So granted, as Rob pointed out this morning, Corzine’s campaign tactics are pretty immature and underhanded (yet, frighteningly enough, effective all the same). But that shouldn’t obscure the growing body of evidence that Christie may have done some things that qualify him for the big house, not the state house. (That’s right; he’s been implicated in a corruption scandal so egregious that I am subjecting him to terrible puns.)

Yesterday, the New York Times reported there’s a good chance that Christie, an ex-US attorney, was getting some assistance from an ex-underling at the DoJ. What sort of assistance? The illegal kind. Such as:

In March, when Gov. Jon S. Corzine’s campaign requested public records about Mr. Christie’s tenure as prosecutor, Ms. [Michele] Brown interceded to oversee the responses to the inquiries, taking over for the staff member who normally oversaw Freedom of Information Act requests, according to federal law enforcement officials in Newark and Washington. The requested information included records about Mr. Christie’s travel and expenses, along with Ms. Brown’s travel records.

In mid-June, when F.B.I. agents and prosecutors gathered to set a date for the arrests of more than 40 targets of a corruption and money-laundering probe, Ms. Brown alone argued for the arrests to be made before July 1. She later told colleagues that she wanted to ensure that the arrests occurred before Mr. Christie’s permanent successor took office, according to three federal law enforcement officials briefed on the conversation, presumably so that Mr. Christie would be given credit for the roundup.

It doesn’t help that Brown and Christie already made some suspicious headlines together back in August, when it came out that Christie loaned Brown $46,000 in 2007, failed to disclose it on his tax returns, and then promoted her. Nor does it help that Brown resigned very shortly after the story broke.

Just to clarify the timeline: As the Times points out, Christie may have been illegally discussing the possibility of running for governor with then-Deputy White House Chief of Staff Karl Rove as early as 2006. The loan was made in 2007. In June 2008, Brown is improperly playing defense for Team Christie.

Flash forward to this week, and things don’t look so hot for Christie. Sure, as Rob noted, he’s neck and neck with Corzine, and it’s still his race to lose; but when one of the senators from the state in which you’re running for governor is calling for a federal investigation into you, that’s a slightly bigger political liability than a few pairs of plus-sized slacks.