Here's a quickie on Christie from North Jersey.com reporting that Christie not featured in NJ's 2014 tourism ads
TRENTON, N.J. (AP) — New Jersey tourism officials say Gov. Chris Christie won't be in this year's commercials trying to entice tourists to visit the state.
The governor and his family starred in last year's "Stronger than the Storm" campaign that promoted coming to the state after Superstorm Sandy.
Some criticized his appearance in the commercial during a re-election year, especially when it was reported that the state paid to hire an ad firm that wanted to use Christie instead of one that did not propose featuring the governor.
The theme of this year's campaign will be "Going Strong."
New Jersey is still waiting for approval from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to use $5 million in federal disaster relief funds to pay for these ads.
In other Christie news this afternoon, Bill Stepien's lawyer is complaining to a judge that Stepien shouldn't have to turn over subpoena documents to the New Jersey legislative committee because they manipulatively included some documents previous submission in their court response to prove such kinds of documents do exist, when Stepien's lawyers claimed there was no proof that they did.
To the extent I could make sense of it, and from memory Stepien's lawyer seems to be arguing now that using evidence to prove that he is wrong is manipulative might jeopardize Stepien's defense that if he has to think about whether documents existed or not, and chose from many documents the types that responded to the subpoena, it would be tantamount to testifying against himself. Quite a stretch I think.
Seriously, WTH? I wish these guys would just confess, so we could get on to giving Christie a fair trial. I don't know when the judge will rule. I'll put a link to this article in an update.
2:27 PM PT: Stepien's attorney accuses Bridgegate panel of manipulation after release of emails.Stepien's lawyer was enraged when emails from Stepien were released in a separate filing in he case.
"That errant filing was overtly designed to revive the Committee's failed attempt to cast Mr. Stepien — the prototypical innocent man ensnared, and indeed victimized, by ambiguous circumstances — as a central figure in the so-called Bridgegate scandal," he said in the brief.
But, Marino himself had demanded that the committee turn over any evidence it had connecting Stepien to the GWB lane closure. When they did, he becomes enraged?
The emails released by the committee show that Baroni forwarded Sokolich's email to Stepien on September 12. Former Port Authority official David Wildstein, the man who coordinated the lane diversions, also forwarded the email to Stepien on the same day.
Stepien responded to the emails with a simple "Thanks."
Democrats have read the email chain to show that Stepien was in the loop on the lane diversions from the start.