Imagine if the hot new texting app Telegram had been widely used last September in America. Instead of incriminating emails allegedly showing Christie inner circle cronies committing misdeeds there could have been no trace of a conversation had Telegram been used.

The Bridgegate scandal with its emails mocking Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich may never have reached past the rumor stage had Chris Christie’s former head of the Port Authority David Wildstein and former Deputy Chief of Staff Anne Kelly used Telegram with its secret chats and self-destruct button. Plausible deniablity could have been sustained.

It leaves me to wonder if Chris Christie’s White House hopes would have been shining brighter today had Wildstein and Kelly used Telegram and the self destruct button instead.

Telegram is an encrypted cloud-based texting app and much more. Users can send files up to 1gb. Music, video, files, zipped documents can all be shared via group chats of up to 200 people or in “secret” chats. Secret chats are one-on-one chats that can’t be forwarded to other users.

The UI of the app is basically the same as Whatsapp with more encryption and more features. Telegram is also not owed by Facebook as Whatsapp is now.

Along with better encryption, Telegram has built in a Mission Impossible style self-destruct button where the creator of a secret chat can determine the time of destruction. It can be seconds, an hour, a day later.

The chat gets forever deleted on both Telegram users phones. Of course, the one fly in that ointment is screenshots. Nothing stops anyone from taking screen shots of their secret chats, but the self-destruct is a great feature that will have many using it for both good and nefarious purposes.

I remarked to a co-worker that the self-destruct button will become huge within Washington DC as well as by local politicans.

That brings me back to Christie’s inner circle.

They were brought down, and likely Christie’s chances in the 2016 presidential race were brought down, by a series of emails documenting the deliberate retribution against Mayor Sokolich for his non-support of Christie’s guaranteed landslide re-election in 2013 as Governor of New Jersey.

The email exchanges between Wildstein and Kelly rang of nastiness and a sense of entitlement stunning in scale. The callious disregard for the citizens of not only New Jersey, but everyone travelling on the interstate highway funneling into the George Washington Bridge was breathtaking in it’s arrogance. The comments made about the voters of Fort Lee showed a particulary petty side.

Wildstein and Kelly tripped themselves up the same way many do now on Twitter. They left written evidence. A chain of emails brought the bridge scandal into the open after months of denials. Both Wildstein and Kelly are gone and possibly facing federal charges. Chris Christie’s poll numbers have taken a hit (to be fair not just for Bridgegate).

But imagine if Chris Christie’s people had been using Telegram and the self-destruct timer instead.

You can bet Washington has paid attention.