Chris Christie Knew About Bridge Lane Closings

[Deadskins]

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/nyreg ... .html?_r=0
What a scumbag!

[Hooligan]

Yes, he is, and not just for that.

The only reason I'm not looking forward to him leaving office is because the next governor will likely be worse. NJ is a mess.

[welch]

NEWARK — Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was told about the George Washington Bridge lane closings during a Sept. 11 memorial service the week they were happening and that they were shut down to punish a mayor who had declined to endorse him, the man who orchestrated the closings testified in federal court here on Tuesday.

The man, David Wildstein, recalled how Mr. Christie reacted with laughter, clearly appreciating the news. And upon learning that the mayor’s calls were being met with silence, Mr. Wildstein said, the governor said in a sarcastic tone, “I imagine he wouldn’t get his calls returned.”

Mr. Wildstein, who has admitted being the culprit behind the lane closings in 2013, testified as prosecutors showed a series of photographs of him, Mr. Christie and Bill Baroni, then the governor’s top staff appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the bridge, at a memorial service to mark the 12th anniversary of the terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan.

The photos showed the three men in a loose huddle on a dirt pathway between the Sept. 11 memorial and the construction site for a tower rising at the World Trade Center site. Mr. Christie, who has previously said he did not recall the conversation, appears engaged and attentive, looking into Mr. Baroni’s eyes, raising his eyes and laughing in some frames, and reaching out his hands to the other two men.

“We were all very relaxed,” Mr. Wildstein testified.

“Were you and Mr. Baroni bragging?” Lee Cortes, an assistant United States attorney, asked.

“Very much so,” Mr. Wildstein said. “This was our one constituent. I was pleasing my one constituent. I was rather happy that he was happy.”

Mr. Christie joked about Mr. Wildstein’s role, he testified, using the name Mr. Wildstein had used in the past as an anonymous political blogger, Wally Edge. “Mr. Baroni said to Governor Christie that I was monitoring the traffic, I was watching over everything,” Mr. Wildstein, a former Port Authority official hired by Mr. Baroni, recalled on Tuesday. “Governor Christie said in the sarcastic tone of the conversation, he said, ‘Well, I’m sure Mr. Edge would not be involved in anything that’s political.’”

Full article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/28/nyreg ... v=top-news

[welch]

NEWARK — Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York agreed to falsely explain the mysterious lane closings at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 as a traffic study to try to “put an end” to the growing scandal, the admitted culprit behind the scheme testified in federal court here on Tuesday.

At Mr. Christie’s request, he testified, Mr. Cuomo told the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the bridge, to “stand down” in trying to publicly blame Mr. Christie and his aides for the lane closings, at least until Mr. Christie had won re-election in November 2013.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo issued a stern statement denying that the governor and Mr. Christie discussed a false story and denouncing Mr. Wildstein’s motivation.

Mr. Christie, a Republican, and Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, have previously denied that such a conversation ever occurred and said they played no role in the cover-up of the lane closings.

The testimony, from David Wildstein, a former Christie administration official at the Port Authority, left open the possibility that Mr. Cuomo did not know the true reason for the lane closings. Mr. Wildstein, who is cooperating with federal prosecutors in the trial of two former Christie aides, has said they were to punish a mayor for declining to endorse Mr. Christie’s re-election.

But Mr. Wildstein has previously testified that he told Mr. Christie about the lane closings and their punitive intent as they were occurring.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/05/nyreg ... v=top-news

[welch]

NEWARK — The former aide to Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey at the center of the political plot to close access lanes at the George Washington Bridge broke her long silence in federal court on Friday, saying that the idea to close the lanes had been sold to her as a policy matter to move traffic more rapidly across the Hudson River, and that the governor had signed off on it.

The former aide, Bridget Anne Kelly, was the author of the email that set off the so-called Bridgegate scandal when it was revealed in January 2014: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

In her testimony in court, where Ms. Kelly is now charged with directing the lane closings to punish the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., after he did not endorse the governor, that bold directive sounded more like bureaucratic churning.

Ms. Kelly, ostracized by the governor as a rogue and a liar after her email was exposed, came off as a newly promoted employee who had been eager to please her boss, Mr. Christie. She had witnessed his temper up close, she said: Upset with an idea she had in a meeting, he once threw a water bottle at her; shortly before the lane closings, he had told her to cancel meetings with the mayor of Jersey City after he too declined to endorse the governor, who said that no one was entitled to a meeting, using an expletive. So Ms. Kelly was careful to follow his instructions.

<snip>

Ms. Kelly said that David Wildstein, a wily former political blogger who was the governor’s enforcer at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the bridge, had approached her with an idea for a traffic study in the summer of 2013.

Mr. Wildstein has pleaded guilty to orchestrating the lane closings and is now the prosecution’s chief witness against Ms. Kelly and Bill Baroni, once the governor’s top staff employee at the Port Authority.

The way Mr. Wildstein pitched it, she said, the three access lanes from the local streets of Fort Lee were slowing traffic along the main highway across the bridge. The local access lanes had been granted in a political deal between a prior mayor of Fort Lee and a prior governor of New Jersey.

The Port Authority, Mr. Wildstein said, wanted to end that privilege, and would do a study of the impact. Ms. Kelly said he told her that there would be extensive traffic problems in Fort Lee, but that those difficulties would go away once people who used the local lanes figured out a new route.

<snip>

The lanes were closed on Sept. 9, 2013. Mr. Wildstein testified that he had told the governor about the closings, and that the mayor’s panicked calls were not being returned, at a Sept. 11 memorial service, the third day of traffic jams.

Ms. Kelly testified that when the governor returned from that event, he stopped by her office and they briefly discussed complaints about traffic.

The governor told her that the Port Authority was handling it, and that Mr. Wildstein had been in touch with Fort Lee. Mr. Wildstein, she said, had told her the same thing.

To convict Ms. Kelly, the jury will have to find that she intended to punish the mayor for not endorsing the governor. Asked whether she had any animus against Mr. Wildstein, she replied, “Absolutely not.”

But she has yet to face cross-examination. And in her testimony, which will resume on Monday, she will have to explain an even more damning message, sent to Mr. Wildstein when he told her about the traffic problems on the first day of the purported study.

“Is it wrong that I am smiling?” she wrote.

Testimony from 21 October:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/22/nyreg ... ottom-well

[TexasCowboy]

I'm not getting this?? three lane closures which forced traffic to slow as they approached entry to the
G.W. bridge NYC and Christie is responsible for this how?