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George Washington Bridge Probe Finds No Direct Tie To Christie

George Washington Bridge Probe Finds No Direct Tie To Christie

By Shawn Boburg, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.) (TNS)

HACKENSACK, N.J. _ A report summarizing a yearlong investigation by the legislative panel examining the George Washington Bridge lane closures found no evidence of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s involvement but concluded that two of his allies acted “with perceived immunity” when they gridlocked Fort Lee’s streets for apparently political reasons.

The 136-report, drawing off sworn testimony, private interviews and thousands of subpoenaed documents, also highlights the unsuccessful efforts by a now-shuttered arm of Christie’s office to court the Fort Lee mayor’s endorsement, finding that the closures were “motivated in part by political considerations.”

The report states there is “no conclusive evidence” as to whether the governor “was or was not” aware of the lane closures or involved in directing them. But it catalogs several unanswered questions surrounding the scandal and cites a lack of cooperation from several key players who invoked their Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.

Like the report commissioned by Christie’s office, it found that the “principal actors” in the scandal were former Port Authority executive David Wildstein and Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly. But it also found that Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni and former Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien share some responsibility because they were aware of the lane closures as they were happening and were aware of the public safety consequences.

Even if Kelly and Wildstein acted alone, the report states, “they did so with perceived impunity and in the environment, both in the (governor’s office) and the Port Authority, in which they felt empowered to act as they did, with little regard for public safety risks or the steadily mounting public frustrations.”

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Bridge-Scandal Panel Seeks Papers From Christie Campaign Strategist

Bridge-Scandal Panel Seeks Papers From Christie Campaign Strategist

By Melissa Hayes, The Record (Hackensack, NJ)

TRENTON, NJ — New Jersey lawmakers leading the inquiry into the George Washington Bridge scandal announced Wednesday that they’ve expanded their investigation to seek documents from the top strategist on Gov. Chris Christie’s campaign.

The move comes a day after Democrats questioned a former staffer in Christie’s office about the political nature of her team — which dealt with mayors and local officials courted by the campaign for endorsements — during an election year.

By demanding that Michael DuHaime provide documents, emails, text messages and his calendars, the committee is furthering its “bipartisan investigation into the lane closings and apparent abuse of power,” its co-leaders, state Sen. Loretta Weinberg and Assemblyman John Wisniewski, said in a statement.

The subpoena seeks information about conversations and meetings DuHaime had months after the lane closures with Christie; Bill Stepien, the governor’s campaign manager; and David Wildstein, the Port Authority appointee at the heart of the controversy.

Republicans said this latest request coupled with repeated questions at Tuesday’s hearing about endorsement efforts show the Democrats who control the committee are more concerned with investigating the governor’s re-election bid than reforming the Port Authority.

DuHaime’s attorney, Marc Mukasey, said his client has been cooperating with the committee and questioned whether Wisniewski was using the investigation to further his own political career.

“He was not involved in the decisions around the lane closures as has been well established at this point,” Mukasey said in the statement Wednesday. “That simple fact, plus the fact that Mike offered to cooperate without need of a subpoena, gives us great concern that this is really about politics and the chairman’s political future. That would be unfortunate to say the least.”

But Wisniewski disputed Mukasey’s allegation as “not true” and also defended the questioning of Christina Renna, who worked as director of the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs until she resigned in January. Renna worked for Bridget Anne Kelly, the deputy chief of staff Christie fired after learning she sent the email, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” to Wildstein.

Stepien was a deputy chief of staff to Christie before leaving to run the campaign; he supervised Kelly and Renna.

The lane closures were allegedly an act of retribution against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, for declining to endorse Christie.

Wisniewski said the subpoena seeks to answer questions raised in the summary of an interview DuHaime consented to with attorneys from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm Christie hired to lead an internal investigation into the lane closures.

Assemblywoman Holly Schepisi, one of four Republicans on the committee, raised concerns with both the subpoena and Tuesday’s hearing.

“This seems to be shifting from the stated purpose of implementing reforms at the Port Authority to more of an indictment of Governor Christie’s campaign,” said Schepisi (R-River Vale). “And if we’re truly focused on what the stated objective of the committee was, which was to understand what occurred at the Port Authority, to put forth appropriate reforms legislatively, we seem to have really gone off on a tangent of an indictment of (the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs) and the inner workings of Governor Christie’s campaign.”

Schepisi said Renna’s nearly five hours of testimony did not offer much new information and Democrats were asking her to speculate on things she did not have answers to.

But Wisniewski (D-Middlesex) said Renna provided critical details, including information about Kelly’s request that she delete an email related to the lane closures in December, months after it had been sent. Renna also testified that she did not think Kelly was the “architect” of the lane closures, a term Christie had used to describe her after he fired her for her involvement.

Kelly’s lawyer, Michael Critchley, disputed Tuesday that his client asked Renna to delete the email.

The issue is important because such a request could expose Kelly to criminal charges, two former federal prosecutors said.

“She’s trying to get rid of evidence that would suggest an ulterior motive to what had occurred,” said Robert Del Tufo, a Democrat who served both as U.S. attorney and attorney general in New Jersey. Del Tufo said it could lead to a charge of obstructing justice.

Matthew Axelrod, a lawyer in private practice who until this year was a top official in the Department of Justice and who advised U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder on white-collar criminal issues, agreed and said the timing of the deletion would determine whether the potential charge would come in federal court or state court. At the time Renna said the request was made, the only requests for documents to the governor’s office had come from the Assembly committee investigating the lane closures; federal subpoenas from the U.S. Attorney’s Office arrived later.

Photo:  Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr

Christie Aide Details Workings Of Office At Heart Of Bridge Scandal

Christie Aide Details Workings Of Office At Heart Of Bridge Scandal

By Melissa Hayes and John Reitmeyer, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)

TRENTON, N.J. — An aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie detailed the inner workings of the political outreach office at the heart of the George Washington Bridge scandal, telling lawmakers at a hearing Tuesday about a supervisor who seemed to take orders rather than make decisions, and taking responsibility for the order to cut communications with Fort Lee’s mayor.

Christina Renna was the first of Christie’s staff to testify directly before the legislative committee investigating the bridge scandal.

Her supervisor and onetime friend, Bridget Anne Kelly, is the now-fired Christie deputy chief of staff who appeared to order the lane closings at the bridge with her “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” email.

Renna, who worked in Christie’s Office of Intergovernmental Affairs and was Kelly’s former deputy, cast doubt on a core conclusion drawn by the lawyers hired by Christie to investigate the lane closures: that Kelly and David Wildstein, a former Port Authority official, alone ordered the lanes closed, apparently to punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, who would not endorse Christie’s bid for a second term.

During a daylong committee meeting Tuesday, lawmakers pressed Renna to explain how the Christie administration staffers in her office straddled the line between politics and good government; whether Kelly was the type of manager capable of carrying out the lane closures; and what, if any, knowledge Renna had of the episode.

In her responses, Renna said she played no role in the lane closures, but she acknowledged she ordered a staffer to stop communications with Sokolich. Renna did that, she said, after learning Kelly was not happy with the mayor.

Renna said there were some inaccuracies in the documents made public by the lawyers after they released their report — a report Christie has repeatedly held up as the scandal has developed into the biggest crisis of his political career, one that has threatened his presidential aspirations.

She resisted adopting the lawyers’ use of the phrase “lane realignment,” instead repeatedly saying “lane closures” during testimony that was at times emotional, but also at times lighthearted and easygoing.

Renna, seated next to her attorney throughout Tuesday’s hearing, was asked to explain why it was appropriate for staffers who worked under her in a government agency to seek political endorsements for Christie from mayors at the same time they were interacting with them for government purposes. She responded they did so only as volunteers on their own time.

She also was asked why she didn’t challenge orders from Kelly, even a request to delete an email demonstrating Kelly was apparently happy to hear the lane closures created problems in Fort Lee. Renna said she feared she could lose her job in the Christie administration.

The Democrats who control the panel said the testimony echoed what other witnesses have said, namely that they felt too intimidated to come forward and challenge the lane closures, which snarled traffic in Fort Lee for several days and tied up ambulances and other first responders.

Renna was the first witness to come before the committee in months, following a period of dormancy after two other potential witnesses, Kelly and former Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien, refused to turn over documents, citing their constitutional protection against self-incrimination. A Superior Court judge ultimately upheld their right to snub the panel.

It was during this period that the firm Christie hired to review the lane closures, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, released its report and notes from the interviews it conducted with 75 witnesses, including Christie himself. After the hearing ended Tuesday afternoon, the state released some bills the firm has submitted, totaling more than $1 million.

The legislative committee plans to meet again next week to take testimony from Christie press secretary Michael Drewniak, who reportedly also has cooperated with a federal criminal investigation of the lane closures.

At one point during Tuesday’s hearing, when asked directly if she thought Kelly orchestrated the lane closures, Renna stopped short of saying so, adding Kelly made few decisions on her own.

“I think that Bridget was not an architect, but I think she participated in whatever this was,” Renna said.

She agreed with a characterization offered by Assemblywoman Lou Greenwald, D-Camden, who said that in his experience Kelly was “a soldier who took orders and responded to those orders and would relay orders.”

And when asked directly by Assemblyman Paul Moriarty, D-Gloucester, if she believed Kelly and Wildstein acted alone, she responded: “I don’t know.”

Greenwald also focused on how staff in her office worked to secure endorsements for Christie’s campaign from the same public officials they assisted on a daily basis. He pointed to her decision to cut off communications with the Fort Lee mayor as proof that “politics took over.”

But Renna said that staff worked to secure endorsements only after government business hours, adding there were times “panicked” staff members would call her during business hours to say a mayor brought up politics.

Democrats also focused on Renna’s remark that the attorneys hired by Christie had been inaccurate in parts of the written summary of their interview with her.

Renna never said her office’s staff was given “mandatory directives” not to communicate with certain mayors, something the Gibson Dunn lawyers attributed to her, she said Tuesday. She said staff was told they didn’t have to be proactive about returning certain mayors’ phone calls, but that if a local official called with an issue, it would be addressed.

“ ‘Hands-off mayors’ would be people IGA would not be proactively conducting outreach with,” Renna said, referring to the Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. “We would not be picking up the phone and saying, ‘Mayor, how are you doing?’ ”

Renna told the lawmakers she would have to go through the interview memo line by line to determine if there were more inaccuracies, but later, when questioned by Sen. Kevin O’Toole, R-Cedar Grove, she was more dismissive of concerns about the memo.

“Largely, I think it’s accurate,” she said.

After the hearing, the Democrats said Renna provided important information that moved the investigation forward, even if she couldn’t provide definitive answers to the still-unanswered questions of exactly who ordered the lanes closed and why.

Before Renna began testifying, Republican members aired concerns that the committee wasn’t pressing more firmly to bring in Port Authority officials for testimony, saying that would go to the ultimate goal of reforming the bi-state transportation agency.

Later in the day, Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced the creation of a panel of Port Authority commissioners and advisers to both governors, to come up with ways to reform the agency.

Michael Critchley, the lawyer representing Kelly, took issue with parts of Renna’s testimony, including depictions of his client as “insecure” and “paranoid.”

“Anyone who thinks they are going to rewrite history and make Ms. Kelly a scapegoat is gravely mistaken,” he said.

AFP Photo/Jeff Zelevansky

Democratic Leaders Of Investigative Panel Mull Next Move In Bridge Probe

Democratic Leaders Of Investigative Panel Mull Next Move In Bridge Probe

By Michael Linhorst and Melissa Hayes, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.)

HACKENSACK, N.J.—Democrats leading the panel investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closures met with their lawyer Thursday to decide their next move, one day after a judge ruled that they could not compel two central players in the controversy to hand over documents.

Also weighing on their decision is concern over whether Democratic leaders will continue backing them as their investigation stretches into its fourth month. Stephen Sweeney, the Democratic Senate president, suggested this week — before the judge’s decision — that the committee should stop its investigation if the court ruled against it. Sweeney later tempered his statement, saying he supports the panel’s work.

Through a spokesman, Sweeney declined to comment Thursday about what direction he thinks the panel should take. The speaker of the Assembly, Democrat Vincent Prieto, did not respond to a request for comment.

Republicans on the committee were not involved in talks with the panel’s lawyer, Reid Schar, a former federal prosecutor from Illinois. And they also don’t have a preferred way forward.

But lawmakers are still holding out hope for some progress in their investigation: Friday is the deadline they imposed for documents from Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, the law firm that conducted an internal probe for the governor’s office. Legislators want whatever records the law firm has from the 70 interviews it completed as part of the investigation the Christie administration hired it to make into the lane closures.

Randy Mastro, the Gibson Dunn attorney who led the internal investigation, said in a statement this week that his firm is talking with the committee’s lawyer. On Thursday, however, a spokesman for Gov. Chris Christie declined to comment about what the law firm would do.

Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson’s decision, which was released Wednesday, allows Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor’s former deputy chief of staff, and Bill Stepien, Christie’s former campaign manager, to refuse to comply with the committee’s demands for documents.

After losing in court, there’s no obvious next step for the committee to take.

But the panel does have several options, according to state Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat,, and Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a Democrat, co-leaders of the committee.

The lawmakers could appeal the ruling. They could issue new subpoenas to Kelly and Stepien and try to craft those demands in a narrower way that might comply with Jacobson’s ruling. They could offer Kelly and Stepien immunity from prosecution — a power that, Wisniewski says, the committee maintains. They also could shift the focus of their investigation to look more broadly at the politicized inner workings of the governor’s office and the Port Authority.

“There are a variety of alternatives here which we have to consider very carefully in terms of the parallel U.S. attorney’s investigation, in terms of what’s the best legal avenue for us to get the answers that we need,” Weinberg said Thursday.

They also could pause and wait for Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney for New Jersey, to complete his investigation into the lane closures. A federal grand jury has issued several subpoenas, and it has heard testimony from at least one person: Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak.

But the wait-and-see approach appears to be out of the question for the Democrats.

“The decision was important, yes,” Wisniewski said of Jacobson’s ruling. “Not what we wanted, of course, but the work of the committee is continuing.”

While they’re deciding on which direction to take, they’re planning to ask additional witnesses to speak before the committee.

“We have been discussing and are in the final stages of extending invitations for individuals to come before the committee and testify in this matter,” said Wisniewski, who did not identify the people he plans to invite.

Complicating the committee leaders’ decision is the possibility of reduced support from Sweeney. The Senate president told The Star-Ledger’s editorial board Monday that if the judge ruled against the committee, it should stop its investigation and let the federal inquiry go forward. He later backed away from that statement, saying he supported the committee’s work.

Like the Democrats, Republicans on the committee haven’t decided on the next step they’d like to take.

“I’m still plowing through the opinion and want to hear from the other 11 members, and I’m waiting to hear from our counsel,” said GOP state Sen. Kevin O’Toole. Although the Republicans hadn’t spoken to Schar, the panel’s attorney, on Thursday, Weinberg and Wisniewski had at least one conversation with him about the court ruling.

If Gibson Dunn doesn’t turn over the documents the committee is seeking by Friday, the committee will subpoena them, Wisniewski said.

The committee is seeking whatever records Gibson Dunn has from interviews, including those with Christie, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and all members of the governor’s Cabinet. Wisniewski said he has “been advised” that the firm did not record or transcribe its interviews from the internal probe. Instead, it likely has memos written by the firm’s lawyers describing the interviews.

Committee member Amy Handlin, a Republican assemblywoman, said that whatever happens next, the panel needs to turn its focus toward implementing legislation that would change the Port Authority.

“I think we should shift priorities for the time being,” she said. “Right now we should push reforms to the top of the list.”

Handlin and other Republicans introduced a set of bills in February that they say would improve the Port Authority’s transparency and operations. But the proposals haven’t advanced in the months since.

Photo:  Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr