Tag: christie scandals
To Roger Stone, Bridgegate ‘Cover-Up’ Is Another Watergate — And He Would Know

To Roger Stone, Bridgegate ‘Cover-Up’ Is Another Watergate — And He Would Know

Very few Republican operatives knew the Nixon gang as intimately as Roger Stone, the legendary trickster whose back is adorned with an enormous Tricky Dick tattoo. And very few know New Jersey politics as well as Stone, who toiled among the party faithful in many campaigns since 1980, when he first ran the Garden State for Ronald Reagan.

So when he suggests that “Bridgegate” is Watergate – from the imponderable stupidity of the original crime to the profound peril of the ongoing cover-up – attention should be paid. Especially on the day when the U.S. Attorney’s office investigating the Port Authority’s decision to close three lanes of traffic on the world’s busiest bridge issues subpoenas to the Christie campaign and the New Jersey Republican Party.

Speaking with The National Memo on Thursday afternoon, Stone said: “This is about hubris, this is about an arrogance and right out of the dark side of Nixon’s playbook. It’s what ultimately brought Nixon down. There was no reason to break into the Watergate, there was no reason to spy on your enemies. His foreign policy was popular, the economy was good, and he was getting re-elected. Just like there was no reason to close these lanes on the George Washington Bridge – although just like with the break-in of Watergate, we still don’t really know why they did that.” He doesn’t buy the theory that the Christie aides were punishing the mayor of Fort Lee for refusing to endorse the Republican governor — and thinks it more likely that they were trying to harm State Senator Loretta Weinberg, a determined Christie antagonist whose district includes Fort Lee.

To Stone, the governor’s explanations rang false from the beginning – and reminded him of the verbal traps Nixon set for himself. He simply doesn’t believe that Bridget Kelly, the deputy chief of staff fired by Christie for “lying” to him, took the initiative to close the bridge lanes.

“The mentality that existed around Nixon – that Teutonic, buttoned-down, we-give-you-orders, you-carry-them-out – that mentality exists inside this administration…It just doesn’t seem plausible to me that this Kelly woman, who seems perfectly pleasant, stepped up to her computer and said, ‘Time for traffic problems in Fort Lee.’ Someone told her to do that.”  Stone says the dubious effort to blame her and a few others is the telltale sign of “a cover-up.”

Stone doesn’t know Kelly personally, but he has known David Wildstein, the Port Authority official who resigned after his role in the bridge closings was revealed, for 35 years.  “He’s the G. Gordon Liddy of this tale,” he said, referring to the maniacal Watergate conspirator who secretly concocted plots to firebomb and even murder Nixon’s political adversaries. “He’s the 100 percent soldier, the kamikaze. This guy has thrown so many bombs I’m surprised he’s got hands left.”

When TheWall Street Journal recently published a photo of Christie with Wildstein taken last September 11 – at the height of the lane-closing crisis – Stone was reminded of a classic Watergate question. The photo surfaced after Christie had claimed during his two-hour Bridgegate press conference that he didn’t know Wildstein well and hadn’t spoken with him for “a long time.”

“We’re asked to believe that they never discussed it,” noted Stone with undisguised sarcasm. “What this becomes is, ‘What did the governor know and when did he know it?’ That’s why I argue that [the scandal is] now a tar baby. First of all, there are now so many people with knowledge of what actually happened; some of them will be facing fines or prison and certainly public humiliation; and how do we know that none of them is going to implicate the governor, either through evidence or testimony? We don’t. And because of the governor being very precise about what he knew and when he knew it, anything that proves a contradiction means this guy is history. “

In an essay published on Wednesday by the Daily Caller – the right-wing website edited by Tucker Carlson where the dapper Stone serves as “fashion editor” – he laid out a series of comparisons between the scandals, casting various characters around Christie as members of Nixon’s Watergate crew:

Port Authority Chairman and former Attorney General David Samson is a gentleman of caution, sober judgment, and integrity. His role is unclear. Like Attorney General John Mitchell with Nixon, Samson has been a calming influence on Christie and his henchmen, one of the few “grey hairs” Christie listens to. Port Authority official and ex-State Senator Bill Baroni reminds me of [Nixon deputy campaign manager] Jeb Magruder: handsome, articulate, but ineffective. [Christie press secretary Michael] Drewniak plays the role of Nixon flack Ron Ziegler. GOP Chairman Bill Stepian is the scheming  [Nixon White House counsel] Chuck Colson. Before it’s over we will hear from all of them.
Just as Nixon fired his top aides H.R Haldeman and John Ehrlichman while insisting he knew nothing of the Watergate break-in or cover-up, Christie fired hatchetman David Wildstein and aide Bridget Ann Kelley [sic], laying the blame on them. While Wildstein (whom I have known since 1979, when he was Harold Stassen’s presidential campaign manager) initially pled the Fifth Amendment, he is now prepared, according to his lawyer, to testify fully in return for full immunity. Is Wildstein the G. Gordon Liddy of this drama … or is he John Dean? Then again maybe Kelley will beat Wildstein to the prosecutors. Maybe she’s John Dean.”


Stone enthusiastically supported Christie for governor in 2009 over Democratic incumbent Jon Corzine, but never saw him as a potential presidential contender. And while he preferred Christie to Corzine – “a crook” – Stone harbors no illusions about the governor’s swift rise to political prominence. “He was elevated to the U.S. Attorney’s office after his multi-millionaire brother [Todd Christie] gave a very, very substantial donation to the Republican National Committee.”

Now, he insists, the handicaps that Christie would face as a presidential hopeful are insurmountable. “Christie was the contender of the establishment party [wing]. This is where [billionaire GOP financier] Ken Langone is, this is where the Texas money is…the Rudy [Giuliani] wing. In many ways, Christie is Rudy without the charm,” he quipped.

But he also believes that Christie’s powerful backers are still oblivious to the looming disaster. “They’re going to spend a lot of money finding out that he can’t be saved.” He warns of a fundamental problem: “You can’t run a presidential campaign – and you can’t start one – on defense. ‘Chris Christie was campaigning in New Hampshire today when an email bomb dropped in Trenton that showed…BA BOOM.’ At the precise time when he needs to be getting a campaign together, he’s on defense.”

A Miami resident, Stone closely observed the New Jersey governor’s recent trip to south Florida for the Republican Governors Association, which Christie now chairs – and was not impressed.  “You saw in Florida a perfect example of what this would be like if Christie runs for president. He comes down here, he does three private fundraisers — and the addresses aren’t even disclosed to the media because they don’t even want them outside. There’s no press event with the two governors, and he slips in and out of the state, like a thief in the night. And [Florida Gov.] Rick Scott doesn’t even want to be seen with him, which tells a lot.”

Speaking of Florida, Stone is perhaps most notorious for his starring role in the “Brooks Brothers riot” during the 2000 presidential recount at the Miami-Dade election office. But after more than 40 years in the GOP, dating back to his chairmanship of the Young Republicans in 1979, he has walked away from his old comrades to join the Libertarian Party.

Still, having worked in no fewer than eight Republican presidential campaigns, he admits, “I still have my emotional Republican leanings.” He has very little regard for Rand Paul (“a guy who looks like he slept in his suit”) or Ted Cruz (“doing his best impression of Joseph R. McCarthy”) – which for him may make the current parody of America’s most infamous political scandal a very painful form of entertainment.

AFP Photo/Eric Thayer

Christie On Two Levels

Christie On Two Levels

WASHINGTON — It’s rare that you can look at your television screen and see not only what is happening but also what might have been. Chris Christie’s inaugural address on Tuesday was at once a masterful summary of the best thinking among Republicans about where their party needs to move and a compendium of proclamations that now carry unfortunate double meanings.

The New Jersey governor gave the speech he would have given had there been no George Washington Bridge scandal and no allegations about the use of Superstorm Sandy relief money to pressure a local official on a development project.

You can’t blame him for sticking to the old script. He now has to live his public life on two levels. And Christie’s speech made an important contribution: The tough former prosecutor denounced our dysfunctional, counterproductive approach to the drug problem.

“We will end the failed war on drugs that believes that incarceration is the cure of every ill caused by drug abuse,” Christie declared. “We will make drug treatment available to as many of our nonviolent offenders as we can, and we will partner with our citizens to create a society that understands this simple truth — every life has value and no life is disposable.”

Forget the scandals for a moment: Christie here is speaking for an expanding consensus that (forgive me) bridges left and right, liberals and libertarians, about the foolishness of filling our prisons with those who are the victims of their own crimes. Pushing this cause along could be Christie’s good deed.

But like everything else in the speech, this passage also had a political purpose. Offering a dash of libertarianism, which appeals to a key subset of the Republican primary electorate, with a soupçon of compassion is just what the consultant gods would order up. And that’s the sort of balance Christie struck throughout.

For the Tea Party ideologues, Christie dutifully mocked “the power of almighty government to fix any problem, real or imagined.” He fired a shot across the Hudson River, aimed perhaps at Bill de Blasio, New York City’s populist mayor. “Let’s be different than our neighbors,” he said. “Let’s put more money in the pockets of our middle class by not taking it out of their pockets in the first place.”

And even Rand Paul couldn’t do better than this: “I do not believe that New Jerseyans want a bigger, more expensive government that penalizes success and then gives the pittance left to a few in the name of income equity. What New Jerseyans want is an unfettered opportunity to succeed in the way that they define success.”

But the ideology came draped in the finery of anti-partisan, anti-gridlock fashion, finished off with a flourish to a resurgent, caring brand of conservatism.

“We have to be willing to play outside the red and blue boxes that the media pundits put us in,” said the man who may be demonizing the media in the coming months. “We have to be willing to reach out to others who look or speak differently than us; we have to be willing to personally reach out a helping hand to a neighbor or a friend suffering from drug addiction, depression or the dignity-stripping loss of a job.”

On a normal day, the once pro-Christie media would have gone into a swoon. But there’s a new normal for the man who once led the GOP presidential polls. Suddenly, anodyne pronouncements sounded strange.

When he said that “each vote cast is an act of faith and trust,” Christie reminded everyone that a breach of trust is precisely why he’s in trouble. When he praised his state for having “put aside political partisanship,” his listeners remembered that hardball is his calling card. When he criticized an “attitude that says I am always right and you are always wrong,” you wondered if he was describing what The New York Times called his “swagger and unapologetic belligerence.”

For there was other news on this inauguration day, including a Pew poll finding that 58 percent of those who’ve heard about the bridge story — including an astonishing 42 percent of Republicans — don’t believe Christie’s account. Ken Cuccinelli, the GOP’s defeated 2013 candidate for governor of Virginia, said that Christie should step down as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. And New Jersey’s legislators consolidated their investigation of him into one Senate-Assembly supercommittee.

Aside from all this, Christie had a great day. But for now, “all this” is what defines him.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. Twitter: @EJDionne

AFP Photo/Jeff Zelevansky

WATCH: Cuccinelli Calls On Christie To ‘Step Aside’

WATCH: Cuccinelli Calls On Christie To ‘Step Aside’

Former Virginia attorney general and failed gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli called on New Jersey governor Chris Christie to step down as chairman of the Republican Governors Association on Tuesday, joining a growing list of Republicans to kick the embattled governor while he’s down.

Cuccinelli went after Christie during a Tuesday appearance on CNN’s Crossfire:

“I think just from the perspective of setting aside this as an issue in other races, it makes sense for him to step aside” as RGA chairman, Cuccinelli said. “He does not serve the goals of that organization by staying as chairman.”

“And that doesn’t mean that any of the charges, political or otherwise, are substantive or not,” he added. “It doesn’t matter. Perception is reality.”

Cuccinelli is the highest-profile Republican to call on Christie to leave the powerful RGA chairmanship, through which he is responsible for helping Republican gubernatorial candidates get elected, and managing the organization’s over-$100 million budget. Several previous RGA chairs, such as Mitt Romney and Rick Perry, have used the position as a springboard to national campaigns (former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell was expected to do the same, until a corruption scandal — which also hung over Cuccinelli’s gubernatorial campaign —  tanked his political career).

There may be some sour grapes motivating Cuccinelli’s comments. In the wake of Cuccinelli’s surprisingly narrow loss to Democrat Terry McAuliffe, some on the right blamed Christie, who reportedly refused to campaign with Cuccinelli in the campaign’s closing days.

Additionally, unnamed advisors to Cuccinelli griped that the RGA — then chaired by Lousiana governor Bobby Jindal — did not spend enough to support the Virginia Republican, and misused what money it did commit to helping him win. Specifically, they were upset that the RGA continued allocating money to Christie, even though his re-election was virtually guaranteed.

“They just took their money and spent it in New Jersey, where we took a 17-point win to a 20-point win,” one of those advisors told the right-wing Daily Caller one day after the election. “I don’t know what their strategic thinking is. It just doesn’t make sense to me.”

Mike DuHaime, a senior advisor to Governor Christie, pushed back against Cuccinelli’s call for his boss to step down from the RGA, in comments to The Associated Press on Tuesday evening. He termed Cuccinelli’s comments “disappointing, given the RGA was by far the largest single donor to his losing campaign, giving more than $8 million — a significant portion of which was raised by Gov. Christie.”

Given what we’ve learned about what Christie’s team is willing to do to politicians whom they deem disloyal, perhaps Cuccinelli should watch his back as he ponders his own political future.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr