Former Republican Senate candidate and tea party darling Christine O’Donnell called for the imprisonment, “not just symbolic firings,” of former staffers involved in New Jersey Gov. Christ Christie’s (R) 2013 Bridgegate scandal during an interview with ABC News on Friday.
After teasing Christie over Twitter on Wednesday for being late to the 41st annual Conservative Political Action Conference “because he's stuck on a bridge,” O’Donnell, who ran in Delaware, expanded on the jab during Thursday’s interview.
“It was fun … what delicious irony because whether its Bridgegate or the IRS scandal, when a government official has access to such power and they abuse it, there need to be very real consequences, not just firings, whether it's Lois Lerner or the people who caused the backup at the bridge,” O’Donnell said.
Christie fired his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, and his campaign manager, Bill Stepien, shortly after evidence of the George Washington Bridge's politically motivated traffic jams became public on Jan. 8.
“People that abuse the trust that people put in you as a government official, I think there should be jail time, not just symbolic firings,” O’Donnell said.
The conservative activist, who was recently signed to pen a regular column in the Washington Times, did not rule out another run for office, but noted that “running for office, I heard Mike Huckabee say, is just like putting your face in a fan while it's turned on.”
With the support of the tea party, O'Donnell beat out former nine-term Rep. Michael Castle (R-Del.) as the 2010 Republican primary candidate for the Senate seat vacated by Vice President Joe Biden. She ultimately lost the special election to Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) with only 40 percent of votes.
O’Donnell, herself embroiled in an ongoing IRS case for previous allegations of tax evasion, will also be speaking at "Obama's IRS: Political Arm of the Left?" panel at CPAC on Friday.
(h/t ABC News)
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