Tag: port authority
Feds Seek Travel Records Of Port Authority’s Ex-Chairman

Feds Seek Travel Records Of Port Authority’s Ex-Chairman

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

HACKENSACK, N.J. — Federal prosecutors have demanded that the Port Authority turn over records related to the personal travel of the agency’s former chairman, David Samson, as well as his relationship with Newark Liberty International Airport’s largest carrier, United Airlines, according to multiple sources, a development that opens yet another line of inquiry in what has become a sprawling criminal investigation.

The subpoena issued last month appears to be part of a probe into a flight route initiated by United while Samson was chairman of the transportation agency that operates the region’s airports. The route provided non-stop service between Newark and Columbia Metropolitan Airport in South Carolina — about 50 miles from a home where Samson often spent weekends with his wife. United halted the non-stop route on April 1 of last year, just three days after Samson resigned under a cloud.

Samson referred to the twice-a-week route — with a flight leaving Newark on Thursday evenings and another returning on Monday mornings — as “the chairman’s flight,” one source said. Federal aviation records show that during the 19 months United offered the non-stop service, the 50-seat planes that flew the route were, on average, only about half full.

United Airlines was in regular negotiations with the Port Authority and the Christie administration during Samson’s tenure over issues that included expansion of the airline’s service to Atlantic City and the extension of the PATH train to Newark Liberty.

Besides Samson’s personal travel records, the subpoena also demands information about votes Samson took while chairman and any communications he had with United and its former lobbyist, Jamie Fox, a close friend of Samson’s who has since become Gov. Chris Christie’s transportation commissioner.

United declined to comment beyond issuing a statement that it, too, had received a subpoena.

“United has received subpoenas for information and is cooperating,” the airline stated, adding that “United has no further comment.”

A spokeswoman for Samson didn’t provide comment. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey declined to comment, as did Christie’s office.

The revelations come the same week that Christie, who is considering a presidential run, is facing his own controversy over extravagant travel and who pays for it. On Monday, The New York Times reported that casino magnate Sheldon Adelson provided his private jet for the Christie family to go to Israel at a time when Adelson was opposing pending state legislation to legalize online gambling. Christie also accepted a $30,000 hotel stay on a trip to Jordan paid for by King Abdullah, who the Christie administration has said is a friend of the governor.

On Sunday, The Record reported that the non-profit group paying for three of Christie international trips in the past six months is backed with donations from companies that do business with the state and regularly lobby lawmakers, including Christie.

The federal investigation led by U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman began with the George Washington Bridge lane closings nearly 13 months ago. The office has remained circumspect about the special grand jury’s focus. But the subpoenas issued in the past month — including to Christie’s re-election campaign and now to the Port Authority for records related to United — suggest that it has widened far beyond the shut-down lanes that clogged Fort Lee’s local streets in September 2013.

Federal prosecutors had previously issued a subpoena for records related to votes Samson took, but this is the first public indication that prosecutors are focusing on his relationship with United.

Samson is a founding partner of a powerful law firm in West Orange, Wolff & Samson, which has earned millions doing legal work for numerous government agencies during Christie’s tenure. In 2013, the firm was counsel to five different state agencies.

Samson also spent many weekends in South Carolina.

Property records show a home in Aiken is under the name of Samson’s wife, Joanna Dunn Samson, a former deputy commissioner for the state Department of Environmental Protection. Her profile on the website of an animal advocacy non-profit group whose board she sits on says she moved to Aiken with her husband in 2006.

Samson served as the chairman of Christie’s transition team after he was first elected, and Christie appointed him to lead the Port Authority. He was elected chairman of the agency’s board of commissioners in February 2011 and resigned on March 28, 2014, amid controversy over whether he had any role in agency decisions that benefited his law firms’ clients. The non-stop flights between Newark and Columbia began on Sept. 6, 2012, according to Lynne Douglas, a spokeswoman for the Columbia Metropolitan Airport.

There was relatively little demand.

In November 2012, there were 16 nonstop flights between the two cities, representing 800 available seats. But only 244 of them were occupied, according to data from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

A spokeswoman for United declined to say why the service, operated on Embraer 145 jets by the airlines’ ExpressJet division, was initiated or canceled, citing the investigation.

State records show that state Transportation Commissioner Fox’s previous company, Fox & Schuffler, was paid $45,000 a year to lobby on behalf of United as far back as 2011. He represented Continental Airlines in 2010, before it merged with United, records show. Christie appointed the Democrat to be his transportation chief last September. Samson and Fox, close friends, served together under former Gov. James E. McGreevey. Samson was attorney general; Fox was also McGreevey’s transportation commissioner and later his chief of staff. Fox then went on to serve as the Port Authority’s deputy executive director.

It’s unclear what role Fox had in discussions between United and the Port Authority or the Christie administration. Lobbying records show that while Fox was a lobbyist, he regularly represented the airline before New Jersey’s Departments of Labor and Treasury regarding “general aviation” and wage issues. Fox is no longer a member of the boutique firm, which has changed its name, according to its website.

Fox did not return a call on Thursday.

Samson and Christie met with United representatives at least once while negotiating, the airline has previously said. They met with company CEO Jeff Smisek on Aug. 23, 2013, for example, to discuss the airline’s operations in Newark and Atlantic City, a spokeswoman for the airline said previously. A spokesman for the governor was asked whether administration officials or the governor were aware of the flight, or the allegation that Samson had referred to it as “the chairman’s flight.” He declined to comment.

In 2013, the Port Authority promised to lengthen the PATH rail line to Newark Liberty, an extension that would directly connect Manhattan with United’s hub in Newark. And United agreed to begin flights out of Atlantic City, a key part of Christie’s effort to revive the struggling resort town.

Samson’s law firm served as bond counsel for the South Jersey Transportation Authority, which handed over operational control of the Atlantic City Airport to the Port Authority.

United pulled out of Atlantic City in November and filed a complaint with the FAA the following month alleging that the Port Authority was improperly diverting airport fees to non-aviation projects.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Friend Offered Advice To Port Authority Executive As Bridge Scandal Raged

Friend Offered Advice To Port Authority Executive As Bridge Scandal Raged

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

HACKENSACK, N.J. — Two days after an email surfaced in January linking the George Washington Bridge lane closures to a deputy chief of staff in New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s office — and with questions swirling about who else was involved — a top Port Authority executive who had resigned amid the scandal received some advice in a private message from a longtime friend.

“Turn the (expletives) in,” read the Jan. 10 email to former Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni, Christie’s top appointed Port Authority employee. It was from a family friend and fellow Port Authority employee, Damon DiMarco, who was co-author of a self-help weight-loss book by Baroni.

It’s not clear that DiMarco, who was one of dozens of Port Authority patronage hires under the Christie administration, had any intimate knowledge of how the lane closures came about. Nor is it clear whom DiMarco is referring to with the colorful noun.

The email, a copy of which was obtained by The Record, was turned over to a legislative panel by Baroni in response to a subpoena for documents related to the lane closures.

It is one of thousands of documents that have given lawmakers an inside look at communications between key figures in the scandal. Some of the written communications have more than one possible meaning.

Neither Baroni nor DiMarco provided comment for this story.

The email chain contains messages between DiMarco and Baroni in the days after the now well-known email, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” written by Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, surfaced. The first of the visible messages in the chain was written hours after Christie held a two-hour news conference announcing he had fired Kelly and had cut ties with his two-time campaign manager, Bill Stepien.

“Still digesting what I’ve seen today. How are you holding up?” DiMarco wrote to Baroni on Jan. 9. “Here if you need me.”

Baroni, who had resigned weeks earlier, responded: “Its (sic) been a surreal day.”

A day later, on Jan. 10, Baroni wrote to DiMarco, “About to get brutal.” It’s not clear what Baroni was referring to, but that evening DiMarco responded with the advice to turn in people.

Before DiMarco and Baroni exchanged the emails, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey had announced it was initiating a review of the lane closures. The review has turned into a special grand jury investigation that is ongoing, a year after the lane closures began last Sept. 9.

DiMarco and Baroni went to high school together in Hamilton. Baroni recommended him for a part-time job as the Port Authority’s “employee publications editor.” He still works at the Port Authority.

The two also were co-authors of Baroni’s first-person account of overcoming obesity, “Fat Kid Got Fit.” DiMarco’s sister-in-law, Gretchen DiMarco, was also hired as Baroni’s executive assistant at the agency.

Baroni had told state lawmakers at a hearing in November that the lane closures were part of a traffic study, and he said that they were orchestrated by another Christie ally at the Port Authority, David Wildstein.

State Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat from Teaneck, said the DiMarco email raises more questions than it answers.

“Until we know who DiMarco is referring to, it could be anybody,” she said.

News of the email comes a day after new details emerged regarding Baroni’s reaction to the reversal of the lane closures on Sept. 13 of last year.

The lane closures, which gridlocked Fort Lee for parts of five days, were reversed by the Port Authority’s executive director, Pat Foye, a New York appointee who has said he only became aware of the operation after an inquiry by The Record four days after it began.

Foye and Baroni, the top executives from New York and New Jersey, met hours after Foye sent out an angry email reopening the lanes and calling the closures potentially illegal. In that meeting, Baroni told Foye the closures were “something Trenton wanted,” according to a report on The Wall Street Journal‘s website, which cited anonymous sources. It’s not clear who was meant by “Trenton,” the website reported.

Photo: Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr

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Phone Data Sought On Christie’s Aide

Phone Data Sought On Christie’s Aide

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

HACKENSACK, N.J. — Lawmakers investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closings are going after the telephone records of a top aide of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, employing a new tactic in an apparent challenge to the aide’s earlier sworn testimony.

Dozens of subpoenas issued by the state legislative panel thus far have been directed at current or former government employees or offices, ordering them to go through their own files and produce documents related to the scandal.

But the latest demand for records, issued on Monday, was sent to the telecommunications company AT&T, requesting a month of phone data — including text messages — sent or received by a Christie staffer who previously testified that she had erased a communication sent to the governor at a crucial time during the unfolding scandal.

AT&T’s response to the subpoena is likely to test the legislative panel’s legal authority to obtain otherwise private text messages from a third-party telecommunications company. Such information, when sought by law enforcement, sometimes requires a search warrant. AT&T representatives did not respond to a message left at their National Subpoena Compliance Center in Florida asking if they would comply with the demand for a month of text messages sent by Regina Egea, chief of Christie’s authorities unit.

Asked about any potential legal concerns, Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the panel’s Democratic co-chairman, said, “We have been guided by our counsel who advised us this was an appropriate way to seek information.”

The subpoena requests all Egea’s incoming and outgoing calls and text messages for December 2013.

On Dec. 9, Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye and two agency employees who manage the bridge testified that a Christie loyalist at the agency had ordered the lane closings. Egea told lawmakers during her hearing in July that she recalled sending Christie a text while watching the December testimony and commenting on how “professional” the Port Authority employees seemed, but she said she believed it had been erased.

The governor has said he doesn’t recall the text message.

Democratic leaders of the legislative panel said on Wednesday that the phone logs and messages, if turned over by the company, would confirm whether Egea was accurate in her description of the erased communication and whether there were other text messages.

“This is the one and only time the head of the authorities unit texted the governor about Bridgegate?” asked state Sen. Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat and co-chairwoman of the panel. “It just doesn’t sound very forthcoming.”

Wisniewski said that the committee had only received two e-mails involving the governor in response to a subpoena requesting all office communications related to the lane closings. The messages, already released, concerned a statement issued about former Port Authority executive David Wildstein’s resignation.

“For someone who quite visibly uses his hand-held device to communicate, it’s remarkable to have only those two communications,” Wisniewski said.

The governor’s office declined to comment on the subpoena.

State Sen. Kevin O’Toole, a Republican lawmaker on the panel who often defends the administration, also did not return a request for comment.

The subpoena signaled that the panel intends to continue to gather information despite its stalled efforts to call more witnesses.

Weinberg said that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Jersey as recently as a week and a half ago requested that the panel refrain from calling 13 people identified as potential witnesses.
Federal prosecutors are conducting their own grand jury investigation.

Wisniewski and Weinberg said the committee’s attorney has instead been conducting informational interviews with undisclosed people.

Weinberg said she would also like to issue a subpoena to the governor’s office, demanding a list kept by Christie staffers of 100 towns that were the focus of extensive outreach.

One Christie staffer, Matt Mowers, testified that the list was composed of “politically intriguing” towns, but documents turned over also show that staffers volunteering for Christie’s campaign tracked endorsements from some of the officials in towns on the list.

The governor’s office previously provided the list, referred to as the T-100 list, but all towns except Fort Lee were blacked out, she said. Democrats want to know if the Christie administration, during regular government work hours and using public resources, used the list to court political endorsements leading up to the voting last November, when the governor was reelected.

Photo: Joe Shlabotnik via Flickr

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Manhattan DA Probes Secret Settlement Between Port Authority, Seaport Company

Manhattan DA Probes Secret Settlement Between Port Authority, Seaport Company

By Shawn Boburg, The Record

HACKENSACK, N.J. — The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating a secret $25 million legal settlement between the Port Authority and a politically connected seaport company that excused $15 million in unpaid rent at the docks in Brooklyn and Newark and handed over $10 million of public money to cover other debts.

Prosecutors have sent the Port Authority a wide-ranging subpoena requesting information about its 2011 agreement with American Stevedoring Inc. and any related communications involving the offices of Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, according to two sources with knowledge of the subpoena.

The 2011 agreement, struck in exchange for the company agreeing to leave the Port Authority’s seaport terminals, was hashed out behind closed doors, and the negotiations were closely monitored by the offices of Nadler and Cuomo, a review of dozens of internal agency documents obtained by The Record shows. The Port Authority’s executive director at the time was Christopher Ward, who had been the chief executive at ASI before he was appointed to lead the agency in 2008 by New York Gov. David Paterson.

Even though the deal provided millions of dollars to the company, the Port Authority — which gets much of its money from tolls on the Hudson River crossings but also leases land at the region’s ports — never disclosed the pact to the public, as it does with other settlements.

The focus of the district attorney’s probe is unknown.

The bi-state agency had a lengthy, mostly bitter relationship with ASI, a port company that unloaded cargo from ships and had a history of not paying its rent. But the company and its colorful owner, Sabato “Sal” Catucci, worked hard to cultivate politicians, donating hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions over the years, including nearly $20,000 to Nadler, who has long fought to keep Brooklyn’s small, struggling seaport, a source of blue-collar jobs, running. That effort included pushing for the Port Authority to provide operating subsidies to ASI and its predecessors at the seaport.

The dispute between the Port Authority and ASI came to a boiling point in mid-2011, after ASI — already locked in a pair of legal actions against the agency over its lease — had gone nearly three years without paying rent.

To get ASI to leave Brooklyn’s Red Hook Container Terminal and put an end to the litigation, the Port Authority agreed not only to forgive the $15 million in unpaid rent — it also agreed to pay the company’s long list of debts owed to third parties. That included money ASI owed to other companies affiliated with Catucci or his family members, according to a copy of the settlement.

More than $931,000 went to a separate company owned by Catucci, who federal prosecutors have described in court papers as a mob associate — an allegation a company spokesman strongly denied. An additional $2.3 million went to a waterfront company run by Catucci’s brother, Ronald Catucci. And the Port Authority also agreed to cover ASI’s unpaid bills for utilities, insurance, city and state taxes — even $201 owed to a medical imaging company and $71 to FedEx.

At the time of the settlement, Ward’s top adviser at the agency led the negotiations and the push to get ASI off the waterfront, internal documents show, writing in one internal memo that ASI had, for two decades, survived “off of public subsidies and political pressure.”

The adviser, Drew Warshaw, noted in a memo to a Cuomo administration official that the relationship between ASI and the Port Authority “has been of particular interest to Congressman Nadler, who has been very vocal in his support of ASI.” Nadler had in the past, he wrote, worked to get ASI subsidies to cover unpaid rent.

The investigation is the latest in a series of inquiries by several law enforcement agencies amid the increasing scrutiny arising out of the George Washington Bridge lane-closure scandal. It is also one of the first signs that investigators are also looking at the Port Authority’s activities in New York.

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on the subpoena, which was issued in April, or on the focus of the probe.

In a statement issued by Nadler’s office, a spokesman acknowledged the congressman’s office played “a constructive role” in the negotiations at the request of the Port Authority and ASI, attending meetings with top Port Authority officials. It said the involvement was part of a 30-year record of strong advocacy for Brooklyn’s port. Investigators had not contacted Nadler’s office, the statement said.

Spokesmen for Christie and Cuomo did not respond to requests for comment.

Ward, the former Port Authority executive director who had previously worked for ASI, defended the deal Tuesday.

“It was time to end the failed ASI model,” he said, adding that “removing ASI at a reasonable cost will allow the city to realize enormous economic benefits of a re-imagined waterfront.”

A spokesman for ASI, meanwhile, said that the deal was “unilaterally” pushed by the Port Authority to force the company out of the ports and that neither ASI nor Catucci profited from the deal.

“This was a ridiculous deal that wasted toll payers’ money and served nothing more than vindictiveness and to stand in the way of economic development,” the spokesman said.

A company official who would only speak on condition that his name was not used because of the investigation said ASI had also received a subpoena from Manhattan prosecutors for documents related to the deal.

A Port Authority spokesman said the agency had not released the $25 million agreement to the public because of litigation but declined further comment. By contrast, the agency regularly reports legal settlements for as little as a few hundred dollars on its web site.

The dispute over ASI’s lease at Brooklyn’s last remaining seaport has been marked by rancor and recriminations and colored by competing visions for prime waterfront property that could serve as either a beachhead for a blue-collar job market in Brooklyn or as an opportunity for parkland and luxury housing.

Port Authority officials argued that ASI’s business model — using Port Authority-owned barges to move cargo unloaded in Brooklyn to New Jersey — was broken. In essence, the bulk of the cargo shipped to the Brooklyn port was then shipped again to Port Newark where it was unloaded once more and placed on trains or trucks. ASI has argued in several lawsuits that its leases, last renewed in 2008, were unfair and that the Port Authority has purposefully undermined its business.

But ASI has had strong political advocates outside the Port Authority who argued for keeping the Brooklyn operation open. In a 2011 memo to Cuomo’s office, Warshaw, the top adviser to Ward, who was then Port Authority executive director, said the company had gotten its rent forgiven twice in the past — both times at the request of former New York Gov. Paterson’s office. He also estimated that ASI had gotten $64 million in public subsidies over the previous 15 years, $54 million of that to keep the Port Authority-owned barges between Brooklyn and New Jersey running.

ASI was a prolific donor during roughly the same time frame.

Between 1997 and 2011, Sal Catucci, the company’s owner; his wife, Lorraine, and ASI gave more than $315,000 to political campaigns, according to an analysis of campaign federal, state and city campaign records. The biggest amount went to the New York State Conservative Party. The Catuccis and ASI donated nearly $30,000 after 2008, around the time the company stopped paying the Port Authority rent. There were no direct donations to either Christie or Cuomo. The most recent donation to Nadler was in 2006.

But when the Port Authority approached ASI about cutting ties in June 2011, it sent a copy of the proposed settlement agreement to Nadler’s chief of staff, Amy Rutkin, according to agency emails. The initial offer by the Port Authority was $2 million. An ASI executive, Matt Yates, wrote back, in an email also copied to officials in Nadler’s and Cuomo’s offices. He called the Port Authority offer “extremely low” and asked for $104.75 million.

The memos reviewed by The Record do not show that Nadler’s office or any other public officials pushed for additional money for Catucci, although they do show aides were extensively involved. Nadler’s office got daily updates of progress in the negotiations, and before the negotiations began, Port officials sought feedback from Nadler’s office on the parameters of the deal, the records show.

The congressman’s spokesman, Aaron Keyak, said that Nadler had been a “30-year champion for the Port” and had promoted previous operators at Red Hook.

“Over this time, there arose many threats to the port and many challenges to each of its operators and Rep. Nadler has acted throughout as a staunch port advocate,” he wrote. “When the Port Authority and ASI were negotiating a settlement agreement, Rep. Nadler’s office played a constructive role — at the request of both parties — to keep the discussions ongoing in order to ensure the seamless continuation of port operations.”

The documents do show that Ward, in at least one case, directed Port Authority staff in negotiations with his former employer, ASI, although it was in an effort to rein in the offer.

“I think our offer should be ‘we will consider all your payables and provide another 500 grand,'” he wrote in an internal email on June 27, 2011 before a negotiating session. “I would not go up more than another 350 over the coming days.”

The final agreement, providing $25 million to ASI, was approved unanimously by Port Authority commissioners, including chairman and Christie appointee David Samson, in a July 2011 meeting behind closed doors. It included $400,000 cash to ASI and an additional $9.8 million to pay off the company’s accumulated debt.

According to the settlement, $931,000 went to pay American Chassis Pool Systems, a Catucci-owned company that state records show closed down at the end of 2011. The Port Authority paid $1 million that was owed to New York State and $77,000 in unpaid fees to the Waterfront Commission, which was created in the 1950s to root out organized crime on the waterfront.

And nearly $350,000 was earmarked for ASI’s attorneys at law firm Weiss & Hiller.

There were small bills, too: $770 to a heating and cooling company, $48 to the Brooklyn postmaster, $198 to UPS and $929 for an office supply store.

In the settlement, ASI and the Port Authority agreed to drop their lawsuits against each other – in the Port Authority’s case, an effort to evict the firm for not paying its rent, and in ASI’s case, a complaint alleging the Port Authority unfairly charged the company more than other port tenants.

ASI had three leases that the Port Authority officials estimated in internal documents should have brought about $5 million in annual revenue to the agency.

An ASI spokesman said the settlement was “plainly a ridiculous and bad deal all around” and claimed that the company was forced out of the port against its will. The company has filed a lawsuit against a dockworkers union — International Longshoremen’s Association — since then, alleging that it was also threatened and pressured by the longshoremen.

The ASI spokesman also disputed 2007 court documents in which federal prosecutors refer to Catucci, who has not been charged with a crime, as either an associate of the Gambino or Genovese crime families.

“ASI has a multi-decade track record of fighting organized crime, including litigation fighting the ILA (International Longshoremen’s Association), and any statements to the contrary are ridiculous,” the spokesman said.

State records show Catucci’s brother, Ronald, is a vice president at American Maritime Services Inc. Ronald Catucci, however, was also listed in campaign finance documents as ASI’s treasurer as recently as 2005.

The Port Authority agreed to give ASI $2.3 million to pay American Maritime Services for labor provided to ASI, according to the agreement.

AMS, based in Woodbridge, has had its own allegations of mob influence.

In a 2012 agreement with the Waterfront Commission, and signed by Ronald Catucci, AMS agreed to hire an independent monitor to root out corruption and mob influence in the firm, alleged to have put a known organized crime figure on the payroll. And in June, one of its workers, Francis Mangano Jr., was banned from working on the docks after an investigation by the Waterfront Commission found he had ties with the associates of the Bonanno and Colombo crime families.

Neither Catucci has ever been charged with a crime.

Meanwhile, back in Brooklyn, a new tenant, a beer distributor, took over the Red Hook facility.

But the Port Authority is still losing money. In late 2011, when it made the transition, the Port Authority estimated it would lose about $9 million in the first year under the new lease, including new subsidies to keep the Brooklyn port running.

Photo via Wikimedia Commons