Fantastic and fantastically detailed report on TPM today about the new Bridgegate-connected shit storm hitting Chris Christie.
Chris Christie is in South Carolina this week, his first trip there in the 2016 cycle. On Tuesday he spent seventy minutes answering questions from GOP activists, road testing pro-gun, anti-Common Core, and anti-teachers’ union messages as he lays groundwork to enter an ever-widening pool of contenders for the GOP nomination.
[Side note: I had forgot that he hadn't yet withdrawn from the race. Anyone else??]
Last week, Bridget Anne Kelly’s attorney, Michael Critchley, filed a request with the presiding judge to be given the power to subpoena Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher. That’s the law firm Christie hired last January – at public expense – to investigate his administration and produce the so-called “Mastro Report” that exonerated him from any culpability in both Bridgegate and allegations leveled against him by the Mayor of Hoboken relating to Hurricane Sandy relief aid.
That report inculpated Kelly, which is why her lawyer is interested in having a look at how it was made. He asked to see "the work product" - interview transcripts, notes, and so forth - to see what people actually said and whether they square with the final report. Only one problem: Gibson Dunn told Critchley those notes and other work product don't exist.
This could be a big deal. According to the manual for outside counsel that’s put together by the N.J. Attorney General’s office, “outside counsel shall” – not may or might, but shall – “retain pleadings, correspondence, discovery materials, deposition transcripts and similar documents and work product for a period of no less than seven years.” Gibson Dunn is therefore under a contractual obligation to keep any documents and notes relating to these interviews since they constitute “work product.”
Moreover, they were legally obligated to keep that material since everyone in the country knew in 2015 that Bridgegate was the subject of a federal grand jury investigation. Gibson Dunn is a firm packed with former federal prosecutors. They know these rules.
And note also that if anything was to be destroyed by the firm – even if it was after the ordinary seven-year-long retention period – Mastro’s team was obligated to notify their client – the Christie Administration.
There is another reason why this is potentially a big deal, and this one is easier to understand. Gibson Dunn's bills to the NJ taxpayer for this work are enormous, and now they are going to be in the spotlight. $7.75 million and counting. Oh, and this:
One of the attorneys who worked on the Mastro Report, Debra Yang, was, like Christie, a fellow George W. Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney. She’d vacationed with the Christies and was called a “good and dear friend” by the governor in 2011. She also billed 118 hours in the first month Gibson Dunn was brought aboard to defend her friend.