[Flash Walken]

Well it looks like Chris Christie has sunken his presidential nomination dreams:

On August 13, 2013, Bridget Anne Kelly, the deputy chief of staff to New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, sent an eight-word e-mail to David Wildstein, the governor's appointee to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, that read, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee".[6][8] Wildstein responded to Kelly's e-mail: "Got it." Subsequent e-mail exchanges also implicated Port Authority Chairman David Samson, another Christie appointee, by name, in the toll lane closures.[9]

Beginning on September 9, 2013, the dedicated toll lanes for one of the Fort Lee entrances to the upper level of the George Washington Bridge were reduced from three to one until early morning on September 13, on orders from David Wildstein without notification to Fort Lee government and police officials. In an area that normally experiences a great deal of traffic, the lane closings caused a significant increase in congestion. This led to major delays for school transportation and police and emergency response within Fort Lee, both during and after the peak hours of travel.[10] The lane closures caused slower response time for emergency vehicles and may have contributed to the death of at least one person.[11]

On September 13, 2013, Patrick Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, ordered that the lanes be reopened. He said the closure violated agency policy and jeopardized public safety. Foye was an appointee of Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York.[12]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Le...re_controversy

Hours after unannounced lane closures went into effect at the George Washington Bridge on a Monday morning in September, Governor Christie’s top two executives at the Port Authority received an email indicating that the resulting traffic jams were posing problems that carried potential life-and-death consequences.

Fort Lee police and medical personnel had been delayed while responding to a report of a missing child and a cardiac arrest, according to an email sent to the pair from a lower-ranking Port Authority employee.

Despite that warning — laid out in one of three internal agency emails obtained by The Record — the two Christie executives, who had quietly decided only days earlier to divert local lanes leading to the bridge, ignored the pleas of Fort Lee’s police and mayor, local officials have said. The lane diversions continued for four days until Pat Foye, the Port Authority’s executive director and an appointee of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, found out about them and angrily reversed the decision, which he called “abusive” and potentially illegal.

http://www.northjersey.com/fortlee/w..._fort_lee.html

The September lane closures on the George Washington Bridge delayed emergency responders in four situations, according to records obtained by the Bergen Record — including one in which a 91-year-old woman died.
According to the Record, EMS coordinator Paul Favia wrote in a Sept. 10 letter to Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich (D) that response times doubled in two of the cases.

Whereas it normally takes about four minutes to respond, it took EMS seven minutes to respond to the situation involving an unconscious 91-year-old woman. She later died of cardiac arrest at a hospital. Favia, however, did not say that the woman's death was directly due to the delays.

http://www.businessinsider.com/chris...res-ems-2014-1

TRENTON — The controversy over the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge in September ramped up today with the revelation that a top aide to Gov. Chris Christie was involved in the decision.

Here's a timeline of how the scandal has unfolded:

Aug. 13: A deputy chief of staff to Christie, Bridget Anne Kelly, e-mails David Wildstein, the governor's appointee to the Port Authority, saying, "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." Wildstein responds, "Got it."

Sept. 6: Wildstein, the Port Authority's director of interstate capital projects, orders the bridge's general manager to carry out the closures.

Sept. 9: The Port Authority closes two of three local access lanes from Fort Lee to the George Washington Bridge, the nation's busiest crossing, bringing traffic to a halt and turning borough streets into a parking lot. Records show Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich calls Port Authority to ask what is happening.

Sept. 12: Sokolich writes to Christie appointee Bill Baroni, the deputy executive director of the Port Authority, and expresses the belief that the closures were "punitive" and asks they be lifted. Some suspect they were put in place because Sokolich, a Democrat, did not endorse Christie for re-election. Records show Wildstein e-mails Kelly and Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak a statement saying the Port Authority is "reviewing traffic safety patterns at the George Washington Bridge."

Sept. 13: Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye, an appointee of Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, directs bridge managers to lift the closures, saying they violated agency policy and jeopardized public safety as well as the agency’s "credibility." Records show Wildstein e-mailed Kelly to tell her of the change, saying, "We are appropriation going nuts. (Port Authority Chairman David) Samson helping us to retaliate."

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf...ntroversy.html

WASHINGTON -- David Wildstein, the former Port Authority official at the center of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's (R) bridge scandal, has been held in contempt by state lawmakers after refusing to testify about the controversy before a state Assembly panel on Thursday. Wildstein invoked his Fifth Amendment right to avoid incriminating himself.

"On the advice of my counsel, I respectfully assert my right to remain silent under the United States and New Jersey constitutions," said Wildstein, to audible reactions from the audience.

Wildstein appeared before the New Jersey Assembly's Transportation, Public Works and Independent Authorities Committee, which has been probing the four-day closure in September of Fort Lee's access lanes to the George Washington Bridge.

His lawyer had tried to get him out of testifying, but a judge refused to quash the subpoena Thursday morning.

Wildstein stated and spelled his name for the committee, said where he resided and that he wasn't currently employed. But after that, he clammed up, refusing to even say where he was most recently employed.

State lawmakers plan to file the contempt charges with law enforcement.

Until Dec. 6, Wildstein was one of Christie's top officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He resigned when questions began emerging about why he ordered Fort Lee's access lanes to be shut down from Sept. 9 to 13.

Members of the Christie administration, as well as the governor himself, had maintained that the lanes were closed due to a traffic study. But on Wednesday, emails emerged showing that the closures were actually ordered as retribution against Fort Lee's Democratic mayor, who the governor's allies believed wasn't going to endorse Christie's bid for reelection in November. The emails were obtained by state lawmakers in response to a subpoena.

At one point, Wildstein received a text message from an unknown sender -- the emails are partially redacted -- saying, "Is it wrong that I'm smiling."

"No," replied Wildstein. When the other person added, "I feel badly about the kids. I guess," Wildstein reminded him or her that their parents are probably Democrats anyway.

"They are the children of Buono voters," Wildstein said, referring to Democrat Barbara Buono, who unsuccessfully challenged Christie in the Nov. 5 gubernatorial election. (The majority of Fort Lee voters, incidentally, voted for Christie, not Buono.)

Not only were Christie's Port Authority officials involved, but so were his deputy chief of staff and his campaign manager. Christie announced Thursday he has cut ties with both of them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/0...n_4569680.html

Rachel Maddow's coverage has been excellent:

Christie is a former U.S. attorney under George W. Bush. He’s a prosecutor who knows how to investigate wrongdoing. He claims that what he “read yesterday” (Wednesday) made him “angry.” This scandal’s been percolating for months. He’s belittled it, joked about it, claimed he didn’t think it was a “big deal.” But on Wednesday, when he read the emails and texts “for the first time,” he realized he’d been lied to by several of his top staffers. He was “stunned,” but didn’t want to speak to the woman, his once-trusted deputy chief of staff, who sent the original email instructing that it was “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”? Really?

That simply doesn’t seem plausible.

It has also become clear that Christie did not discuss the matter with his two top appointees at the N.Y./N.J. Port Authority either, even though he fired them in early December last year as part of damage control at the time, including the one who actually ordered the lanes shut down after responding to Kelly’s “Time for some traffic problems” missive with the simple reply: “Got it.”

Why doesn’t Christie want to speak to those people if, as he claims, he wanted to get “to the bottom of things” and “spent all day yesterday” trying to do it after being “blindsided”?

Answer: It doesn’t seem like he really wants to get to the bottom of things at all. It seems he may already know what’s at the bottom, or, in the most generous interpretation, doesn’t want to know. I suspect it’s the former. Either way, his claims today — despite his repeated apologies, his expressions of regret and sadness, his assertion that it was “heartbreaking to me that I wasn’t told the truth” and his willingness to answer questions for two hours — don’t seem particularly plausible, given the extent to which he has clearly gone to not learn the truth when he had the opportunity to do so firsthand from some of his very closest staffers.

If his deputy chief of staff was in on the conspiracy, along with his campaign manager and his top appointees at the Port Authority and several others, and they all lied to him, as he says, wouldn’t he want to find out what else they didn’t tell him before cutting them loose? Who else was in on it? For some reason, Chris Christie doesn’t appear to want to know.

It makes no sense. Unless he’s covering something up. What is he covering up? Maddow may have uncovered a hint tonight.

Until now, the reason suspected for the retaliatory closure of the lanes out of Fort Lee was that it was political payback against the Democratic mayor who refused to endorse Christie in his reelection bid. But other Democrats had also declined to do so. Both Christie and Fort Lee Mayor Mike Sokolich have claimed to be puzzled by that. Sokolich, while acknowledging that he’d been asked for the endorsement, didn’t think he was “that important” that the governor of N.J. would exact that kind of retribution when he chose to endorse the Democrat instead. For his part, Christie said during his presser that he didn’t “have any recollection of at any time, anybody in the campaign ever asking me to meet with Mayor Sokolich or call him, which was the typical course that was used when we were attempting to get an endorsement.”

It does, after all, seem an incredibly aggressive response to a fairly petty matter, particularly given the landslide reelection victory that Christie believed (correctly) that he would have in November.

“I know who I was pursuing as endorsers. I know who was close and we didn’t get. I know who was never close or we were trying to get. And know the people we got. This guy never was on my radar screen. And I think he confirmed that last night by saying he was never really — he doesn’t have any recollection of being even asked for the endorsement. And that’s — you know, that’s why I don’t get this,” Christie said during the marathon press appearance on Thursday.

So, if that’s true, what was this all about? Was it something else? Something other than the Fort Lee mayor’s lack of endorsement? Something that Christie knows about, perhaps? Something that would lead him to not want to have to admit he’d discussed it with Kelly and others before firing them?

Maddow, noticing that Kelly’s “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” email was sent to Christie’s Port Authority appointee David Wildstein on Aug. 13, 7:34 a.m., wondered what else happened around that time in N.J. that might have spurred Kelly to order the lane closures on the world’s busiest bridge first thing in the morning that day?

Here’s Maddow’s report, finding that the evening before, Christie had unloaded on Democrats in a particularly angry press conference concerning the renomination battle of a N.J. Supreme Court judge, a battle that had been several years in the making. The woman who headed the state Senate committee causing embarrassment for Christie at the time was N.J.’s state Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D), who happens to represent … you guessed it … Fort Lee …

http://www.salon.com/2014/01/10/rach...ristie_theory/