Prepping for today’s BradCast on KPFK/Pacifica Radio, and may touch on this story a bit more then, or later as it continues to explode.
Either way, it’s one that, despite being largely ignored by the D.C. media originally, seemed to have legs when it quietly emerged a couple of months back.
Today’s blockbuster by Shawn Boburg in The Record, including tons of documents (emails and texts between the conspirators), almost ensures those legs. The question is now, as it has been from the jump, how NJ Gov. Chris Christie, a 2016 Presidential Republican fave, handles it. Oh, and if criminal charges — even federal criminal charges, since this ultimately affected interstate commerce — will emerge.
To date — seemingly forgetting the old “it’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” mantra — Christie’s handled it very poorly. He’s spent weeks denying any foreknowledge of the several-days closure of several lanes of the George Washington Bridge (the world’s busiest) last September as part of an apparent (now pretty much confirmed) political payback scheme against Democratic Fort Lee, NJ Mayor Mike Sokolich. His response, to date, has largely been to belittle questions and reporters and officials who’ve asked about it. He may have one more chance to save himself if he acts quickly now and fires a whole bunch of people, and comes clean on everything he knows. But if he knows more than he’s letting on so far (as is likely the case), he may be watching 2016 — where he coulda been a contender — go down the drain.
Here’s the lede of Boburg’s story. And no, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” — “Got it”, are not lines from The Sopranos. They are actually lines from this actual, now-documented, scandal…
The messages are replete with references and insults to Fort Lee’s mayor -who had failed to endorse Christie for re-election -and they chronicle how he tried to reach Port Authority officials in a vain effort to eliminate the paralyzing gridlock that overwhelmed his town of 35,000, which sits in the shadow of the world’s busiest bridge.
The documents obtained by The Record raise serious doubts about months of claims by the Christie administration that the September closures of local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were part of a traffic study initiated solely by the Port Authority. Instead, they show that one of the governor’s top aides was deeply involved in the decision to choke off the borough’s access to the bridge, and they provide the strongest indication yet that it was part of a politically-motivated vendetta-a notion that Christie has publicly denied.
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Bridget Anne Kelly, one of three deputies on Christie’s senior staff, wrote to David Wildstein, a top Christie executive at the Port Authority, on Aug. 13, about three weeks before the closures. Wildstein, the official who ordered the closures and who resigned last month amid the escalating scandal, wrote back: “Got it.”
Other top Christie associates mentioned in or copied on the email chain -all after the top New York appointee at the authority ordered the lanes reopened -include David Samson, the chairman of the agency; Bill Stepien, Christie’s re-election campaign manager and the newly appointed state GOP chairman; and Michael Drewniak, Christie’s spokesman.
Christie has previously said that no one in his staff or campaign was involved in the lane closings and he has dismissed questions about political retribution by joking that he moved the traffic cones himself.
Full story, documents, etc. at The Record…
UPDATE 1:44pm PT: Christie has released the following written statement this afternoon, , versus the combative on-camera statement he usually enjoys making (via reporter Brett LoGiurato):
Well, for a start, the behavior would seem to be very representative of his Administration, given the number of top level Administration staffers found to have participated in it, according to the emails and texts released by The Record today. That said, Christie has hit all the necessary points here “seen today for the first time” … “outraged and deeply saddened” … “I was misled” … “without my knowledge” etc.
Now he better start firing a lot of people, and hope that they don’t sing and/or his fingerprints aren’t on any more documents to come. These folks are all likely to be under subpoena and/or oath now in both legislative testimony and potentially depositions. Dems are, no doubt, already preparing 2016 ads with shots of the GWB and traffic jams, I suspect…
Lovin’ this. Hope the scandal sinks him. His deplorable record of providing so little help to Sandy victims, lack of transparency of same, and then touting his criminally ineffective efforts as heroic are unconscionable.
Brad,
Follow this up angle please: one of Christie’s NJ staff during this mess is now a top gun at GOP governors group.
This will be big hit against that governors group, since Christie is now the head honcho there. It’s more than just an NJ problem for Christie.
Thanks
More on Christie’s staffer in middle of this mess (from
From: http://www.northjersey.com/news....9EBpJeEF.dpuf
Brad: It would be of interest to know whether this violated any specific NJ state laws and, of course, what did Christie know and when did he know it.
I doubt that the answers will come from the office of the New Jersey Attorney General. New Jersey’s Acting Attorney General John Jay Hoffman is a Republican, who ascended to his position after the prior AG resigned on June 6, 2013 when Christie announced the prior AG would succeed the recently deceased U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg.
Democrats do hold a majority in both the state Assembly and Senate. Although Christie would scream politics, there really is no reason why those bodies should not fully investigate this matter, subpoena records and receive testimony.
He was misled and unaware, how presidential.
How does anyone get to redact all that stuff in those emails?
I think someone should be arrested and jailed for this. As for whether Christie, knew, sure he knew. Key aides either do what their boss tells them to, or they do what they know their boss would want them to do.
Ernie said @ 4:
Well, the state legislature is subpoenaing Wildstein and others, so they’ll be forced to testify under oath. Plus, this would seem to be an interstate commerce issue (the GWB links NY and NJ, and the Port Authority is run by appointees by each), so watch for the U.S. Congress to get involved and potentially start issuing subpoenas as well.
Brad @8 wrote:
They will be forced to appear and produce documents. Whether they testify will be dependent upon whether they invoke their 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination.
At the federal level, “U.S. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-WV), who chairs the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, yesterday launched his own inquiry into the Bridge-gate scandal. He has requested documents from the Port Authority and has sent a letter urging the U.S. Secretary of Transportation to conduct a full investigation,” according to NJSpotlight.
If federal laws were broken, that could well lead to a DoJ criminal investigation. Unlike legislative investigations, a criminal investigation carries with it the ability to negotiate a plea deal in which Christie’s aides will have an incentive to reveal what they know about his involvement.
Also, as revealed the L.A. Times (print version only), this little stunt put lives at risk.
In one of those calls, traffic delayed paramedics trying to get to an unconscious 91-year-old woman who later died at a hospital, according to EMS coordinator Phil Favia, who did not explicitly say whether her death was caused by the delay.
In a separate Los Angeles Times article, after noting that the “sound you’re hearing is the air going out of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s 2016 Republican presidential aspirations,” Robin Abcarian added:
ABC’s coverage of Christie’s decision to fire Bridget Ann Kelley suggests that many in the MSM are attempting to erect damage control on behalf of the presumed GOP 2016 Presidential frontrunner.
Was he a “no nonsense” governor when he deployed extraordinary secrecy to conceal his having jetted out to Colorado to serve as the keynote speaker at the Koch Brothers’ Summer Seminar?
The “caught flat-footed” presupposes that Christie had no inkling of what transpired even as the controversy had been swirling for months and his administration falsely claimed that the closure was occasioned by a traffic study.
To its credit, ABC did include this quote from DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz:
He can’t even keep his story straight in one press conference.
He opens with:
Well, let me tell you, everybody, I was blindsided yesterday morning. I was done with my workout yesterday morning and got a call from my communications director at about 8:50, 8:55, informing me of this story that had just broken on the Bergen Record website. That was the first time I knew about this. That was the first time I had seen any of the documents that were revealed yesterday.
During questions he says:
I’ve been governor but in previous leadership positions — you always wonder about what you could do differently. And believe me, John (sp), I haven’t had a lot of sleep the last two nights, and I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching. I’m sick over this.
So learned yesterday morning, but lost two nights sleep?
Governor, when did you really learn about the e-mails?
The left needs to continually bring this up at EVERY turn, press release and such even if it has nothing to do with the topic. Keep shoving out there just as the repugs did with their fake Benghazi story!
This metaphorically NEEDS to be the rope around his neck if that can be found.
Okay, Governor-I-want-to-get-to-the-botton-of-this, how about you start showing you mean that by unredacting those emails. I want to know the justification for the redactions. Is someone going to claim screwing the mayor and people of Fort Lee, New Jersey is a matter of national security?
Well, forgot comment #2 & #3 re: Stepien dropped like a hot potato from both positions.
While it was unscientific, it is interesting to note that, in an on line poll conducted by New Jersey 101.5, nearly 64% of respondents answered with a flat out “no” when asked if they believed “Christie when he said he had nothing to do with the Ft Lee lane closures.”
Another 16% said they were unsure and needed more info.
2016? Hell, Christie will be lucky if he is not recalled in 2015.
BTW, it is interesting that the right wing true believers, WingNutSteve and Davey Crockett, who have always been so quick to latch onto every bogus RW “scandal” (e.g Benghazi) have uttered nary a word on this “real” scandal.
From The New York Times:
However, Mr. Wildstein invoked hist Fifth Amendment privilege against questions by lawmakers
The Times also reported that the “United States Attorney in New Jersey will open an inquiry into the lane closures.”
Crazy.
I think Ishy Issa should investigate, lmao
Stay the course…pound him into sand…true conservatives are no fan of CC. You are doing us a favor! Thx