Word is that it was payback for the Democratic Mayor of Fort Lee not endorsing Christie’s re-election or it was payback to NJ Legislative Democrats over the State Supreme Court or a development project in Fort Lee.
Or something else – which may or may not be found out through investigations, hearings or maybe even subpoenas and prosecutions. And ironically, it was this and not one of the myriad of other things he did over his career that finally has people sitting up and taking notice of how scummy Governor Fleece has been consistently over the course of his career.
But at this point, quite honestly, the big thing here is not why this was done (even though it could lead to other crimes being uncovered and could be a very big deal in its own right), but the mere fact of how many people in Christie’s inner circle were so very intimately involved in the planning and cover up of this – leading to the conclusion that the only way that Christie actually didn’t know about the planning and cover up is if it was perfectly clear by design that Christie was to purposely be kept in the dark about the details.
Which is (1) not plausible or (2) a sinister culture (a point made many times already) in that these people – people this loyal to him - would not keep Christie in the dark about something this big and this damaging without him wanting to not be told of the details.
In short – this could not credibly have been kept from Christie without he himself letting his inner circle know that he doesn’t want to know about these things. And not wanting to know how this is being covered up or not pressing to find out why his own high level appointees were resigning is patently absurd to anyone who has followed Christie in any way.
He would never have let his two hand picked people, one a longtime friend and former State Senator, the other who had a position created by Christie for him and was “Christie’s eyes and ears” at the Port Authority – step down and hire attorneys without staunchly defending them and insulting anyone who dared ask why.
There is no way that his Deputy Chief of Staff would be emailing his “eyes and ears at the Port Authority” for hours during Sept 12 (the day before the lanes reopened) and then be with Christie for hours at Seaside Heights after a fire without him knowing of the events unless he wanted to not be kept in the loop.
There is no way that he met with his Port Authority hand picked Chief David Samson a week before the order was given to shut down the lanes, then meet with him for two hours(!) last week only to say that that Samson had no involvement in the cover up – after emails show that Samson was personally involved in “retaliation”.
There is no way that Christie’s spokesman, Michael Drewniak, met with Wildstein in December about Wildstein’s resignation without Christie knowing why Wildstein was resigning.
There is no way that Christie’s buddy Bill Baroni would have demanded that there “be no discourse” about the closures without that being approved at a higher level.
There is no way that Christie himself would have called Governor Cuomo and asked him to back off investigation the lane closures.
There is no way that “Charlie” (most likely referring to Christie’s chief Counsel) would have been very proud of Baroni’s shutting down the lanes without Christie knowing or willfully not wanting to know.
Over his career, Christie has shown that when he wants to know about something – when he really wants answers on an issue, he will. not. stop. until he gets what he wants. There has never been a time (except when he was guilty in the past on other similar things) where he has been so disinterested – so willfully ignorant – of something that his inner circle was involved with.
None of these people are low or mid or even moderately high level people. These are the closest people to Christie and hold positions that Christie appointed them to, sometimes even creating positions for. This was no accident.
If Christie didn’t know, then it was specifically known that Christie did not want to know.
And that is the same thing as knowing but covering it up. Knowing about a cover up is covering it up.
Regardless of why it happened in the first place.