Most of us are probably already familiar with Bennet Barlyn, the Hunterdon County assistant prosecutor who was suspended and ultimately fired in 2010 after complaining about the state's interference in the investigation he had worked on.
Barlyn has been fighting to get the issue resolved, but the state has been stonewalling on document requests for months and months and months.
Well, the AP reported yesterday in this article that one of Barlyn's colleagues on that 2010 investigation is also stepping forward:
Former Hunterdon County Assistant Prosecutor Charles Ouslander asked in a letter to the legislative panel to investigate whether politics informed the decision by then-state Attorney General Paula Dow to drop a 43-count indictment in 2010 against the county sheriff, Deborah Trout, a Christie backer.
I'd been wondering when this issue would reach this stage, and it seems like it took too long -- but maybe that's because the legislature has been overwhelmed with the unceasing onslaught of allegations.
Barlyn's and Ouslander's efforts are finally bearing fruit, while simultaneously adding to the credibility of the other allegations in the Bridgegate saga. (emphasis mine)
Sen. Loretta Weinberg and Assemblyman John Wisniewski, Democrats who co-chair the legislative panel looking into the bridge scandal, said Friday the request would be reviewed.
"The pattern we're seeing is you are rewarded for saying 'yes' and something seems to happen if you say 'no,'" said Weinberg, who ran against Christie as a lieutenant governor candidate in 2009 and was later on the receiving end of a Christie rant during which he suggested the press "take a bat" to the 79-year-old legislator.
As one would expect given what we've heard from Christie about everything else,
Christie has denied any involvement in the decision to drop the indictment.
Is it possible (though it makes no sense to me) that he's telling the truth about this one?
Public opinion polls suggest that the average person in NJ and beyond appears to have a hard time buying the "I didn't know" claims about the other big allegations. The denials don't seem to make sense to most people.
So why is the NJ Governor continuing to respond this way?
For some reason it's bringing to my mind other instances of politicians appearing to be completely untethered to reality.
Anyone have any explanations?