Christie Administration Lawyering Up To Assist With Internal Review Of Lane Closures

[ProSense]

Christie Administration Lawyering Up To Assist With Internal Review Of Lane Closures

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's (R) administration has hired outside legal counsel to help conduct an internal review of lane closures on the George Washington Bridge and assist with the U.S. Attorney's own investigation, according to multiple media reports.

Capital New York reported that Christie's administration will announce Thursday the retention of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

On its website, the firm offers assurance to prospective clients: "When your back is against the wall, there is always a way out."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/christie-administration-outside-legal-counsel-internal-review

Experts see possible charges in NJ bridge scandal
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024336956

[malaise]

1. To Assist ? Bwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah hahahahahahahahah

Getting up off the floor!!

[ProSense]

2. LOL! More: Scandal Emails Raise Questions About Christie's Trash-Talking Mouthpiece

Scandal Emails Raise Questions About Christie's Trash-Talking Mouthpiece

People who know New Jersey politics know who Michael Drewniak is.

<...>

Thanks to the release last week of thousands of pages of documents connected to the George Washington Bridge lane closures, many people outside New Jersey politics have now learned who Drewniak is, too, while also learning a few things about his use of invective.

"Fuck him and the (Star-Ledger)," Drewniak wrote in an email on Nov. 27 to former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive David Wildstein, after hearing that the Star-Ledger editorial board would call for subpoenas to be issued in the scandal....Emails Drewniak exchanged with Wildstein in December, in the days leading up to Wildstein's announced resignation from the Port Authority, remain one of the more enigmatic aspects of this still enigmatic story.

Let's pause here to set the stage a little. By early December, Democrats in New Jersey had already spent months suggesting that the lane closures in September, which led to a massive traffic jam in the town of Fort Lee, N.J., had been orchestrated as political payback against the town's mayor, a Democrat who had declined to endorse Christie's re-election campaign. Another Christie ally at the Port Authority, Bill Baroni, had by that time appeared before state lawmakers and said that Wildstein had ordered the closures. At the same hearing, Baroni maintained that the lanes had been closed as part of a traffic study.

A final piece of background information: Wildstein and Drewniak appear to have a longtime friendly relationship. The 2009 PolitickerNJ article that mentioned Drewniak's "testicular fortitude" was written by Wally Edge -- which was the pseudonym Wildstein used when he ran the website.

Now back to the mysterious emails. On Dec. 3, a week after the Baroni hearing, Wildstein and Drewniak traded emails in the morning after Wildstein asked for a transcript a Christie's comments at a press conference that week, the one were the governor joked about "working the cones" during the lane closures. Wildstein said he needed the remarks for a "board meeting." Later in the day, Wildstein forwarded an email to Drewniak from a Port Authority spokesperson. The subject was a request from the editorial page editor of the Star-Ledger, who wanted to talk to the Port Authority for an upcoming editorial about the closures. At 9:22 p.m., Drewniak replied to Wildstein, who had forwarded the email from his personal Gmail account to Drewniak's own Gmail account.

- more -

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/drewniak-christie-scandal

[malaise]

3. This gets sweeter by the minute

I'm also watching Samson closely.

[ProSense]

5. This is good

because the media wants to keep pushing the 2016 angle when Christie's ass and governorship are on the line.

Big GOP Donors Want Answers From Christie: 'I Wonder How The Hell Did He Let This Happen'

Chris Christie is heading to Florida this weekend to break bread with some major Republican benefactors, and some think the New Jersey governor has some explaining to do.

Politico's Ken Vogel caught up with some GOP donors who will be meeting with Christie...Here's what Minnesota-based media mogul Stan Hubbard, who will be attending Sunday's event, told Vogel:

“He has got a big problem, because perception is everything — perception is reality. I’m sure he’s an honorable, decent guy, but I wonder how the hell did he let this happen. I mean, who did he hire? What kind of idiot? It’s just ridiculous. How stupid.”

An unnamed Republican finance operative told Vogel that the bridge scandal has been on the minds of many donors.

“I had a donor say well ‘Who gives a sh— about you? What about all the people who are stuck on the bridge?” the operative said.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/chris-christie-republican-donors-florida-bridge-scandal

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024320643

Christie: Vindictive ass or incompetent buffoon
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/01/09/1268391/-Christie-Vindictive-ass-or-incompetent-buffoon

[mucifer]

4. Oh I think they are gonna find lots more than lane closures.

They got the Blago prosecutor after them. He got 14 years in prison for talking about crimes he was going to commit.

[Dread Pirate Roberts]

6. Hey Drewniak!

Fuck me? No, no, no. Fuck You! Just a good "Jersey Salute" to Mike "the Mouthpiece" Drewniak. Sorry for the vulgar language, but he started it.

[katmondoo]

7. Reminds me more and more of the Enron scandal

How Enron caused the price of electricity to sky rocket in California and then they made fun of the poor grandmothers who couldn't afford electric. Same nasty e-mails, same disregard for people.

[ProSense]

9. And

"Same nasty e-mails, same disregard for people. "

...lies.

The bridgegate question Christie isn’t asking

By Timothy Noah

On January 12, Politico identified ten unanswered questions about bridgegate and managed to leave off the only one that matters: who ordered the deliberately punitive shutdown of two traffic lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge? Maybe Politico was channeling Chris Christie, who at a January 9 press conference said he was wholly ignorant of his office’s involvement until news of it broke the day before in the Bergen County Record. Since then, to judge from Christie’s public silence on the question of who made bridgegate happen, he’s kept that ignorance intact.

It’s de rigeur for a politician in Christie’s awkward situation to bang a fist on the table and pledge that, by God, he’ll find the bad apples and toss them out of the barrel. To some extent, Christie did that at the press conference. “I spent all day yesterday digging into talking to folks and getting to the bottom of things,” Christie said. He said that process would continue. “I’m going through an examination,” Christie said, “and talking to the individual people who work for me, not only to discover if there’s any other information that we need to find, but also to ask them: How did this happen?”

Almost immediately, though, the avidity of Inspector Christie’s interrogations came into question when he acknowledged that he hadn’t spoken to Bridget Anne Kelly before firing her. Kelly, one of Christie’s three deputy chiefs of staff, had authored the now-famous email: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Any “examination” that wasn’t a complete sham would have begun by asking Kelly why she wrote that e-mail, who told her to do it, and who else was in on the whole reckless prank. But at the press conference, Christie said, “I have not had any conversation with Bridget Kelly since the email came out.”

<...>

One striking feature of the Watergate tapes is President Richard Nixon’s incuriosity about who the ordered the June 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters. If you were a president who would ultimately be forced to resign because you tried to cover up a burglary committed at the behest of the White House staff, wouldn’t you want to know what numbskull created this problem for you? But except for one strained remark that sounds very much as though Nixon is addressing the tape recorder directly, Nixon didn’t ask. A highly compelling conclusion is that Nixon didn’t ask because he already knew the answer: he ordered the break-in himself. The closing of two traffic lanes is not a burglary. But as the days pass and Christie demonstrates a similar incuriosity about who ordered bridgegate, it will become harder not to conclude that for Christie, that isn’t much of a mystery.

https://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/the-question-christie-isnt-asking

[ProSense]

8. Awww, someone has a sad:

Rothenberg: Christie Scandal Has Become A 'Political Lynching'

Stuart Rothenberg, the editor and publisher of The Rothenberg Political Report, wrote in a blog post published Wednesday that the investigation of the bridge scandal linked to Gov. Chris Christie (R) had become a "political lynching."

"We still don’t know whether Christie told the entire truth at his news conference last week or whether the many investigations that are now developing — about the bridge scandal but also about other decisions made by the governor during his time in office — will show poor judgment or even malfeasance," Rothenberg wrote in a blog post for Roll Call, where he also writes a twice-a-week column. "But given the governor’s immediate reaction to the personal crisis that has engulfed him, it isn’t too soon to wonder when the accusations and media frenzy crossed the line from inquiry and investigation to political lynching."

Read the whole thing here.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/rothenberg-christie-scandal

Summary: We don't know if he's lying, but it's not too early to portray his suspicious, vindictive and/or incompetent ass as the victim.

His "immediate reaction" was a series of lies.