ABC news reported that the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey has convened a grand jury to investigate the involvement of Governor Chris Christie’s office in the George Washington Bridge scandal, ABC News has learned.
Twenty-three jurors convened in a federal courthouse in Newark today to hear testimony from a key staff member, Christie press secretary Mike Drewniak, whose lawyer, Anthony Iacullo, said Drewniak was not a target of the investigation.
“We’re here to answer questions and that’s what Michael did today,” Iacullo said.
The convening of the grand jury is evidence that the U.S. Attorney’s investigation has progressed beyond an inquiry and moved to the criminal phase.
The investigation was done by his own people. They found nothing wrong and that’s their final answer.
With his office suddenly engulfed in scandal over lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey two months ago summoned a pair of top defense lawyers from an elite law firm to the State House and asked them to undertake an extensive review of what had gone wrong.
Now, after 70 interviews and at least $1 million in legal fees to be paid by state taxpayers, that review is set to be released, and according to people with firsthand knowledge of the inquiry, it has uncovered no evidence that the governor was involved in the plotting or directing of the lane closings.
The review is the first of multiple inquiries into a scandal that has jeopardized Mr. Christie’s political future. It will be viewed with intense skepticism, not only because it was commissioned by the governor but also because the firm conducting it, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, has close ties to the Christie administration and the firm’s lawyers were unable to interview three principal players in the shutdowns, including Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor’s former deputy chief of staff.
Last week, Bryan Fischer said that pleading the Fifth was a sure sign of guilt. Of course he wasn’t talking about the participants in Chris Christie’s BridgeGate scandal, because those people are on his side of the political isle.
Well now it seems that pleading the Fifth and refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents are not enough. The main characters in the BridgeGate scandal now want a judge to legalize their decision.
Two figures in a political payback plot that has overshadowed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration will attempt to convince a judge that they shouldn’t be forced to turn over documents to a legislative panel.
Lawyers for former Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien and fired Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Kelly have asked the judge to throw out their subpoenas.They say handing over personal emails, text messages and planning calendars would be like testifying against themselves.
They also cite the possibility of criminal prosecution as a legal basis for not complying with a request for correspondence involving a plot to create traffic jams near the George Washington Bridge.
More than a dozen individuals and organizations close to Christie have complied with similar subpoenas.
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” – the now infamous quote by Bridget Kelly that closed down lanes on the busiest bridge in the world – was not the first time Christie’s people spoke about willfully causing problems for the constituents of New Jersey.
Documents released by Wildstein to a state legislative committee probing the incident, in which lanes were shut near the busy George Washington Bridge, causing a huge traffic jam, reveal that on August 19 he and Kelly discussed another traffic scheme.
“We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?” Kelly wrote in a message to Wildstein.
“Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed,” Wildstein wrote in reply.
Kelly and Wildstein appear to be joking.
“This is part of the drip, drip, drip of bad news for Christie,” said Lee Miringoff, a political observer and a pollster with Marist College.
The Star-Ledger newspaper has identified the rabbi as Mendy Carlebach of the Chabad of North and South Brunswick who was also a chaplain for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department.
“He has officially pissed me off,” Wildstein wrote.
Carlebach did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Attorneys for Wildstein and Kelly also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fort Lee, N.J. Mayor Mark Sokolich met Friday with federal prosecutors who wanted to talk about the George Washington Bridge lane closures, Sokolich’s attorney confirmed to TPM on Monday.
The meeting, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was a voluntary one. In a statement, Sokolich’s attorney declined to discuss details of his client’s conversation with members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the district of New Jersey.
“Since there is an ongoing criminal investigation, neither Mayor Sokolich nor I will comment on the substance of those discussions,” attorney Tim Donohue wrote. “The Mayor is grateful for the efforts of the US Attorneys Office, and the Mayor and his entire administration will continue to cooperate fully with this investigation as well as the Select Committee’s investigation.”
Sokolich has been at the center of the bridge scandal from the start. The lane closures caused a massive, multi-day traffic jam in Fort Lee. The same week they began, Sokolich told a local columnist that he had begun to wonder if the closures were intended to send him “some sort of message.” Democrats in the state have since suggested that the closures were retaliation against Sokolich’s decision not to endorse Christie’s re-election last year — an allegation that has not been proven.
Some Republicans are claiming Chris Christie isn’t really one of them. Some pundits are claiming, even as scandal erupts around him, that he’s a “different kind of Republican.” He’s more than that: He is the archetypal Republican, the incarnation of its arrogant, corporatist soul.
It’s like we said a while back: Christie is “the heartless, smug, bullying embodiment” of his party. He and his staff reflect a world in which other people are nothing more than rubes to be manipulated and exploited, whether they’re trying to escape the trap of long-term unemployment or Fort Lee during the morning rush hour.
The conventional wisdom says that Christie’s not like other Republicans. Pundits say he’s a “moderate,” a “pragmatist,” a counterbalance to the far-right ideology of the Tea Party Republicans. But no leading Republican is really moderate, including Christie. And at the end of the day they’re all pragmatists, ready to do whatever it takes to serve their paymasters’ agenda.
Democrats and liberals routinely express frustration and bafflement at Republican hypocrisy. “They claim to hate big government,” they’ll say, “but they want to expand the Defense Department. They say they want government out of our lives, then vote to control women’s sex lives or manage a brain-dead woman’s care from the nation’s capital.”
Well, yeah.
It’s true that Republicans are hypocritical in word and deed. But while they may be false to an ideology, they’re always true to their mission: to promote and serve the interests of big corporations and ultra-wealthy individuals. And when it comes to that agenda, all of them — the Chris Christies as well as the Paul Ryans — are as extremist as the political climate will permit. Whether the subject is taxation, “corporate personhood,” or the future of the planet, there’s no room for either moderation or ideology in the service of corporate goals.
The problem for Christie and his “office” is not that they would be perceived to be using the office of governor as petty personal fiefdom. The problem for Christie and his “office” is this.
Emergency responders were delayed in attending to four medical situations – including one in which a 91-year-old woman lay unconscious – due to traffic gridlock caused by unannounced closures of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, according to the head of the borough’s EMS department.
The woman later died, borough records show.
And this.
“There was a missing child that day. The police had trouble conducting that search because they were tied up directing traffic,” says Jan Goldberg, a Fort Lee councilman who works with local emergency personnel.
Endangering the public safety as “payback” for a member of the opposing party not sufficiently cowing to you would seem to be beyond what a non-sociopath would consider to be reasonable policy.
The Democratic lawmaker investigating September’s controversial lane closures at the George Washington Bridge has subpoenaed any correspondence on the matter between Gov. Chris Christie and Port Authority officials.
Assemblyman John Wisnieswki (D-Middlesex) wants to know what the governor knew about the closures and when he knew it.
The subpoenas, issued to key officials of the bistate agency, demanded “all documents and correspondence, produced between Aug. 1, 2013 and the present date between Governor Chris Christie or any member of his administration and/or any employee, officer, or executive of the Port Authority.” The subpoenas give the officials until Thursday to respond.
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