Saturday, September 24, 2016

The Outlaw Jersey Whale harpooned by witness


The case of the George Washington Bridge lane closings is getting better and better. The latest juicy bits come from the "mastermind" of the closings who pins the whole thing on Governor Chris Christie.
The admitted mastermind of the mysterious George Washington Bridge lane closings broke a three-year silence on Friday, testifying in federal court here that everything he did in his job was at the direction and for the benefit of Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

David Wildstein, who has confessed to coming up with the scheme to close the lanes and is cooperating with federal prosecutors in the trial of two top Christie administration officials accused of conspiring with him, described the governor and his aides as scheming for creative ways to use government resources to help Mr. Christie’s re-election and, ultimately, his ambitions to run for president.

Mr. Christie and his aides were looking for favors to hand out to officials they hoped would support the governor, he said. And they saw the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the $8 billion-a-year two-state agency that runs the bridge along with other major transportation hubs and systems in the region, as a particularly sweet “goody bag,” as an email revealed in court described it. The Christie administration used the agency to spread money and jobs, as well as emotionally rich gifts like pieces of mangled steel and ceremonial flags from the World Trade Center and private tours of the construction site there, Mr. Wildstein said.

Mr. Wildstein, who had been hired at the Port Authority by one of the defendants, Bill Baroni, Mr. Christie’s top staff appointee at the agency, recalled a conversation he and Mr. Baroni had soon after they started their jobs in 2010, establishing what they called the “one constituent” rule.

“The only person that had to be happy was Governor Christie,” Mr. Wildstein explained, adding, “We used that as the barometer by which a decision would be made at the Port Authority.”

“How did you know what the one constituent wanted?” a prosecutor, Lee Cortes, asked him.

“Because we were told by Governor Christie or a member of the governor’s staff,” Mr. Wildstein replied.

Mr. Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, are charged with closing access lanes to the bridge for four days in 2013 to punish the mayor of Fort Lee, the town on the New Jersey side of the bridge that was gridlocked by the closings, because he declined to endorse the governor for re-election.

Mr. Wildstein, who arrived at the Port Authority with no transportation experience — he had written an anonymous political blog for the previous 10 years while working at his family’s textile company — has pleaded guilty to conceiving the plan. Mr. Baroni approved it, prosecutors say, and Ms. Kelly directed it.
In fairness to TOJW he is not on trial in this court but we can expect something to follow from this case, the more so if and when the two principles, Baroni and Kelly take a plea in return for testimony.

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