http://www.northjersey.com/news/inquiry-by-legislative-panel-finds-no-evidence-of-christie-involvement-in-gwb-scandal-1.1146761 A report summarizing a yearlong investigation by the legislative panel examining the George Washington Bridge lane closures found no evidence of Governor Christie’s involvement but concluded that two of his allies acted “with perceived impunity” when they gridlocked Fort Lee’s streets apparently for political reasons.
The committee’s 136-page report, drawing off sworn testimony, private interviews and thousands of subpoenaed documents, also highlights the unsuccessful efforts by a now-shuttered arm of Christie’s office to court the Fort Lee mayor’s endorsement, finding that the closures were “motivated in part by political considerations.”
The report states there is “no conclusive evidence” as to whether the governor “was or was not” aware of the lane closures or involved in directing them. But it catalogs several unanswered questions surrounding the scandal and cites a lack of cooperation from several key players who invoked their Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination.
The governor’s office released a statement late Thursday in response to the report from the attorney it hired to conduct its own investigation.
“The committee has finally acknowledged what we reported nine months ago — namely, that there is not a shred of evidence Governor Christie knew anything about the GWB lane realignment beforehand or that any current member of his staff was involved in that decision,” attorney Randy Mastro said. “Thus, the committee’s work has simply corroborated our comprehensive investigation. And with this inquiry behind it, the governor and his office can now focus on doing what they do best — serving the public interest.”
While the report does not contain any conclusive findings about Christie’s involvement, it puts a spotlight once again on a scandal that the administration has tried to move beyond. And it comes as Christie considers whether to run for president, a decision he has said he will make early next year. It also comes as the U.S. Attorney’s Office continues a criminal investigation into the lane closures.
Like the report commissioned by Christie’s office, it found that the “principal actors” in the scandal were former Port Authority executive David Wildstein and Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly. But it also found that Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni and former Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien shared some responsibility because they were aware of the lane closures as they were happening and were aware of the public safety consequences.
Even if Kelly and Wildstein acted alone, the report states, “they did so with perceived impunity and in the environment, both in the [governor’s office] and the Port Authority, in which they felt empowered to act as they did, with little regard for public safety risks or the steadily mounting public frustrations.”
The report, by the legislative committee’s special counsel, Reid Schar, also partly faulted the governor’s office for responding to the scandal “very slowly and passively” as there were “mounting indications that serious harms had been inflicted on thousands of New Jersey motorists for political rather than legitimate policy reasons.”
It lists a series of missed opportunities to get to the origins of the lane closures, even as Christie publicly mocked questions about his office’s involvement or said he was confident that no one on his team had any knowledge of the Port Authority operation.
The slow response “may have been the result of a series of mistakes involving failure to recognize warning signs and failure to anticipate the seriousness of the problem facing the governor and his administration,” the report states. But the sequence of events and the administration’s “evident lack of curiosity” could also signal that the people within the administration “knew or suspected a more damaging true story and preferred that it not come to light.”
While the report adds few new details to the series of investigative hearings that stretched out for most of the year, it lays out the panel’s findings in a chronological sequence that accentuates gaps in the narrative or factual discrepancies. One passage, however, provides new details about a series of text messages that the governor exchanged with a top aide while Port Authority officials were providing damaging testimony to the committee in December.
The phone records of Regina Egea, an aide to the governor, indicate that Christie initiated an exchange of text messages while Egea monitored the testimony of a bridge supervisor. Egea replied twice to the text and Christie responded once during the testimony, according to the report, but the governor’s office told investigators the messages had been deleted and the phone company said it did not maintain the texts and had only information about when they were sent and by whom.
Previously, Egea had testified that she sent the governor a text message commenting on the professionalism of the Port Authority employees whose testimony raised doubts about the legitimacy of a purported traffic study. At the time, the Christie administration maintained that the lane closures were part of a legitimate traffic study.
The report, a copy of which was obtained by The Record, does note that Wildstein told other Christie staffers that he informed the governor of the lane closures during a Sept. 11 anniversary ceremony on the third day of the closures — an allegation that the governor has denied.
“While the committee currently has no means to independently evaluate Wildstein’s reported statement, the statement, as well as the current lack of information from Wildstein, Kelly, Stepien, and others, leaves open the question of when the governor first learned of the closures and what he was told,” the report states.
It also goes further than any previous investigative report by stating that Kelly — who wrote the infamous “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” email — likely broke a state witness tampering law when she asked a subordinate to delete an email that showed she was aware of the Fort Lee mayor’s public-safety concerns during the lane closures. The report by Schar, a former federal prosecutor, does not address whether any other laws may have been broken.
The “interim report” also leaves open the possibility of continuing the inquiry. In the summer, federal prosecutors asked the panel not to call central figures in the scandal so as to avoid interfering with the criminal investigation. “The report will be supplemented should additional material information be obtained,” it concludes.
The legislative panel plans to meet on Monday when it is expected to formally release the report to the public. But at least one Republican on the Democrat-controlled committee, Assemblyman Michael Patrick Carroll, questioned the wisdom of releasing any findings when the report has so many unanswered questions.
“While I reserve judgment until I have fully read and analyzed the ‘interim’ report, and considered the discussion before the committee, I confess to confusion as to why we’re even considering releasing a report now, when we simply don’t – and can’t – know the answers to the question of motivation,” he said in an emailed statement late Thursday.
