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Article Index"The key sentences read: 'Our application did not include documentation in Section (F)(1)(i) establishing that New Jersey increased its spending on education as a percentage of total state revenues from 36.9% in 2008 to 39.6% in 2009 (a fact that was demonstrated in New Jersey's Round 1 application). In addition, it was confirmed verbally during our August 11 presentation that New Jersey satisfied this criteria.'
On Thursday (Aug. 26) afternoon, the U.S. DOE released the videotape of Schundler and his aides meeting with officials in Washington.
"It didn't surprise me,'' Schundler said. "The governor, in the midst of his attack on the Obama administration, said things that were false and now the Obama administration was acting to embarrass the governor about it. I came out from an early evening meeting and saw I had an email from Rich Bagger requesting that I call him immediately. I called and he said the governor was demanding my immediate resignation for having "misled" him about the grant interview.
"I responded to Rich that both he and the governor knew that was not true,'' Schundler said. "Rich didn't respond to that point -- which of course he wouldn't. Rich then told me the governor had left for a radio call-in program and was not available to discuss it, but that it seemed his mind was made up. He said he would call me later that evening, after the radio program was over, to talk more -- which he did not. Finally, he said that in the morning I should report to the governor's office to discuss "transition issues."
Schundler said that from his home that evening, he forwarded Christie a string of emails detailing how his aides and consultants searched for the application mistake.
"... Now I was being fired, and I figured part of the reason had to be the governor's belief DOE made the error, and I was responsible as commissioner,'' Schundler said. "I decided to let the governor know that the error may well have occurred during a fact-checking process that involved two departments - not just the (state) DOE - and sent him the email string we had discovered.
"I learned yesterday (Tuesday) that one of our consultants finally found in her boxes of papers what we'd been looking for: the answer to the question of how the missing information got dropped from the application,'' Schundler said. "It turns out that I had crossed out the key words while hand-editing text. I haven't seen the page with my hand edits, and I don't know why my error wasn't caught, but I now feel worse about things than ever. My stupid error contributed to New Jersey not winning $400 million in federal grant funds. If the governor had given us time to discover this, and then fired me for the error, I would still feel devastated, but I would not feel defamed.''
Schundler said he told Christie and Bagger "... the truth: I did not give the missing budget numbers to the U.S. Department of Education grant reviewers. I spelled this out in my Tuesday (Aug. 24) emails to Maria Comella. I said it repeatedly during my Tuesday (Aug. 24) phone conversation with Maria and Rich Bagger.
I stressed it during my Wednesday (Aug. 25) morning phone conversation with the governor -- with Rich Bagger on the speakerphone -- who already knew I had not given any numbers to the grant reviewers. And I refused to sign a letter to Secretary Duncan that misrepresented the fact. We're not talking about a situation where there might be a misunderstanding by the governor and his team. We're talking about a point I made again and again, just last week.
Schundler declared that telling the truth is important to him.
"And the accusation that I misled the governor to hide a poor interview performance is utter nonsense,'' Schundler said. "I handled the reviewer's question appropriately and my team and I earned New Jersey a larger point gain from our interview performance than any other state achieved in either of the two rounds of this competition. Finally, I knew that the interview was being videotaped. If you don't know whether you should believe in my honesty or our effective presentation performance, at least trust in my common sense: There is no way I would lie to the governor about having provided the ‘08 budget numbers, knowing that such a lie would be brought to light.
"I have thought about the possibility that beyond my being a scapegoat for his misstatement, the governor might be angry at me for not telling him the interview was videotaped,'' Schundler said. "In my defense, I never believed I needed to say, ‘Governor, stick to the truth, there's a videotape.' Perhaps I should have.
"After all, I may have misremembered by a few minutes precisely when, a few weeks earlier, I had made a comment about New Jersey meeting the grant's spending criteria,'' Schundler said. "But it's hard to imagine how, within a matter of minutes, the governor could forget a point I made to him emphatically.
"Perhaps he just accidentally misspoke when he said I provided the missing numbers. You know ... gotten on a roll and said the wrong thing,'' Schundler said. "But then he would have had to accidentally misspeak again, just a few minutes later, when he repeated the same falsehood. The accident thesis seems unlikely ... but you draw your own conclusions. The only thing I'm sure of is that the governor knew I didn't provide numbers at the grant interview.
"I told Governor Christie and his staff that I did not provide the numbers,'' Schundler said. "The documentary evidence backs me up. Reporters should ask the governor a direct question: ‘Is it true Bret Schundler told you that he did not provide the numbers?' If he says, ‘No,' ask him for his evidence. If he says, ‘Yes,' ask him why he made the claim that I provided numbers -- remember, twice -- during his press conference.
"I mentioned that the governor told me he likes being on offense, not defense,'' Schundler said. "As a former prosecutor, that it is not surprising to me. Prosecutors construct their argument and press it. In this instance, the argument the governor wanted to make at his press conference was that New Jersey lost out on $400 million because the Obama administration has stupid grant competition rules. It would have supported the governor's argument if I had, in truth, given the reviewers the missing information, and they just refused to give us points. But that is not what happened. And the governor already knew that Wednesday (Aug. 26) morning.
"The governor ignored my correction of his mental script,'' Schundler said. "Whether accidentally or on purpose, he went ahead and said what he had wanted to say from the beginning. He shouldn't have. Good prosecutors don't support their argument with claims they know are false. And they don't charge people that they know are innocent.''
