Megyn Kelly threw a few real questions into her interview with Gov. Chris Christie last night. But she didn’t need to put on a “Vote Republican!” button for viewers to easily see which side she was on. Especially considering that she failed to ask Christie the single most important question surrounding his Bridgegate scandal – yet spent a considerable amount of time suggesting that President Obama is much guiltier.

Kelly’s Christie cheerleading began right in her introduction when she announced that it “looks and sounds like a comeback” for him. I don’t know whether the pre-recorded interview took place before or after Christie’s press conference that same day. But the interview was definitely after the release of an internal investigation, by a lawyer hired by Christie, that has been harshly criticized.

Earlier that same day, Fox’s own Chris Wallace spoke about the report (and the press conference) rather harshly:

(Christie) can say all he wants about how this was an exhaustive investigation (but) it was an internal investigation. It was his lawyers… They were hired by his office and while he may say that this clears him, the fact is that, as he pointed out several times, the state legislature is investigating it, the federal prosecutor, the U.S. Attorney, is investigating it and I think a lot of people are gonna say, “Hey, until we hear what these independent investigations have to find – and especially until we find out what the two key figures in this, that you mentioned haven’t talked… the two people most involved in this, and until they say whether they talked to Christie or not, whether he had told them or not, I think a lot of people are gonna say, “I’m not convinced yet.”

Megyn Kelly acted as though Christie has been completely exonerated

Kelly announced to Christie that the report “exonerates you completely.” Then she asked, “Do you feel exonerated?” She didn’t bring up those pesky other two, less friendly investigations.

Just as with her prior interview with the lawyer who ran the internal investigation, Kelly failed to ask the key question about the Bridgegate scandal: When did Christie find out about the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge? However, she did ask a few decent questions, such as whether the “approach” of a governor “infiltrates his office and the way his staff believe they can and should behave.”

Christie’s answer? “Sure. I think that’s absolutely true.” But he went on to say that his reputation, presumably as a bully, comes from a “small sliver of a couple of YouTube moments.”

That is simply not true. There are serious allegations of Christie’s bullying, abusive behavior out there: there’s the Mayor of Hoboken, who has alleged Christie threatened to withhold Hurricane Sandy relief funds unless she supported a development project he favored. Olympian Carl Lewis, who once decided to run against Christie, has also accused him of intimidation tactics.

The New York Times notes other allegations of retributive behavior: “a former governor who was stripped of police security at public events; a Rutgers professor who lost state financing for cherished programs; a state senator whose candidate for a judgeship suddenly stalled; another senator who was disinvited from an event with the governor in his own district.”

But Kelly let Christie’s “couple of YouTube moments” comment go unchallenged. Even though he claimed his handling of Hurricane Sandy was exemplary.

Kelly deliberately suggested Obama is the real culprit of the Bridgegate scandal

At about five minutes into the interview, Kelly tried to make Bridgegate about Obama:

How does this relate in your mind to what we’ve seen with President Obama – because you said you didn’t know about Bridgegate, he said he didn’t know about the IRS targeting conservatives, he didn’t know about Fast and Furious, he didn’t know about the DOJ targeting reporters, he didn’t know that if you like your plan, you can keep it was untrue and many of our viewers and the voters out there have said, ‘A, I don’t believe that but B, if it’s true, you have a responsibility to know.’” Your thoughts on that.

Christie didn’t want to go there. He replied, “Whether you’re president of the United States or whether you’re governor of a large state like I am, it’s a fiction to believe we know everything that’s going on. …But secondly, I think it’s how you respond after you find out something is being done in your name that you believe is inconsistent with your values.”

So Kelly pressed Christie again to attack Obama as a worse wrongdoer. “Do you see a contrast between how you handled your situation and the president handled those?” she asked.

Christie answered, “I don’t know the particular circumstances of the president’s relationship with the people that you talk about. But I think you’re judged much more by the American people and for me by the people of New Jersey by how you react to those circumstances, and whether you’re decisive and direct or whether you look like you can’t make a decision.” It was easy to guess who was who.

Part Two of the Christie interview is scheduled to air Monday night. There is no reason to think Kelly will be any less partisan then.