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Christie aide tied to "traffic problems" in Fort Lee
Friday, January 10, 2014 12:49 PM
NIKI2
Gettin' old, but still a hippie at heart...
Quote:As Christie apologized publicly for the abrupt lane closings seemingly ordered by some of his staff, and which he said he did not know about beforehand, the office of the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey said it was launching an investigation. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/09/us-usa-newjersey-bridge-christie-idUSBREA080MB20140109
Friday, January 10, 2014 12:53 PM
SHINYGOODGUY
Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: Quote:Originally posted by ElvisChrist: I have to wonder if any of those who think Obama should be impeached for [insert "scandal" of your choice here] believe that Christie is now unworthy of the office. Would they vote for him for President? Running against Hilary? I suppose so. Quote: I think I can safely say that in light of the various scandals surrounding President Obama, I will never again vote for him for President. Anyone willing to make the same pledge regarding Christie?
Quote:Originally posted by ElvisChrist: I have to wonder if any of those who think Obama should be impeached for [insert "scandal" of your choice here] believe that Christie is now unworthy of the office. Would they vote for him for President?
Quote: I think I can safely say that in light of the various scandals surrounding President Obama, I will never again vote for him for President. Anyone willing to make the same pledge regarding Christie?
Friday, January 10, 2014 1:04 PM
MAL4PREZ
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: Well, it's a beginning:Quote:As Christie apologized publicly for the abrupt lane closings seemingly ordered by some of his staff, and which he said he did not know about beforehand, the office of the U.S. Attorney in New Jersey said it was launching an investigation. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/09/us-usa-newjersey-bridge-christie-idUSBREA080MB20140109
Friday, January 10, 2014 1:08 PM
Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: There was a script he was reading from at the beginning of his Presser.
Friday, January 10, 2014 1:17 PM
Quote:•How did Christie not know? There were 117 days between when the Bridgegate story broke and when the governor learned that one of his Deputy Chiefs of Staff, Bridget Kelly, had called for the lane closures. One of his close confidants whom he just selected to run the New Jersey Republican Party, Bill Stepien, is also implicated. Despite the fact that increasing national attention was being paid to this story through the fall, Christie — who has a background as an aggressive prosecutor! — had no idea some of his closest allies were involved. Why was he so oblivious? Christie has been reduced to insisting that his staff has been out to control and lying to him about what they're doing. That's not an ideal talking point to have to lean on. •Why would Christie's appointees have thought this was a good idea? Politicians survive scandals of staff misbehavior all the time. But in this instance, the misbehavior was conducted on Christie's behalf, in order to execute a political strategy to benefit the governor. How did Christie create a culture in which his appointees in his administration and at the Port Authority would get together and assume this was something the governor would want them to do? •Why didn't anybody narc on Bridget Kelly? The governor says Kelly lied to him and said she had no involvement in the bridge lane closures. But Kelly wasn't the only person who knew Kelly was involved. In August, she emailed David Wildstein, Port Authority Director of Interstate Capital Projects: "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." Wouldn't Wildstein have told the governor, in the process of tendering his resignation, that Kelly had told him to do it? Bill Baroni, Christie's top appointee at the Port Authority, was also checking in with Wildstein about whether "Trenton" was happy with the handling of the closures. Why didn't Baroni tell the governor his staff had known? •When did Christie really learn about his staff's involvement? Christie described discovering the story in the Bergen Record yesterday morning after his workout. But he also said he hasn't slept well "the last two nights" because of his soul searching. If Christie didn't know about this story until Wednesday morning, why did it cause him to lose sleep on Tuesday night? http://www.businessinsider.com/four-uncomfortable-questions-from-christies-press-conference-2014-1#ixzz2q1KPBNPi]
Quote:At the news conference, Christie said he planned to go to Fort Lee on Thursday to apologize to Mayor Mark Sokolich in person. Sokolich accepted Christie’s news-conference apology but urged the governor to delay his visit, saying he suspects the whole story has yet to come out. http://www.thedailyjournal.com/viewart/20140109/NEWS01/301090039/Christie-m-sorry-U-S-Attorney-launches-probe]
Quote:Christie focused repeatedly not on the lane closings themselves but on how upset he was that his staff didn’t tell him the truth when asked, saying he was “heartbroken” and “betrayed” by his tight-knit circle of advisers. He said he saw the emails and text messages for the first time on Wednesday, and was “blindsided” by what he read. “What did I do wrong to have these folks think it was OK to lie to me?” he asked. http://www.thedailyjournal.com/viewart/20140109/NEWS01/301090039/Christie-m-sorry-U-S-Attorney-launches-probe
Friday, January 10, 2014 1:28 PM
Quote:BTW Niki - I've found that quoted html addresses always need a return after them to make formatting work all right."
Quote:He was, he said, heartbroken. Embarrassed. Sad. Disappointed. Humiliated. By the end of an extraordinary and exhaustive 107-minute news conference, Chris Christie had transformed himself from a belligerent chief executive, famed for ridiculing his detractors, into a deeply wronged father figure, shaking his head, whispering his words and verging on tears. The bravado had vanished. The certitude was gone. In its place was an entirely new vocabulary of self-doubt and a once unthinkable spectacle: Governor Christie acknowledging a “crisis in confidence,” sleepless nights, second-guessing and nonstop soul-searching. Political apologies generally follow a robotic sequence. The public figure caught doing wrong offers a terse, often grudging, sometimes distant and always uncomfortable expression of remorse. But Mr. Christie is not every other politician. He said “sorry” the Christie way: excessively, vaingloriously, in large, vivid and personal terms. At times, he divulged oddly intimate details and reactions — the 8 a.m. home workout session after which he discovered the “heartbreaking” news of his aide’s misconduct, and his late-night chats with his wife about the episode. He seemed to want to talk the scandal away, droning on for so long at the State House that reporters started repeating their inquiries, even asking for his response to a news story that had popped up as he was talking. “What was on display,” said Mike Murphy, a longtime Republican consultant who has advised former Gov. Mitt Romney, “were all the strengths of Chris Christie and all of the weaknesses.” “He just does not come in small doses,” Mr. Murphy said. Mr. Christie may have fielded every query tossed his way on Thursday (more than 90), but there remained scores of unanswered questions about his involvement in the imbroglio, which his forceful performance did little to satisfy. Even as they marveled at his stamina, Republican leaders privately worried that Mr. Christie was cementing a reputation for the most unwelcome quality in the world of political professionals: unpredictability. There were moments when the straight-talking governor seemed to slip into self-denial. Despite the absence of any concrete evidence, he suggested that perhaps there really had been a traffic study in progress when an aide in his office, working with a Christie appointee, closed lanes and paralyzed traffic in Fort Lee, N.J. Mostly, he kept apologizing. Twenty times, in all. To the people of New Jersey. To the mayor of Fort Lee. To members of the State Legislature. Even to the news media. He kept finding new ways to flagellate himself, ticking off his “mistakes,” owning up to his “failure” and repeatedly declaring, “I was wrong.” He seemed to lean on the lectern more than usual, holding himself steady and repeatedly fidgeting with his suit jacket. His normally voluble and prosecutorial manner, the very attribute that has catapulted him onto the national political stage, was replaced by a newly contemplative and somber tone. But this version of Chris Christie — the chastened, penitent public official — was hard to keep up, and he occasionally lapsed into a familiar pique. When out-of-town reporters began to shout questions at him, disrupting his system of calling on journalists, the governor shot them a chilly stare. “Guys,” he said, “we don’t work that way.” And his temper flared when he denounced, in harsh and scolding terms, the senior staff member who sent the email proposing “some traffic problems in Fort Lee” and who, he said, later misled him about her role. “I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here,” Mr. Christie said, making clear that he could no longer stand to be in the same room with the now-fired aide, Bridget Anne Kelly. “She was not given the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious that she had,” he said. The all but unending news conference seemed to offer Mr. Christie a cathartic public therapy session that was at once confessional and clinically detailed. He expounded, professorially, on the nature of truth and the difficulty of detecting deceit. “If you ask for something and someone deceives you and tells you it doesn’t exist, what’s the follow-up?” he asked. “Were you involved in any way? No. Any knowledge? No. Well, after that, what do you do?” And he sought to clear up what he said were (at least to him) mystifying misimpressions about his temperament, mocking the idea that he becomes a “lunatic when he’s mad about something.” “It is the rare moment,” he said, “when I raise my voice.” http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/10/nyregion/christies-apology-done-his-way.html?_r=0
Friday, January 10, 2014 2:18 PM
Quote:Originally posted by MAL4PREZ: Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: There was a script he was reading from at the beginning of his Presser. Shiny, please: We've been making progress with this. Don't open the door and let it back in! *-------------------------------------------------------------* MAL4PREZ: Clearly [The Rap]'s doing nothing but trolling now. STORYMARK: And not even cleverly. RAPPY: [My trolling] did its job, did it not? Easiest marks in the 'verse. http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=57146 *-------------------------------------------------------------*
Friday, January 10, 2014 2:22 PM
Friday, January 10, 2014 2:36 PM
AURAPTOR
America loves a winner!
Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: What!? You've got to be kidding me? That is a huge leap, even for you? SGG Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: But Obama gets a pass from y'all on KNOWINGLY lying about O-Care ? Huh. Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts. " AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall
Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: But Obama gets a pass from y'all on KNOWINGLY lying about O-Care ? Huh. Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts. " AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall
Friday, January 10, 2014 4:29 PM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: Okay Shiny, you made some very valid points. We may never know all the answers, but I'd sure like some. 1. I haven't followed Christie that closely, so I bow to your opinion, which I admit corresponds to what little I DO know about him. 2. There we disagree; I find it perfectly consistent for a politician to keep a low profile in order to meet with his people and figure out how to respond to something like this. 3. While I find his demeanor not surprising (and politically pretty astute), I was struck with a different impression: that he talked and talked and talked, while never addressing a major, salient point ("Why?"). For a normally garrulous person, it seems to me an effective way to look like you're taking responsibility, while at the same time not addressing a major point. What surprised me was his great amount of detail as to why the endorsement didn't make sense as the answer...surely he would realize that if he shows that, people are going to look around for what IS the answer? 4. "...has been targeted by Christie himself..." -- So there's been trouble there before? That lends weight to some of what's been speculated. "Why, when his two top political appointees resigned amid controversy regarding the lane closures, didn't he take a serious look into why they resigned." Another salient point, which I didn't know about. I admit, I haven't delved into this in depth until now, so I've probably missed some stuff…but along with "why did you do it?", "why did you resign?" might have been a very pertinent question for him to have asked. Of course, given the fubar of the lane closure, the screw-up alone WOULD have been sufficient reason to resign, but if Christie micro-manages as much as you and others indicate, one would have thought he'd have asked. The reeeeely bigger question, for me, tho', remains "Why did you do it?" --which question Christie says clearly he doesn't care about. That's a pretty amazing statement, to me! Did he actually "claim no knowledge of the scandal until Wednesday morning at 8:50 a.m"? I've been seeing it around the news for ages, I can't imagine him having claimed that…unless you mean he claimed no knowledge that it WAS a "scandal" until then… That, then, goes back to him not being directly involved, about which I'm still on the fence. "Why didn't he ask the Traffic Commission to look into the matter and get to the bottom of the "traffic study" that didn't exist?" I'm still on the fence in that this might well be something a GOVERNOR might ignore, given traffic snafus, even huge ones, happen daily, as to snafus by traffic managers. Here I look to what even someone who hasn't followed him closely recognizes as a very big ego who might well be willing to ignore "traffic problems" as beneath his attention. Mind I say MIGHT. "This had to be pre-planned and the signal was given." Obviously it was pre-planned; obviously there were more than two people involved. I don't know enough about the specifics to know if anyone beyond those two people had to know it was anything underhanded, nor how much planning and time would have had to go into it. If it's possible it could have been put together in a day or so by just a couple of people, and the people in question knew what Christie was going to do about Justice Helen Hoens the day before, I can see two or three (pretty stupid) people feeling powerful enough to do what they did, being pissed off enough about the whole Wallace/Hoens/Democrats thing to decide to do it on their own. I guess the major reason I don't see Christie as being behind it personally is it was SO stupid, SO obvious, and caused SUCH a huge mess that surely someone was going to look into it eventually… I hadn't caught that Weinberg is a member of the Judiciary Committee--I read that it's her district, but that she's a member of the Judiciary Committee gives further weight to this theory, in my mind, when coupled with all that went on around the judiciary and the timing of Christie's blow-up "Is the name, redacted in the email, belong to Christie? Just why was the name redacted in the first place?"--I could be wrong, but in the screen shot I've seen of the e-mail, it shows the recipient's name and what's after it that's blocked out appears to me to be her e-mail. In other shots of the e-mail in question, it shows first her name, then her e-mail, not blocked out. You can see what I mean…here: http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-christie-staffer-bridge-email-highlights-20140108,0,4946506.photogallery?index=la-pn-christie-staffer-bridge-email-highlights-005 I definitely think you're right that there should be a criminal investigation. People were harmed; someone abused their power; people need to be held accountable. Whether it's the state prosecutor(s), NJ/NY Attorneys General, feds or someone else, an apology and firings are not sufficient to answer all the questions.
Friday, January 10, 2014 5:34 PM
WHOZIT
Friday, January 10, 2014 6:21 PM
Quote: Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye wrote an impassioned email to the general manager of the George Washington Bridge on Sept. 13, arguing that lane closures that spiraled into a major scandal this week were illegal. Foye's email, addressed to Robert Durando and other Port Authority officials, fumed that he was not included in the decision, which he said was damaging the public safety and the economy. He ordered that it be reversed. "This hasty and ill-advised decision has resulted in delays to emergency vehicles. I pray that no life has been lost or trip of a hospital- or hospice-bound patient delayed," he wrote. He added: "I believe this hasty and ill-advised decision violates Federal Law and the laws of both States." "To be clear," Foye declared, "I will get to the bottom of this abusive decision which violates everything this agency stands for; I intend to learn how PA process was wrongfully subverted and the public interest damaged to say nothing of the credibility of this agency." A mere minutes later, Durando responded, "We have restored the 3 toll lanes to Ft. Lee." http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/pat-foye-bridge-illegal
Friday, January 10, 2014 6:45 PM
Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: What!? You've got to be kidding me? That is a huge leap, even for you? SGG How is it a leap? Explain.
Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: What!? You've got to be kidding me? That is a huge leap, even for you? SGG
Friday, January 10, 2014 7:15 PM
Friday, January 10, 2014 10:47 PM
Quote:Originally posted by MAL4PREZ: I'll give this much: apparently, Christie did actually say that he was sorry. Kudos. :/ But of course, he was apologizing for the evil people who abused his trust, and not for anything he himself may have done wrong. Because in his bully brain he did nothing wrong. Ever.
Quote: Has anyone followed up on his quote that he had "two sleepless nights" yet he only "found out about it" one day before?
Quote: The whole thing stinks, and Maddow put forward an explanation that may very well prove to be the truth of it. If these morons were dumb enough to use gmail for the already released mails, I'm guessing they left more tracks that will come out eventually.
Saturday, January 11, 2014 9:12 AM
Quote:Governors Spoke Privately About Bridge Controversy New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week to complain about a Cuomo appointee's handling of a growing controversy over traffic pattern changes on the George Washington Bridge, a person familiar with the matter said. Mr. Christie, a Republican, complained in a private phone call to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, that Patrick Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was pressing too hard to get to the bottom of why the number of toll lanes onto the bridge from Fort Lee, N.J. was cut from three to one in early September, according to this person. The lane closures occurred without notice to local authorities, officials have said, and snarled traffic for a week in the small borough on the Hudson River bluffs. Messrs. Cuomo and Christie share control of the Port Authority, which oversees Hudson River bridges and tunnels and the region's airports and is rebuilding the World Trade Center complex in Manhattan. A spokesman for Mr. Christie said the governor talks to Mr. Cuomo regularly "on any number of mutual-interest topics. Those conversations are private." Mr. Baroni told lawmakers in November that the incident was the result of a traffic study to determine if the lanes should be permanently taken away from the local access ramp in Fort Lee and used for traffic coming from the local highway. That statement didn't precisely match the authority's initial written response to complaints about the lane closures, which said the authority was studying "traffic safety." Mr. Foye, testifying under oath on Monday after receiving a subpoena, said he didn't believe Mr. Baroni's version of the events was true. "I'm not aware of any traffic study," he said. Republican lawmakers have defended the Christie administration and its authority appointees, and said a Democratic legislative inquiry into the lane closures was a partisan exercise. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304477704579254012674389146
Saturday, January 11, 2014 11:40 AM
NEWOLDBROWNCOAT
Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: Insulting and belittling is his M.O. Imagine him running the country and scoffing at the state of Georgia, or Virginia or even New York. How would that play out in the world stage? What would his presidency consist of?
Saturday, January 11, 2014 1:10 PM
Quote:Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat: Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: Insulting and belittling is his M.O. Imagine him running the country and scoffing at the state of Georgia, or Virginia or even New York. How would that play out in the world stage? What would his presidency consist of? Or the first time he gets into it with a foreign leader, and insults Kim Jong Un, is it? ; or the boss ayatollah in Iran; or even some ally of ours, like the Brits or Japanese.
Saturday, January 11, 2014 7:31 PM
ELVISCHRIST
Saturday, January 11, 2014 7:46 PM
Quote:Originally posted by ELVISCHRIST: Ironically, there's not major traffic tie-ups in New Jersey because of all the bodies Chris Christie has thrown under the buses. - Andy Borowitz
Saturday, January 11, 2014 9:22 PM
1KIKI
Goodbye, kind world (George Monbiot) - In common with all those generations which have contemplated catastrophe, we appear to be incapable of understanding what confronts us.
Saturday, January 11, 2014 10:51 PM
Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: What!? You've got to be kidding me? That is a huge leap, even for you? SGG How is it a leap? Explain. No explanation given? You must not be able to explain it,which means it isn't any sort of a leap, at all. Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts. " AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall
Sunday, January 12, 2014 12:40 AM
Sunday, January 12, 2014 1:46 AM
Sunday, January 12, 2014 2:19 AM
Sunday, January 12, 2014 8:45 AM
REAVERFAN
Quote:Originally posted by ElvisChrist: 8 videos of Christie not being a bully: http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2014/01/chris-christie-bullying-videos
Sunday, January 12, 2014 10:42 AM
Sunday, January 12, 2014 10:47 AM
Quote:Originally posted by reaverfan: He's a shitty governor, and would make a disastrous president.
Monday, January 13, 2014 6:23 AM
Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: Quote:Originally posted by reaverfan: He's a shitty governor, and would make a disastrous president. What makes him a bad governor ? Didn't he just win re-election by a massive landslide ? I agree, *IF* he's found to have known / orchestrated any of this, his image would and should take a huge hit, but presuming he's really clean on this, what else can you point to that shows him to be a bad governor ? Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts. " AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall
Monday, January 13, 2014 6:29 AM
Quote:Originally posted by AURaptor: Quote:Originally posted by NewOldBrownCoat: Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: Insulting and belittling is his M.O. Imagine him running the country and scoffing at the state of Georgia, or Virginia or even New York. How would that play out in the world stage? What would his presidency consist of? Or the first time he gets into it with a foreign leader, and insults Kim Jong Un, is it? ; or the boss ayatollah in Iran; or even some ally of ours, like the Brits or Japanese. Like a President scoffing at say...Arizona? Over Immigration ? Or insulting on our long time allies, England and Israel ? Man, that would be bad. Oh wait... we've already done that recently. Fathom the hypocrisy of a government that requires every citizen to prove they are insured... but not everyone must prove they are a citizen I'm just a red pill guy in a room full of blue pill addicts. " AU, that was great, LOL!! " - Chrisisall
Monday, January 13, 2014 6:41 AM
Monday, January 13, 2014 9:43 AM
Quote:Regina Egea, then the director of Mr. Christie's Authorities Unit and now his incoming chief of staff, received word of the lane closures and resulting traffic chaos in Fort Lee, N.J., just three hours after the closures were ordered to be reversed by a New York official on Sept. 13. Mr. Christie appointed Ms. Egea as his chief of staff in December, taking over for longtime top aide Kevin O'Dowd. Mr. O'Dowd was nominated in December to become the state Attorney General, with a confirmation hearing originally set for next week. Senate Democrats have said that hearing is now up in the air since the bridge emails were released. The Assembly's subpoena power for documents and testimony related to the closures issue expires Tuesday, when the current legislative session ends. There had been some doubts as to whether Democratic leaders would push to renew the subpoena power, but the Assembly's incoming speaker said he would hold a session Thursday to consider legislation reauthorizing it. The documents reveal that some of Mr. Christie's closest aides had a clear picture of the problems unfolding in Fort Lee from the first morning of the lane closures. On Tuesday, Sept. 10, Mr. Baroni received an email from Tina Lado, the New Jersey director of government and community relations at the Port Authority. Ms. Lado was a primary contact for Mr. Sokolich as he tried in vain to learn the purpose of the lane closures and asked that they be reversed, records show. Mr. Sokolich didn't understand what was happening, Ms. Lado wrote to Mr. Baroni, adding that the mayor "said that he is trying to 'keep a lid on this' (politically) and is getting pressure from members of Borough Council who want to take some action." http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303393804579314500006896102?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303393804579314500006896102.html
Quote: Although Port Authority staff knew the closures would happen, Fort Lee officials have said they did not. That appeared intentional. In emails between Durando and Fulton about the second day of closures, Durando replied that he would tell his staff. “Just to your staff -- right?” Fulton replied just three minutes later. The Fort Lee mayor, Mark Sokolich, repeatedly contacted the Port Authority to find out what was going on. "Please call me as soon as possible in hopes that we can resolve this issue and reverse a policy change that is wreaking havoc on Fort Lee …. the otherwise cooperative and supportive host community to the busiest bridge in the world,” Sokolich wrote in a letter. http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-bridge-emails-chris-christie-aides-20140110,0,6208095.story#ixzz2qHytuMzK
Monday, January 13, 2014 11:23 AM
Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: He's dumped all over state civil servants, except cops (mainly because they protect his sorry ass), firefighters, but mainly teachers. And, as far as I have heard, many Sandy victims have yet to receive relief from their applications to rebuild. SGG
Tuesday, January 14, 2014 12:57 AM
Tuesday, January 14, 2014 6:20 AM
Quote:Originally posted by SHINYGOODGUY: Now, it turns out, it's been reported that Christie misused Sandy funds. The plot thickens. SGG
Thursday, January 16, 2014 1:28 AM
Quote:Originally posted by Niki2: I can't find anything about Durando sending Foye's email to Egea, but it's getting interesting (O'Dowd's nomination doesn't look to happen all that quickly, now…). I wonder at the "consider legislation reauthorizing it"--surely they wouldn't dare NOT reauthorize the subpoena power, in the midst of all this…Quote:Regina Egea, then the director of Mr. Christie's Authorities Unit and now his incoming chief of staff, received word of the lane closures and resulting traffic chaos in Fort Lee, N.J., just three hours after the closures were ordered to be reversed by a New York official on Sept. 13. Mr. Christie appointed Ms. Egea as his chief of staff in December, taking over for longtime top aide Kevin O'Dowd. Mr. O'Dowd was nominated in December to become the state Attorney General, with a confirmation hearing originally set for next week. Senate Democrats have said that hearing is now up in the air since the bridge emails were released. The Assembly's subpoena power for documents and testimony related to the closures issue expires Tuesday, when the current legislative session ends. There had been some doubts as to whether Democratic leaders would push to renew the subpoena power, but the Assembly's incoming speaker said he would hold a session Thursday to consider legislation reauthorizing it. The documents reveal that some of Mr. Christie's closest aides had a clear picture of the problems unfolding in Fort Lee from the first morning of the lane closures. On Tuesday, Sept. 10, Mr. Baroni received an email from Tina Lado, the New Jersey director of government and community relations at the Port Authority. Ms. Lado was a primary contact for Mr. Sokolich as he tried in vain to learn the purpose of the lane closures and asked that they be reversed, records show. Mr. Sokolich didn't understand what was happening, Ms. Lado wrote to Mr. Baroni, adding that the mayor "said that he is trying to 'keep a lid on this' (politically) and is getting pressure from members of Borough Council who want to take some action." http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303393804579314500006896102?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303393804579314500006896102.html Curiouser and curiouser…it appears a lot of people knew what was going on; that Christie might not have been in the loop is harder and hard to buy:Quote: Although Port Authority staff knew the closures would happen, Fort Lee officials have said they did not. That appeared intentional. In emails between Durando and Fulton about the second day of closures, Durando replied that he would tell his staff. “Just to your staff -- right?” Fulton replied just three minutes later. The Fort Lee mayor, Mark Sokolich, repeatedly contacted the Port Authority to find out what was going on. "Please call me as soon as possible in hopes that we can resolve this issue and reverse a policy change that is wreaking havoc on Fort Lee …. the otherwise cooperative and supportive host community to the busiest bridge in the world,” Sokolich wrote in a letter. http://www.latimes.com/nation/politics/politicsnow/la-pn-bridge-emails-chris-christie-aides-20140110,0,6208095.story#ixzz2qHytuMzK What a mess…these guys seem to have been astronomically stupid about emails…
Thursday, January 16, 2014 2:57 AM
Thursday, January 16, 2014 9:47 AM
Thursday, January 16, 2014 10:37 AM
Quote:Originally posted by ElvisChrist: There is a troll here who keeps trying to insinuate that this is all Obama's fault somehow.
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