Holy Family School

Republican Gov. Chris Christie has fired New Jersey’s education chief after the U.S. Department of Education released video that caught the administration in a lie, The New Jersey Star-Ledger reports.

The state missed out on $400 million in federal education funds for submitting budgetary information for the wrong years, a move that Garden State Democrats have decried as a “stunning 400 million mistake.”

Christie claimed in a several-minute long rant in a press conference Wednesday that his education commissioner Bret Schundler provided the Race to the Top reviewing board with the missing information two weeks before a decision was made. Today, the Department of Education released video that shows no one from New Jersey’s contingent could provide the missing information when panel members repeatedly requested it. You can watch the video after the jump:

Christie called the Obama administration’s education team “mindless drones” and said they should have looked up the missing budget information up by themselves on the internet in his rant Wednesday, insisting that he would not fire anyone over the mistake. “We’re the victim,” he said.

“This is the stuff that drives people crazy about government, and crazy about Washington…Does anybody in Washington DC have a lick of common sense?” he asked.

Christie fired Schundler today over the incident.

“I was extremely disappointed to learn that the videotape of the Race to the Top presentation was not consistent with the information provided to me,” Christie said in a press release. “As a result, I ordered an end to Bret Schundler’s service as New Jersey’s Education Commissioner and as a member of my administration.”

Watch the video of Christie’s rant below:

(Photo: Chris Christie. AP)