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Christie Comments On Bridge Scandal Case At Mississippi Campaign Event

Christie Comments On Bridge Scandal Case At Mississippi Campaign Event

By Melissa Hayes, The Record (Hackensack, N.J.) (TNS)

TRENTON, N.J. — New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R-NJ) told reporters in Mississippi that he’s now been cleared in the George Washington Bridge lane closure scandal by three different investigations and if defense attorneys want to subpoena him, they can.

Christie took questions from reporters after attending a campaign event for Mississippi Governor Phil Bryant (R-MI) at a restaurant in Flowood, Miss., Tuesday afternoon.

Christie said he’s now been cleared by a legislative committee that was headed by Democrats, an internal investigation conducted by an attorney he hired, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. He said all three came to the same conclusions “that I had nothing to do with this.”

“All you can do is tell the truth, and that’s what I’ve done and what I’ll continue to do,” he said, appearing on a video stream of the event, which aired live on social media.

The event marked the first time Christie has spoken to reporters since his former deputy chief of staff and an appointee at the Port Authority were indicted Friday on charges they conspired to close the lanes in an act of political retribution against the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, who declined to endorse Christie’s re-election bid in 2013. The indictments came as another Christie ally at the Port Authority pleaded guilty to two charges related to the lane closures as part of a plea deal for cooperating with federal authorities.

Christie, who is considering a presidential bid, is attending events in Mississippi and Louisiana Tuesday. He campaigned for Bryant in 2011 and Christie made an appearance for him last year amid a busy schedule of events as chairman of the Republican Governors Association.

Christie was asked whether the event also served as a campaign stop for his potential presidential candidacy.

“Oh heck, if it was a campaign stop for me, Bryant would be talking a lot more than me,” Christie said. “I’d have him telling people in Mississippi what he thinks of me. So no, this is really about Phil.”

Christie said he supported Bryant’s candidacy in 2011 and was in Mississippi Tuesday to urge voters to give him a second term — and also raise money for the state GOP.

“Believe me, if I come down here for campaign stuff for me you’ll know exactly what that looks like and feels like,” Christie said. “This is campaign stuff for my friend Phil Bryant.”

A reporter also asked Christie how his “moderate policies” would affect his potential presidential candidacy, a remark that drew a quick response from the governor.

“Which moderate policies on social issues are you talking about?” Christie asked. “You know, I’m pro-life, I vetoed Planned Parenthood funding in my state five different times, I vetoed a clip reduction.”

The reporter interjected, “What about gay marriage.”

“I vetoed the gay marriage bill in New Jersey and fought it all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court, so I don’t know which moderate social issues you’re all talking about,” Christie said.

The reporter asked again, “So you’re against gay marriage?” Christie replied, “I have always been, yes.”

The governor often faces questions about whether his views are conservative enough to win him a presidential nomination. He attributes his image of being too moderate to governing a Democratic state in the Northeast.

Photo: Quinn Dombrowski via Flickr

New Jersey’s GOP Lawmakers Blast Bridgegate Committee

New Jersey’s GOP Lawmakers Blast Bridgegate Committee

By Andrew Seidman, The Philadelphia Inquirer (TNS)

TRENTON, N.J. — A New jersey state legislative committee’s investigation into last year’s lane closures at the George Washington Bridge was a cover to “take down” Gov. Chris Christie and boost the political career of its co-chairman, GOP lawmakers charged in a new report Monday.

Democrats on the New Jersey Legislative Select Committee on Investigation, led by Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, “repeatedly misled the public; manipulated media coverage via false leads, seemingly unlawful leaks, and baseless claims; charged taxpayers millions of dollars to promote political fiction; and accomplished nothing meaningful for the public good,” the 119-page report says.

Wisniewski countered that the committee’s work “may well serve as a great example, perhaps the greatest example, of legislative oversight in our state’s history.”

Most of the taxpayer money cited by the GOP refers to billing by Christie’s outside counsel.

Republicans issued their “minority statement” Monday morning before the committee met to publicly release a 136-page report written by its outside counsel, Jenner & Block of Chicago. The eight Democrats on the 12-member panel voted to make the report public, while the four Republicans voted against it.

That report, leaked to reporters last week, said there was “no conclusive evidence” linking Christie, a possible GOP presidential contender in 2016, to the lane closures.

Like a report written by a law firm retained by Christie’s office to investigate the matter, the Jenner & Block report said the “principal actors” in the lane closures were two then-Christie allies: Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor’s former deputy chief of staff, and David Wildstein, a former official of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

Wildstein’s attorney declined to comment Monday, and Kelly’s could not be reached.

The January disclosure of Kelly’s Aug. 13, 2013, email to Wildstein — “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” to which Wildstein responded, “Got it” — transformed the bridge mystery into a scandal.

Even if Kelly and Wildstein acted alone, the committee’s report says, “they did so with perceived impunity” in a government environment in which “they felt empowered to act as they did, with little regard for public safety risks or the steadily mounting public frustration.”

Gaps remain in the public knowledge of the lane closures and their aftermath, Wisniewski said, in part because the committee has refrained from interviewing key players at the request of the U.S. Attorney’s Office, which is conducting its own investigation.

The lane closures spanned Sept. 9 to 13, 2013, causing massive traffic jams.

One lingering question, Wisniewski said, was what Christie texted to one of his senior staffers during a legislative hearing on the lane closures last year.

Christie and the staffer, Regina Egea, then head of the authorities unit and now his chief of staff, exchanged 12 texts that day, according to phone records obtained by the committee from AT&T via subpoena. But attorneys for the governor’s office could not locate the contents in response to the committee’s subpoena request, indicating the texts had been deleted.

Egea told lawmakers under oath that she had sent a text to the governor and subsequently deleted it, as she commonly does. The phone records show Christie initiated the exchange, contrary to Egea’s testimony, the report said.

Christie said he did not recall receiving a text from Egea that day.

“I’m not sure how this is very different from the actions that Bridget Kelly took,” Wisniewski told reporters Monday, referring to an email in which Kelly directed a subordinate to delete an incriminating email about the lane closures.

Last week, Randy M. Mastro, an attorney for the firm representing the governor’s office, said the legislative report had confirmed that “there is not a shred of evidence Gov. Christie knew anything about” the lane closures beforehand “or that any current member of his staff was involved in that decision.”

Republicans on the legislative panel criticized Wisniewski as an “opportunistic and power-hungry politician” bent on using the committee as a political weapon to “take down” and succeed Christie as governor.

GOP state Sen. Kevin O’Toole, reading from his party’s report, hammered Democrats as having made incendiary comments on national television regarding the possibility of impeachment and asserting that laws had been broken. According to the Republican report, Democratic members of the committee gave more than 100 TV interviews on the bridge scandal.

The GOP also said a number of Democrats on the panel had conflicts of interest in their business dealings with regard to the Port Authority, a charge Democratic leaders denied.

And Republicans questioned why Jenner & Block, which represented New Jersey Democrats during the redistricting process and is a contributor to Democratic campaigns, was retained as counsel for an independent investigation.

O’Toole said it was “the constant and persistent leaking of subpoenaed documents” that “proved to be the greatest disservice to the integrity of this committee.” Republicans said they had referred their report to acting Attorney General John J. Hoffman and asked him to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate whether the committee had broken any laws.

A spokesman for the attorney general’s office said the report would be “reviewed appropriately” and declined further comment.

Democrats noted that Republicans did not actually dispute the facts of the Jenner & Block report.

“It was not some political witch hunt,” said Assembly Majority Leader Louis D. Greenwald, a Democrat.

There was debate over the cost of the committee’s report. Republicans said its price tag was about $9 million, but $6.5 million of that comes from invoices submitted to the governor’s office by its outside counsel, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher L.L.P.

And it’s unclear what portion of Gibson Dunn’s billing is related to the legislative inquiry; it has responded to federal subpoenas as well.

Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr

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

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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