Tuesday, January 14, 2014
Chris Christie's cover story is blown.
The thousands of documents released Friday show that Port Authority official David Wildstein went to great lengths to create a cover story.
Wildstein and the top aide to Gov. Chris Christie who set him in motion might actually have been able to pass it all off as a traffic study rather than unconscionable political payback.
Wildstein gave the supposed test the official sounding name “TL24.” He even put together a PowerPoint presentation complete with photos and charts. The title page read:
“Reallocation of Toll Lanes at the GWB.
An EARLY Assessment of the Benefits of the Trials.
September 12, 2013.”
The results were summarized as:
“TBD”
Meaning “to be determined,” which is a pretty good description of how it will play out with regard to Christie’s political future.
The latest documents make the four days of closings seem all the more reckless and reprehensible. Various emails from three days before the closings show that Port Authority supervisors were surprised and alarmed by the plan to close two of the three toll booths that service the Fort Lee entrance.
“A single toll lane operation invites potential disaster,” wrote Jerry Quealch of Port Authority planning and operations. “It seems like we will be punishing all for the sake of a few.”
He added at the bottom, “Very confused.”
In another email, a puzzled Port Authority supervisor named Daniel Jacobs asked, “What is driving this?”
A Port Authority Police email indicates that Wildstein was personally on hand to witness the effect when the toll booths in question were closed on Sept. 9, not by accident the first day of school. He was undeterred by reports that the resulting traffic was impeding the Fort Lee police and paramedics from responding to emergencies.
The closings continued for three more days until the executive director, Patrick Foye, stepped in to reopen them.
Of course NONE of this cover story makes any sense, in that even a complete moron could recognize that closing several lanes of traffic on the busiest bridge in the world would cause huge problems.
However Wildstein pushed forward with that excuse, and even reached out for help in constructing the story.
Emails show that Wildstein sought and received the counsel of Christie’s press secretary, Michael Drewniak.
“Need to talk to you soon, in person,” Wildstein wrote on Dec. 3.
The two met the following evening.
“Thanks again for all your sound advice last night,” Wildstein emailed him on Dec. 5.
“Thanks for a great dinner,” Drewniak replied.
Drewniak can insist, as does his boss the governor, that at that point he still believed the closing was part of a traffic study.
However to do so would be almost an admission of guilt as that story was already coming apart at the seams after this e-mail exchange was made public.
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Kelly wrote on Aug. 13.
“Got it,” Wildstein replied just a minute later.
Openly identifying it as causing "traffic problems" and demonstrating the kind of shorthand that indicates that they had worked together on the planning stages, makes it impossible for this to be seen as anything legitimate.
And the possibility that these two cooked this up without direction from the Governor, who is accused of running his organization like a "paramilitary operation," is simply too ridiculous to take seriously.
By the way it is also worth noting that apparently the Port Authority police officers were apparently directed to blame the bridge closing on the Mayor of Fort Lee:
In a letter to a Port Authority executive on Sept. 12, Fort Lee, N.J. Mayor Mark Sokolich complained that the agency's police officers were telling commuters that the George Washington Bridge lane closings were his fault.
"[M]any members of the public have indicated to me that the Port Authority Police Officers are advising commuters in response to their complaints that this recent traffic debacle is the result of a decision that I, as the Mayor, recently made," Sokolich wrote to Bill Baroni, who was the deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey until he resigned last month.
Are we really to believe that they came up with that all by themselves?
No, I think that we all need to brace ourselves for the seismic shock that is about to occur after Chris Chirstie's political career finally falls from the skies and crashes down to earth. It's going to be a BIG one.
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