I believe that the most interesting part of the letter from Wildstein's attorney to the Port Authority has so far been ignored by the media: the paragraph accusing "certain commissioners" at the PA of allocating PA funds to land deals. In addition, I think the media is not fully appreciating the indirect evidence that Chris Christie knew about the closures both before and during the days that they were effective.
There has been a lot of insistence in the media recently that there is as yet no evidence that Chris Christie knew of the bridge lane closures BEFORE they happened. Wildstein's lawyer is claiming in his letter to the Port Authority that evidence exists that Christie knew of the closures DURING the closures--which is bad enough if it is true, because this would raise the question of why the governor did not immediately take action to correct the problem. One would normally expect a Governor of New Jersey to be horrified and outraged on learning that the GWB was suffering massive unnecessary traffic congestion--over September 11, no less--even if it were due to some cause quite unrelated to the actions of his own staff. So it would be damning even if Christie only knew about the closures while they occured, as Wildstein claims, because Christie's doing nothing to end them would indicate that the closures were at a minimum okay with him--or at worst he wanted them to happen.
As yet Wildstein has offered no proof that Christie knew about the closures as they occurred. But since there was a lot of media coverage during the bridge problems, I do not see any way that Christie could not have known about them. He must have learned about them from the press coverage. Plus there were the 20 to 30 urgent emails to Christie from Mayor Sokolich complaining that Fort Lee ambulances and emergency services were being hindered and begging him to unblock the lanes. So Christie had to know. And yet Christie did nothing to end them. Hence his bizarre insistence that nobody told him about the closures (!!!), to explain why he was not hitting the roof and knocking heads left and right as one would expect.
I think there is too little emphasis in recent coverage on how unlikely it is that anyone other than Christie could have been responsible for ordering the lane closures. Anyone who has worked with a politician knows how terrifying it would be to give orders to cause traffic congestion, just on your own hook without the knowledge of, say, the mayor, which is my area of experience. It would have scared me to death to order such lane closures, and I would have known that I would almost certainly lose my job, and that the firing would likely have been done in a public, humiliating way to appease the angry citizens. People complain bitterly about lane closures even for much needed repairs of streets with car-damaging potholes (a big problem in my city, due to the type of soil we have.) Lane closures of a major artery are politically sensitive even when completely justified, and they get hostile press coverage. All of that applies exponentially more for unnecessary lane closures on "the busiest bridge in the world" and economic lifeline of the area.
After the orange squiggle, I look at the alternatives to Christie's having ordered the closures and the accusations in Wildstein's letters about Port Authority commissioners being involved in land deals.
It defies belief that Bridget Kelly, then deputy chief of staff, would have decided on her own to close lanes on the GWB. Even if she had had a psychotic break and called the Port Authority commissioners to order this, they would have not agreed to do it without checking with Christie or without some prior assurance from him that he was okay with this. The same goes for Stepian ordering the closures. It was just way too risky for a staffer, especially as day after day of massive congestion stretched out and the press coverage and community anger grew. If Christie were not on board, he was going to find out who ordered it and fire them.
Closing lanes on the GWB was actually incredibly risky even for Governor Christie as we can see from the fact that it has blown up in his face, which I believe was inevitable. It was especially dangerous as the Port Authority has two commissioners who represent New York and are therefore not under Christie's control. (Which does make me wonder why Governor Cuomo has been so passive in reacting to all this, possibly wanting to further some development project important to powerful New York developers or fearing Christie retaliation against New York in areas where it needs New Jersey cooperation or is vulnerable to retaliation? We have seen this with Dawn Zimmer's silence and even praise for Christie for months after her city was denied badly needed Sandy funds. Her community needed Christie's help and was too vulnerable to his malice for her to protest. Cuomo's reaction during this whole thing, and the phone call from Christie to Cuomo where Christie complained to Cuomo are all very strange and interesting. If anyone has a better understanding of Cuomo's role, please enlighten me about his response to the GWB lane closures.)
So the motivation behind the closures had to be very strong.
Which brings me to a paragraph in Wildstein's lawyer's letter which all the press accounts and TV coverage I have found so far have ignored. I would like to think that this is because the reporters are busily investigating what it says, and are waiting to discuss it until they know more about what it refers to. For me it is the most interesting paragraph in the letter.
"Subsequent to Mr. Wildstein's testifying, there have been reports that certain Commissioners of the Port Authority have been connected directly or indirectly to land deals involving the Port Authority, that Port Authority funds were allocated to projects connected to persons who supported the administration of Governnor Chris Christie or whose political support he sought, with some of the projects having no relationship to the business of the Port Authority, and that Port Authority funds were held back from those who refused to support the Governor."
http://www.bergendispatch.com/...
This is quite fascinating to me because it does not refer to Sandy funds. Mayor Dawn Zimmer of Hoboken accused Christie of witholding Sandy funds from Hoboken in retaliation for her not approving the Rockefeller development project. Here Wildstein's lawyer makes the same accusation but with regard to Port Authority money.
Zegas is essentially threatening here that if the PA does not agree to fund Wildstein's legal expenses, Wildstein will tell what he knows about the PA allocating PA funds to "projects connected to persons who supported the administration of Governnor Chris Christie or whose political support he sought"--and witholding funds from others.
The wording of "certain Commissioners" as allocating funds to land deals implies that Zegas is targeting some Commissioners and not others. David Samson and Scott H. Rechler, Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of RXR Realty LLC, a multi-billion dollar private real estate company, seem like prime candidates to me.
I am speculating that the motivation for closing the GWB lanes will turn out to be connected to these land deals, as has been suggested by Steve Kornacki, who has done such great reporting on Chris Christie, including breaking the Dawn Zimmer allegations.
There is only one scenario I can come up with to explain the lane closures that does not have Chris Christie as the one behind them. It seems to me possible that the lane closure idea came from David Samson, Christie's appointee as chairman of the Port Authority and a powerful lobbyist whose firm represented and lobbied for land developers. Samson's power and wealth came from his ability to get New Jersey politicians to agree to and facilitate what developers want from them. Perhaps the lane closures were a stick to beat some politician in the bridge area to agree to some developer's demands -- or even a way to extort campaign contributions, political support, or project concessions from a developer whose project's value depended on commutes via a freely flowing bridge. But the lane closures would have had to have Christie's concurrence, as Bridget Kelly, his deputy chief of staff, and Stepian, his political director, orchestrated the closures. Quoting Steve Kornacki,
"Wildstein's records suggest there was a Christie/Samson meeting before the 8/13 "time for some traffic" email from Kelly. And Wildstein made clear that he was releasing only records that are relevant to the closures, so he's saying that apparent meeting was related to all of this."
http://www.capitalnewyork.com/...
If Wildstein was correct that this meeting between Samson and Christie is relevant to the closures, (and Wildstein had every opportunity of knowing due to his position at the Port Authority and to his being in the thick of the implementation of the lane closures), I believe that either Christie pushed the idea and got Samson to agree, or Samson pushed it and got Christie on board. I would lean to Christie as the originator, as it was an extremely reckless plan, almost guaranteed to blow up in view of the media attention the closures drew and the number of people who had to be in the know to bring the closures about. It is Christie, not Samson, who is the brash, overconfident, and combative personality, certain that he can brazen his way out of anything with a bravura public speaking performance and histrionic displays of bogus emotion.
One possibility is that the media is not discussing the paragraph of Wildstein's letter dealing with the Port Authority land deals because it implicates developers who are too powerful for the media to antagonize, developers who make huge campaign contributions and who have just as much clout with New York Democrats such as Cuomo and even Schumer and Gillibrand as they do with the New Jersey Republicans. I hope reporters are actively investigating behind the scenes and are not being warned off, because I think the land deals are probably the key to the whole thing, and I would dearly love for the public to know how big money bullies and deprives communities of what they need, which is a key Progressive concern.
