0 from the left i'm van jones. >> i'm cs.e. cupp. >> erin burnett starts right now. breaking news breaking his silence seconds away from the new jersey governor chris christie answering questions about the bridge scandal on the heels of new allegations. you see him arriving to take the questions. what did he know skm when did he know it. stocks tank. new details surrounding the death of actor philip seymour hoffman. out front we begin with the big breaking news. chris christie answering questions. the new jersey governor seconds away from sitting down. he will be taking questions on the bridge scandal. you see him there arriving momes ago. he will be answering the questions in the ask the governor program. this is really important because it is the first time we have heard from the new jersey governor since his two hour news conference last month where he repeatedly denied having anything to do with closing down lanes on the george washington bridge. tonight's comments are pivotal. former official says he has evidence that chris christie knew about the lane closures. cnn's new poll shows the governor's ratings dropped. he can begin speaking at any moment. you saw his arrival. so many cameras there. what is at stake tonight? >> well, i'll tell you what is at stake is this is the first time we hear from the governor. he is taking questions from jersey residents. this is a call in show. it will have national implications whatever he says. it comes the same day where subpoenas were due for many members of his team by democrats investigating him in the state house. it will be interesting to hear what is on jersey voters minds here and what kinds of questions are going to be asked. i think it is also important for folks to know jersey democrats asked members to call in. they say if you have questions now is your opportunity. it will be interesting to see if we are getting tough questions for the next hour for the governor. >> before you go and i know you are there monitoring it i think it is important the governor having to declare a state of emergency for snow. he had an out that probably would have been legitimate enough. every was sent home who worked fr state government at noon today. he diplomat take it which seems to me that he is going to come out swinging. >> he could have said the roads are too bad. this is a way for him to show doing something he normally does. this is part of his routine and he is able to say this is part of what being the governor is, i'm going to answer questions without causing a national media circus. he is able to do in a way that says i'm just doing business as usual. it certainly has much more implications and he knows that. >> thank you very much. this is on camera even though it is a radio show. we know when he sits in the chair and when the interview starts. that is the room he is going to be. we anticipate the news director ahead of time. we may get a direct question before. i want to bring in the new jersey assemblyman leading the investigation, really the point person on this, the commune kags director for the republican national committee and john avilan. great to have all of you with us. so you obviously have read the letter where the former head of the port authority says he has evidence showing that the governor knew about the lane closures during the time they were happening. you have been looking into this since october, october 2, i believe. he is entering the room. as soon as he starts answering questions we will dip in there. do you see a smoking gun here? >> not yet. i think it is important to look at the words used in the letter. mr. wildstein's attorney wrote this letter and it says that his client is aware of information that would contradict the governor. we don't know if it is a document or a conversation or somebody he knows that has material. so i think we need to see exactly what this information is before we make judgments that it does contradict the governor. i'll say this. i'm sure he is not going to write the letter without having some reasonable basis that his client has something to say. we don't know what it is he has to say. >> the governor has come out aggressively. not that he hasn't spoken yet. he said -- let me play the sound byte of what he said about david wildstein once more. >> i was actually the guy out there. i was in overalls and a hat. i was the guy working the cones out there. you really are not serious with that question. i don't get involved in traffic studies. so what i can tell you is people find it hard to believe. i don't know what else to say except to tell them that i had no knowledge of this of the planning, execution or anything about it. and then i first found out about it after it was over. >> and i want to get to the david wildstein question i had. let me ask you about that. he has said again and again and again if it turns out that there is a smoking gun and he is the guy looking into this. if there is he done? >> yeah. he put his credibility on the line. he is a former u.s. attorney. he is a pretty savvy politician. when he says he didn't know if he is lying he is done. >> he is taking a huge hit in the polls for this. republican choice for nominee back in the day. that was chris christie was number one. 24% of republicans were going to vote. now you can see mike huckabee is number one. he got trounced when he tried to run for president. >> mike huckabee did very well last time. he was a huge figure in the party. additionally that is a little unfair. anybody would take a hit in the polls if you had the media pile on that we have seen over this event. i think the "new york times" what they did last weekend was just unbelievably reprehensible up there with tabloid media. the notion that this scandal that he admits there is no evidence beyond the action of the governor and yet you see the throngs of media out there outside of a radio station is unreal. i cannot believe that there has been zero attention paid to any of the scandals in d.c. that democrats are involved in to a fraction of what has happened here. and as a guy who spent all of his time attacking republicans and can't find a motive and this is the media. >> it is live what you are seeing on the screen. the governor of new jersey taking questions talking about the super bowl. the second he starts talking about this issue which is of utmost importance to his candida candidacy. >> the governor's office is involved. there is an e-mail from bridgett kelly, deputy chief of staff that said let's close these lanes and cause traffic. that's not a rational government action. and she did something wrong. and his staff did something wrong. >> we are going to listen to the governor talking about david wildstein. >> your office put out a pretty strong response to the letter. >> yeah. >> what in particular do you dispute in wildstein's account at this point? >> well, listen. let's make one thing clear right off the bat which i think is the most important issue. and most important issue is, did i know anything about the plan to close these lanes? did i authorize it? did i know about it? did i approve it or have knowledge of it beforehand? the answer is still no. in fact, no one has ever accused me of that. that is the thing people of new jersey care about the most. now, when did i first know about the lane closures? the fact is that the first time this came into my consciousness as an issue was when the executive director of the port authority's e-mail about the incident was leaked to the meade dw media and reported on. >> who brought that to your attention? >> news accounts. >> you read them personally? >> i read it in the "wall street journal." and it was that day, then, when i read that that pat was saying i didn't know about this. it wasn't cleared through me, whatever else it said in the e-mail. that is when i asked my chief of staff and chief counsel would you look into this and see what is going on here. now, if prior to that -- i know prior to that there were press accounts about traffic issues. and if i either read that or someone said something to me about traffic issues up there it wouldn't have been meaningfulal to me because i didn't know there was a problem up there because i didn't know we had actually closed lanes before that. so my dispute is two fold. first, to make clear to everybody in the midst of all of the things that were reported over the weekend, that nobody has said that i knew anything about this before it happened. and i think that is the most important question. secondly, that when this first became an issue for me -- because let's face it, there is traffic every day at the george washington bridge, lincoln tunnel. i hear reports on the radio. we all hear about them. that is not something that rises to the gubernatorial level. when this first became clear to me that this was a potential issue was when the e-mail was put out. there were press accounts before whether i read any of those. if i did or heard anything from anybody about traffic it would not have been meaningful to me. now we are looking at it in the prism of everything we know since january 8. back then this was not a major issue. it became one to me in terms of finding out what was going on. >> today is the day subpoenas were due to be answered in the legislative investigation. we know some were granted extensions. have you seen documentation gathered to this point? >> i have not. the governor's office has started to produce things today. ewe started to produce documents today. we are working as hard as we can to get through. there was a lot of stuff asked for from us. i have not seen any documents. >> are you curious to know what is in some of those documents? >> here is what i'm curious -- we hired a law firm to come in and do the internal investigation. they are working hard and diligently. i can't wait for them to be finished so i can get the full story. >> this is the internal investigation of your staff to determine who may have known what. >> right. and to get into the situation. we are going to try to get as much information as we can by interviewing folks and reviewing documents. >> the unequivocal denial continues. you are the one who asked for the subpoenas. are they giving you everything you need and most important he says allt that matters was did he know before. >> is that all that matters? >> first of all the documents are due today. they are starting to come in. our office was closed by mid day. we don't know the total quantity of the responses. we will start reviewing the documents. it is not just simply a binary question of whether he knew before or not. it is clear somebody in his office with a high position, deputy chief of staff ordered the lanes closed and tried to cover it up and a lot of people were involved in it. it was more than did he know before the lane closures. >> to be clear obviously we know there was wrong doing on the part of the deputy chief of staff. investigation is about the search for the truth. the real question and the reason there is a partisan feeding frenzy is because chris christie had been the front runner for some polls. the key question for the investigation is what he knew and when he knew it. we know already that there was absolute wrong doing on the part of individuals in the christie administration and that affected people dramatically and negatively. the big focus is what the governor knew. >> the real focus is not only what the governor knew and who else in his staff knew. clearly there is something wrong where take the governor at his word that he has no idea about this. his staff orders lanes closed at the george washington bridge. they closed down fort lee for four days. >> let me ask you this because the reason this does matter is because of 2016. you look at what has happened because of the scandal to chris christie on a national level. in december that was pretty much a dead tie. 46-48% with the win going to chris christie. now 53% to 39% in favor of hillary clinton. that is an incredible swing. part of the problem isn't just whether he lied which as was said would be game over for the governor. it is the perception of the inner circle to think it is okay to do these things. can he get over the perception? >> absolutely. first of all, you have two noncandidates that they are testing. things go up and down. here is what i truly believe. i'm not here as a chris christie supporter and rnc is neutral in the 2016 race and he has not announced. that being said i think there is a sharp contrast should those two be the nominees. you have hillary clinton who had several scandals where she did her one song and dance and then we have gotten no further. she wouldn't get interviewed for the review board. chris christie who is out there taking more and more questions from the general public who stood for 119 minutes taking questions that the national and new jersey media could. it is basically a huge contrast in the type of leaders that they are. secondly, i think what you have seen from chris christie is that when the problems occurred and every administration, every organization is going to face some kind of problem or hurdle, hour a leader deals with them is important. what christie has done in terms of addressing the problem, firing people and taking corrective action goes to speak to the kind of leader he would be. >> i am going to hit pause here. the breaking news that the governor is starting to answer the question. we will see as he continues this. we are watching live coverage of that and talking about the latest toxicology report that we have with philip seymour hoffman. new details of what was found in his apartment and the growing heroin crisis in the united states. and a convicted killer escaped from prison taking a home hostage. we have the 911 call as the hostage tries to escape. 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