall. they've reported what's in those tapes. it's amazing. stay with us. yeah. i heard about progressive's "name your price" tool? i guess you can tell them how much you want to pay and it gives you a range of options to choose from.

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snowed in today. thanks to the giant winter wallop that closed down schools and roads and government. and everything else. vice president biden today was unable to travel from washington to the meeting that he had been planning to attend in cambridge, maryland. that's where house democrats started their annual retreat yesterday. that's where they plot strategy and talk policy and get to spend time with each other outside of capitol hill. but even though vice president biden could not get to them, the house democrats meeting went ahead today, anyway, and from their retreat many the middle of the snowstorm, they lit the fuse and tossed this proverbial bomb into washington politics today. when javier becerra, member of house democratic leadership, announced that house democrats have this new plan. listen. >> we are prepared to submit a discharge position to begin the process of collecting the votes it will take in the house of representatives to pass a bill to increase the minimum wage to

$10.10 an hour for all americans. and we think that's not only the right thing to do, it's about time to do it. >> house democrats today announcing from their annual retreat that they're going to do a discharge petition to try to hike the min puimum wage. now, just yesterday president obama signed an executive order to hike the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour. that peexecutive order applies people o work for federal contractors. expected to affect a few hundred thousand people which is nice but it's not everyone. what the house democrats are talking about is raising the minimum wage for everyone to $10.10 an hour. that's a very popular idea. president obama first talked about it in last year's state of the union, talked about it again at this year's state of the yun you know. since then, democrats have put together legislation and a legislative strategiy on this issue. for that, it helps that it polls really well. democrats love the idea of raising the minimum wage.

a majority of independents like the idea, a majority of republicans like the idea. everybody likes the idea of raising the minimum wage except elected republicans. they will not allow it to come up for a vote. democrats aren't no control of the house so they can't control what comes up for a vote. the speaker has absolute power. except for this one weird tactic xavier becerra talked about today. the discharge position is weird enough and rare enough as a tactic that some people think it is a myth, but i know it is true because i have seen "legally blond 2." >> i just don't think i'm cut out for this. >> elle, we have a plan. two words for you. discharge petition. >> with a couple hundred signatures, we can spring the bill from committee straight to the house floor for a vote. >> i don't know. that sounds really complicated. >> you've come farther than any of us while maintaining your balance and sparkle. we never sparkle.

>> none of us ever thought one person could make a difference until you came along. >> well, if i remember correctly, isn't that, like, 218 signatures? >> it's not that hard. >> yeah. yeah. i guess i know women with more shoes than that. wait, that's me. >> elle, it's time to finish what you started. >> and i don't mean to spoil it in case you haven't seen it, but it works. it works for reese witherspoon in that movie. bruser's bill is the bill they do it on. i don't exactly remember what the bill is, but it's very popular and the speaker will not bring it up for a vote. reese witherspoon and her pals get around that problem of the speaker not bringing it up for a vote by having a majority of congress, 218 members of congress, sign a petition saying that they would like, please, to

have a chance to vote on that bill. that is a discharge petition and that is technically how you get around the speaker if you've got a popular bill that the speaker won't let you vote on. this is something that's almost never used. the last time it worked was more than ten years ago on an overhaul of campaign finance laws. but at least on paper this is an option. and house democrats said today that they're going to try to. they're going to start one. start a discharge petition on the minimum wage next week. and while that was being announced today from the house democratic retreat, this is what the front page of "the new york times'" website looked like all day long. featuring this article about democrats may be using a discharge petition for something else. new york senator charles humor telling "the new york times" today that the idea was circulating in democratic circles to also try a discharge petition on immigration reform. remember, immigration reform already passed the senate last summer. in the house, it would likely get every single democratic vote and potentially even more than

the 17 republicans who would be needed to pass it. if it did come up for a vote. but, again, like with bruser's bill and reese witherspoon, john boehner will not put it up for a vote. a discharge position on immigration, a discharge position on the minimum wage. i don't know why democrats floated both of these ideas in the same day today or if it was koorduated at all, but it did happen. the official republican line about this tactic is it will never happen, it will never work. specifically the comment from john boehner's spokesman today was, "this scheme has zero chance of success." he said by twirling his mustache. maybe that is true. democrats would need some republicans to go along with this on either of these two issues, and even on these very popular issues that would probably be a very, very, very tall order. but you know what? in this congress, weirder things have happened. democrats decided apparently they're going to start throwing hail marys like this. let's see what happens. watch this space. there's a saying around here,

you stand behind what you say. around here you don't make excuses. you make commitments. and when you can't live up to them, you own up, and make it right. some people think the kind of accountability that thrives on so many streets in this country has gone missing in the places where it's needed most. but i know you'll still find it when you know where to look. and the people who choose to pursue them,

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this decision is final. there is no opportunity for reconsideration of this decision on my part. i'm done. >> that is how a very decisive governor chris christie of new jersey just a few months into his first term decided to junk a huge long awaited public works project that involved thousands of jobs and that had already begun. nevertheless, the decision was done. he was moving on.

now, 3 1/2 years later, the reasoning behind that decision, his decision to halt everything after that project had already started, that's now getting a second look and all tied up, all of a sudden, in the current investigation into the george washington bridge lane closures. the plot thickens on that tonight. as the "associated press" gets ahold from audiotapes from emergency dispatchers during the bridge lane shutdown. what is on those tapes turns out is rather harrowing and we've got both of those stories coming up. stay with us. when you order the works you want everything. an expert ford technician knows your car's health depends on a full, complete checkup. the works. because when it comes to feeling safe behind the wheel, going the distance and saving at the pump you want it all. get our multi-point inspection with a a synthetic blend oil change, tire rotation, brake inspection and more for $29.95 or less. get a complete vehicle checkup. only at your ford dealer.

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if i blindfolded someone and took him at 2:00 in the morning into the airport in hong kong and said, where do you think you are? they say, this must be america, it's a modern airport. if i took you and blindfolded you and took you to laguardia airport, you think i must be in some third world country. i'm not joking. >> he's never joking. that was vice president joe biden not joking in philadelphia about the general problem of american infrastructure and the need to keep up internationally. but he did make his point by

talking about one specific decrepit part of american infrastructure that's called laguardia airport. laguardia is one of the three major airports that serves the new york city area and nothing against laguardia airport, i have many times enjoyed an auntie ann's pretzel. laguardia was built in 1939. that was the year laguardia officially opened. it's amazing laguardia's 75 years old, but it's also kind of amazing to realize that it was built at that time in our nation's history. i mean, 1939, right? great depression. and it's not just laguardia that was built then. laguardia opened in 1939. the triborough bridge built in 1936. the lincoln tunnel between new jersey and new york city, that was built in 1937. the famous george washington bridge of ft. lee and governor chris christie fame, the george washington bridge opened in 1931. and this is true across the

country, too. everything from the blue ridge parkway, to the elevated highway that connects miami and key west. to the grand coulee dam, to the hoover dam. all of these things, public works projects were built during the great depression. as were all of these corner stones of transportation, they were cornerstones then, definitely cornerstones now. it's not an accident all of that big picture, big thinking building happened we the country was in dire economic straits during the depression. when the economy went cabluey in 1929, the government decided to crank up works projects to keep people employed. private business couldn't keep americans at work anymore. the government did. they could and they did. one of the ways they did that helped us pull through those years was that they built these projects that became foundational to our growth as a country and to our economic capacity. it helped us keep it together through the depression and it

laid the groundwork for our economic growth thereafter. and, yes, it was 75 years ago and, yes, laguardia is looking mighty frouzsy these days and needs an upgrade as the vice president said. the point about investing in public works projects when the private sector is in bad shape, the idea of investing at that time both to put people at work during economic downturns and to build things that will be helpful later that will make transportation easier and business easier in the future, the salience of that idea did not die in the last great depressi depression. same idea made sense, made this particular kind of sense in the second american depression. that ended at the end of the bush presidency with the collapse of the financial sector. what you're looking at here are pictures from the groundbreaking in november 2009 for the largest public works project in the country at that time. in the midst of the economic collapse that we are in the middle of in 2009, that collapse in private sector employment,

this was the groundbreaking for the first major expansion in generations for the most densely populated part of the country. right now there is one, count them, one train tunnel into new york city from new jersey. one tunnel, two tracks. it's 100 years old. it's been at maxed out capacity for a very long time. that groundbreaking you saw footage of us to build a second tunnel. this is an artist's rendering. two decades or more of planning for a second train tunnel. and it was already under way. $600 million had already been spent starting the tunnel. when the year after this ground breaking happened a new governor was sworn in in new jersey. as a candidate, chris christie supported the tunnel project. he'd written letters to the federal government a new months into his first term supporting the tunnel project saying he wanted to go ahead with it.

in october in his first year in office, he changed his mind. >> when you become governor and start to be presented with the information i was presented with, you're presented with now a choice of a project that i do think is a worthwhile project, but that we simply cannot afford. >> the new governor argued that since he had become governor, the expected cost of the tunnel had ballooned by billions of dollars. he said new jersey was going to be paying a staggering 70% of the cost of the tunnel and new jersey just couldn't afford it. none of that was true. general accountability office later did a report on this issue. they found the estimates of the cost of the tunnel hadn't changed at all in the two years before governor krif christie announced he was killing it. governor christie said new jersey was paying 70% of the cost of the project. actually try 14.4%. chris christie sold this whole public line about why new jersey couldn't do the tunnel. remember, $600 million had

already been spent starting to build it, but the case he made for what was wrong with the project was not a true case. and then he kept the money. seriously. not only did he resist paying back any of new jersey's share of the money that had already been spent, he kept billions of dollars that had been earmarked for the tunnel and didn't spend them on the tunnel. he took them for new jersey to use on other stuff. new jersey has a really low gas tax, so he was out of money to do road and bridge repair work which he always said it would be fund with gas taxes. he just took billions of dollars of the tunnel money and spent that on the repair work instead and thus avoided having to raise gas taxes because he said he wouldn't. see, we don't need to use tax money. i've got this other money that i found over here. it was somebody else's money, but i'm going to take it. fiscal conservatism. the same kind of fiscal conservatism that led famous individuals in our history to

pay very low taxes for years until they didn't anymore. so the tunnel never got built, and all that money for the tunnel got swiped in a shell game. and that all happened in 2010, 2011, the gao report came out in 2012 about it. but now unexpectedly, it's all come back because the canceling of the tunnel, including the issue of the supposed costover runs that weren't costover runs at all, though issues have been included in this new subpoena which we obtained last night served on the port authority on monday of this week. the port authority is being asked to turn over documentation related to the shutdown of access lanes on to the george washington bridge. that much we knew. the port authority is also unexpectedly being asked for a ton of information on that tunnel. on the tunnel project that chris christie canceled after it was already started. and that is technically within the remit of the legislative committee that sent the

subpoenas out, but honestly nobody saw it coming. why is all this coming up now? what does it mean for chris christie and what does it mean for the bridge-gate investigation into him and his administration? stay with us. i know how to answer these questions. sly. hey, let me get it. ah, uh. i don't want you to pay for this. it's not happening, honey. let her get it. she got her safe driving bonus check from allstate last week. and it's her treat. what about a tip? oh, here's one... get an allstate agent. nice! [ female announcer ] switch today and get two safe driving bonus checks a year for driving safely. only from allstate. call an allstate agent and get a quote now. just another way allstate is changing car insurance for good. ladies... kitchen counselor. it's likely your detergent. cascade platinum's triple cleaning formula delivers brilliant shine finish gel can't beat. it even helps keep your dishwasher sparkling. cascade platinum is cascade's best. it even helps keep your dishwasher sparkling. imagine not beinge near this so often., imagine not getting out of bed again and again.

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in the new jersey bridge lane scandal, the "associated

press" says it obtained five hours of audiotapes from emergency dispatchers from during the time the access lanes on to the george washington bridge were closed last september and traffic was backed up into absolute gridlock throughout the town of ft. lee. the "ap" says as far as it can discern from the records and audio it has heard, the deliberately orchestrated traffic jam in ft. lee does not appear to have led to anyone's death, but, "the lack of life or death consequences reflects good fortune, not good planning. it would have been impossible for anyone responsible to have predicted that such exasperating traffic would not cause serious emergencies for police, firefighters and paramedics." i have to tell you, we're among many news organizations that have tried to get these recordings from emergency dispatchers and first responders. now that the "associated press" heard some of them, we're hoping they'll be released more widely. we can tell you about the "ap's" quotations from the tapes and

logs according to "ap" reporting. just before 9:00 a.m. september 9 th, monday the first day of the lane closures, one first responder says, "the george washington bridge is totally gridlocked." a few minutes later a 45-year-old man calls 911 to complain of chest pain. the dispatcher tells the man "we'll do our best" but has to note the emergency crew headed to the man, "is delayed in ft. lee." one of the mornings of the traffic jam, early morning 911 call from a nursing home about an elderly woman who fell and cut her face. dispatcher says at 6:20 a.m., "she's been waiting for over an hour." again, we're trying to obtain some of these recordings ourselves, but that's what "associated press" is reporting tonight. in addition to the new reporting tonight, there's the puzzle of the unexpected reference in the new subpoenas that have gone out this week to something basically nobody had been connecting to the bridge lane shutdown, the

older issue, the 2010 decision by christie to stop the largest public works project in the country which was already under way. he shut down construction in progress on a train tunnel into new york from new jersey in 2010. why did that stuff turn up in the subpoenas now and should we all have seen it coming? joining us now to try to sort this out is andrea bernstein, she's senior editor and investigative journalist for wnyc radio. sher last name is actually pronounced bernstein. didn't i promise you because i was practicing it, i'd get it wrong? i didn't do that to be funny. i'm just a failure. why do you think the tunnel stuff is in this round of subpoenas that otherwise seems to be about the bridge lane closures and the effort to cover up the bridge lane closures? >> well, there's a link and i think that the bridge-gate scandal has been very gripping because it's traffic, it's what you were just describing. it's people, perhaps, not getting emergency services. it's people not being able to get to work. but what we are learning increasingly is that this scheme

was part of an effort by governor christie to use the port authority of new york and new jersey, a giant bistate agency, really as an additional arm of this government and a political wing to solve his political problems. so what happened during the tunnel, and we've learned some of this since bridge-gate is the same individuals, david wildstein, bill baroni, the ones who directed the lane closures, were also orchestrating from very early on, from way before christie publicly said there are cost overruns here, they came in to the port authority literally two months after christie was elected and said, we basically need money, can we use this money, is it possible to direct it to the polaski skyway which is a road in new jersey coming out of the holland tunnel. and they needed to do that because they realized the

transportation trust fund, which has all the money to pay for roads, was empty and the only way to fix roads would have been to raise the gas tax which is something that christie did not want to do going into a potential republican election. >> thinking about, just thinking about the sort of short-term political incentives there, obviously not repairing the roads is politically disastrous. people call their local elected officials. they start getting mad. not being able to fix them without raising tax is a big problem, when the trust fund is empty because of his promise not to raise taxes. at the port authority, looking around for money to dump into that trust fund so you could avoid the potholes calls, would the tunnel money have been the biggest pot of money sitting there is. >> it was sloabsolutely. it was $3 billion that once it was taken out of the tunnel could be redirected to this and in fact, that is what happened. this is not something that the port authority has done. and this is something the same committee that is now looking

into bridge-gate had started to investigate. where did that money go, how were the decisions made? was it transparent? they were not getting answers. they were stonewalled. when it came to this round of f subpoenas, they say we want to understand this. because essentially, the trouble with bridgegate is is not just the mayor of ft. lee, but it's that the port authority was being used in a way that served governor christie perhaps more than it served to do what it's supposed to do, which is increase port activity in new york and new jersey. >> in terms of those political incentives might have led to this decision to not do the tunnel, if it was about getting chris christie's hands, new jersey's hands on that money, it really feels in a layman's sense, it feels wrong to take the tunnel money and apply it to something that's totally unrelated. is it legillegal? is there a question of whether

tho using those funds were illegal? >> i haven't heard anybody say it was a crime, but what is concerning to watchdogs is that this is not the way this money is supposed to be used. it's supposed to be used for the region. and that there's a concern that this agency became very politicized to benefit chris christie and new jersey in a way that it hadn't been prior to this. and that's -- we're talking billions of dollars. we're not just talking about little pots of money here and there being sfrinkled among friends. we're talking $2 billion going to a roadway. and that is what is of great concern. and that's why the committee is looking into this, because of that concern. >> and that concern about issues like this tunnel and all these other related issues is how they got subpoena authority in the first place, which is how we got the time for some traffic problems in ft. lee e-mail, which is how we got the bridge scandal, which is how we ended

up surprised when the subpoenas went back to the original story. >> it doesn't b smell right. and now there's a chance to perhaps get to the bottom of it. >> i've been following your online dispatches from the very beginning. it's really nice to have you here. >> it's wonderful to be here. >> we'll be right back. aflac. ♪ aflac, aflac, aflac! ♪ [ both sigh ] ♪ ugh! ♪ you told me he was good, dude. yeah he stinks at golf. but he was great at getting my claim paid fast. how fast? mine got paid in 4 days. wow. that's awesome. is that legal? big fat no. [ male announcer ] find out how fast aflac can pay you at aflac.com.

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that year with voters electing scott walker. 2010 was a huge year for republicans everywhere, but particularly in wisconsin. once they were all sworn into office in wisconsin, wisconsin republicans moved almost immediately to start taking apart union rights in that state. you might remember. it was immediately a hugely contentious issue. it sparked some of the largest protests that have ever happened in the state of wisconsin. people said it rendered the political fabric in that state the way they had never seen it before. it led even to the attempted recall of governor walker. just absolutely transformed that state. why was it so important to them to do that? why did wisconsin republicans go so far out of their way and cause that much drama in the state to do it? at the most basic level, i mean, one way to understand the difference between the two parties in this country is that

the republicans represent people who sign paychecks on the front and the democrats represent people who sign paychecks on the back. republicans are the party of business owners. businesses are anti-union because they want to have maximum leverage over their employees and pay them as little as the marngt allows. make republicans lining up against the unions is just ideologically motivated. democrats stand for the workers, republicans stand for the business owners. maybe that's all it is. but there's also this. in the 2010 election cycle, these were the heavyweight outside spenders across the country. these were the ten outside groups that spent the most money in that election cycle. most donated big time to the republican side. the karl rove american cross roads group, the u.s. chamber of mers, the american action network, just loads of outside money, much of it corporate funded that mostly favored republican candidates for office. six of the top ten outside spending groups spent in favor of republicans. the only major spenders on the

side of the democrats was all unions. and they only made up three of the top ten spending groups. if you were able to get rid of the unions and make union mem r membership almost impossible, you would essentially cripple the democrat's party ability to the compete in the high stakes fundraising part of the election process. yeah, it's ideological. but it also has a very, very crude partisan interest that in reality was crucial to understanding what happened in 2010 in the state of wisconsin. it was about republicans keeping control of that state for the long run if they could. and what we're seeing right now in the great state of tennessee is like the child's treasury cardboard picture book of how to see this dynamic at work in the starkest possible terms. in chattanooga, tennessee, right now there's an union drive under way at an auto plant. and practically every elected republican in the state of tennessee is doing black flips right now to try to stop that

plant from unionizing. to convince people who work at that plant to not vote for the union. but the republicans are not making that case on behalf of the factory owner. on behalf of volkswagen. because volkswagen kind of wants the union. they're in favor of it, basically. yesterday on the first day of that volkswagen plant's three-day election on whether to unionize, republican u.s. senator bob corker had a message for the workers there. he said hey, if you guys don't go for the union, i've been told there will be another car for you to build here at this plant. meaning if you do vote for the union, this plant might not get any more work from volkswagen. senator corker said that and then the company had to come out afterwards and say hey, actually, that's not true at all. and we're in a position to know because we're the company. bob corker, though, stands by it. whatever you guys say, don't unionize. this is sort of the full flowering of this issue on the right. volkswagen wants the union. it's republicans who don't. elected republicans are against

union rights. they're against workers organizing to better their live the. even when being against those things puts them against the businesses that are trying to unionize. the unions might then support democratic candidates. this is partisan. yes, it is business, but it is business as usual, which in tennessee and around the country means that it is partisan politics. that volkswagen union election should wrap up tomorrow. nobody knows how it's going to go, but the republicans on this are 100% understandable in partisan terms. now it's time for "the last word" with lawrence odom. have c o'donnell. have a great night.o'donnell. have a great night.o'donnell. have a great night.o'donnell. have a great night.o'donnell. have a great night.o'donnell. have a great night.o'donnell. have a great night. if you were surprised at what team christie did at the george washington bridge, then you don't know hhr