Defending the Arts in a Climate of Fear is a real eye-opener into the way the Christie statehouse operates. Actually, it may just be that your eyes are simply widening in fright. It appears on the front page of “US#1 - PrincetonInfo,” a magazine published in Princeton, NJ, which covers business and entertainment news along the Rte 1 corridor in Princeton and Central New Jersey.
The Jan. 15 issue's front page, written by editor Dan Aubrey, describes ten months of escalating governmental abuse by Ms. Guadagno's office and the office of the state's Attorney General that he endured in 2011. It's a tale of governmental persecution to further a personal vendetta that will induce paranoid nightmares.
In January 2011, Mr Aubrey testified before the New Jersey State Assembly Tourism and Arts Committee, in favor of a bill that would prevent an archeological dig in Trenton named Petty’s Run from being backfilled.
The decision to bury the site was linked to Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno. The Republican former federal prosecutor and Monmouth County sheriff had become the state’s first lieutenant governor in January, 2010.
In November, 2010, she announced that she was “to refill the area next to the Statehouse as soon as possible to improve the grounds.”
Newspaper articles explained that Guadagno could see the site from her window and considered it an “eyesore.”
The bill to rescue the site was initiated by two Trenton-area Democratic members of the state assembly: Bonnie Watson Coleman (who at that time had claimed to be bullied by Governor Christie, who would later put her to a “Willie Horton” type of context) and assemblyman Reed Gusciora (later to be labeled “numbnuts” by Christie).
Mr Aubrey spoke in favor of the preservation bill because he also runs an arts non-profit, and has had contracts with the state Council on the Arts since 2003, under three governors. The bill to preserve Petty's Run passed. The Petty's Run site was eventually completed through private donations, in spite of the state's continuing to push for its demolition,
even soliciting bids for the work that May.
Mr Aubrey suddenly found himself in a world of hurt for standing in the way of Ms. Guadagno's personal landscaping preferences. If his story is true, the Lt. Governor of New Jersey, and Gov. Christie's replacement, used the full power of her office, and that of the state Attorney General, in an attempt to destroy Mr. Aubrey.
Guadagno's office called Mr. Aubrey on Mar 25, 2011, to inform him that, effective immediately, all of his arts education contracts with the State Council on the Arts were terminated, and that all remaining monies from the now-to-be unfinished projects had to be returned immediately, as well.
An hour later, even as he was completing the paperwork to wrap up his work for the state, he got a call from the office of the state Attorney General's office. He was accused of working under an illegal contract with the state and therefore illegally holding onto state funds.
At that time, he shrugged, finished closing up the accounts, and figured that was the last of it.
But it wasn't - not by a long shot. In April, Guadagno held a press conference in which she accused the State Council on the Arts of being a "rogue agency," and used the awarding of Aubrey's contracts (without calling him out by name) as an example of its lack of accountability. At the same time, the AG's office told him that he had to produce complete documentation for all his past state contracts, as they were all to be audited.
In May, at a senate budget hearing, the contracts in which Aubrey had been involved became a major topic of discussion. Over the next several months, the Lt Governor went after him with the full powers of her office, attacking his contracts in front of legislative hearings, speaking of his possible criminal fraud to the media. Criminal investigators were sent to his home. He was informed that he was going to be brought before a grand jury.
Aubrey was eventually called to the attorney general’s criminal division office in Whippany, where he went through a hearing in August 2011, at which his records on his state contracts were more complete than the state’s. At the end of October, Aubrey received an email telling him that the case had been “closed.” That was it - no explanation, and certainly no apology.
So all Aubrey was out was 10 months of grief, $7,000 in lawyers’ fees, and a chance of any work with the state.
Kim Guadagno is the woman who would become Governor if Christie steps down. When Christie is out of the state on one of his monthly - or is it weekly? - dancing-bear fundraising acts, she serves in his stead. I live in New Jersey, and don’t know if I am more horrified or terrified. She is willing to abuse the power of both her own office, and that of the state's top law enforcement officer, because she doesn't like the view from her office window. The sheer vindictive spitefulness of these “public servants” is appalling. If this is the sort of abuse of power they are capable of, with the cause as miniscule as a paragraph of testimony over an archeological site on the statehouse lawn – imagine what they would do with the powers of the NSA and the FBI. We would end up with a fascist dictatorship. Christie combines Nixon and Putin, and seems to have filled New Jersey government with mobsters.
5:56 PM PT: Carl Lewis' statement today about Christie's attempted intimidation of him concerning a state Senate race had one sentence that jumps out: “He called me and asked me to get out of the race. I said I would stay in the race. Then he killed the program and used his secretary of state and attorney general’s office to get me out of the race,” Lewis said. “It’s a pretty clear parallel.”
The NJ State Attorney General at that time was Paula Dow, a Christie protege. Today she oversees the legal department of -- the Port Authority.
