Dan Balz
By Dan Balz
New Jersey Gov Chris Christie got what he wanted most from an internal investigation of last fall’s lane closures on the George Washington Bridge — a declaration that he had no knowledge of a scandal instigated by some of his aides. Whether he can use it to turn a corner politically is another question.
Anyone watching Christie at his Friday news conference would conclude that the governor believes he is turning that corner. The last time he met the Trenton press corps, in January, as the scandal was enveloping his governorship, he was humble and contrite. On Friday, he was the Christie of old — pugnacious, impatient and dismissive of any questions that displeased him.
The internal report that was released on Thursday not only exonerated Christie from any involvement in the lane closures, which caused massive traffic delays around Fort Lee, NJ, last September. It also exonerated all current members of Christie’s staff. But it was at best an incomplete report.
The governor’s office hired a team of lawyers, led by Randy Mastro of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher to carry out the investigation. The report they issued blamed the bridge mess on two people. One was Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, who sent the infamous email saying it was time “for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” and who was fired by Christie in January. The other was David Wildstein, the official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who was the recipient of that message and who earlier resigned his position.
But the legal team did not interview either of those two, or others whose testimony could have helped fill in some obvious holes in its findings.
The release of the report turned out to be only part of what appeared to be a carefully orchestrated series of events designed to help Christie reemerge publicly after almost three months in which he has shunned the spotlight as multiple investigations played out.
Almost simultaneously with the release of the internal report, Christie was sitting down at his home with ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer for his first nationally televised interview since the scandal erupted with full force in January. He told her he did not think he had created the environment that caused his aides to do what they did. He also touched an important political base by giving a separate interview to Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, the first part of which aired on Friday.
Then came the news conference, and on Saturday, Christie was off to Las Vegas to deliver a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition and perhaps to meet privately with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, one of the Republican Party’s biggest super PAC donors.
One sequence of political scandals goes something like this: revelation, investigation, conclusion, rehabilitation, redemption. With two investigations still underway — one by the Democratic-controlled state legislature and the other by the office of the US attorney — Christie is a long way from completing that full sequence.
But the deliberate ramping up of activity over the past few days shows how eager the governor is to begin trying to rehabilitate his image, even in the absence of a more definitive conclusion about what happened and why back in New Jersey.
Christie has said from the beginning that he knew nothing of the decision to close traffic lanes in an apparent act of political retaliation. So far there is no evidence to disprove his statement. The internal inquiry produced no smoking gun that would knock Christie out of the running for president in 2016.
But the findings are hardly the last word on either what happened on the bridge or on the veracity of a charge by Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of Hoboken, NJ, that the Christie administration threatened to withhold Hurricane Sandy relief funds unless she approved a separate development project. The Mastro report concluded that Zimmer’s accusations had no validity.
The Trentonian newspaper in the state capital gave the report a sceptical interpretation in its Friday editions. Its front page included a picture of Christie and two headlines. One read, “Governor’s lawyers clear Christie of wrongdoing in traffic jam scandal.” Below that, in much larger type, were the words, “Conflict of Interest,” suggesting that this was an in-house job.
That’s how many of Christie’s critics see the report. It is at times a dispassionate explication of events that lays out the timeline of what happened. At other times it offers subjective interpretations and fails to reach a conclusion as to the motivations of Kelly and Wildstein. Without any testimony from either, the report could not say whether their actions represented political retaliation against the Fort Lee mayor for refusing to endorse Christie for re-election. The report said Christie was told about the mess on the bridge by Wildstein but that the governor did not recall the specifics of the conversation.
Kelly’s supporters complained that the report amounted to a sexist attack on a female employee. It revealed that she had a personal relationship for a time with Bill Stepien, Christie’s former campaign manager, that ended around the time of the bridge closures, and it also described her as sometimes “emotional.” Asked what he thought about some of the language used to describe Kelly, Christie said it was for every individual to decide. Her lawyer called the report “venomous, gratuitous . . . sexist.”
All of this means there is more information to come out. Christie, a former US attorney, has acknowledged that the probes being carried out by the Democratic-controlled legislature and by the US attorney’s office could last for months. Until they are concluded, the scandal will be with him.
But Christie isn’t waiting any longer. With some Republican donors who could be in his camp looking around at other potential candidates, such as Jeb Bush, and with other possible rivals for the nomination courting donors and activists and offering policy ideas, he appears eager to put himself back into the middle of the conversation. He also wants to take full advantage of what could be a high-profile post as chair of the Republican Governors Association in a year when there are races in 36 states.
Christie has sustained considerable political damage. His favourable rating in the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll taken last October, just before his reelection, was 33 percent positive and 17 percent negative (with the rest either neutral or having no opinion). In a survey conducted this month, those numbers were upside down, at 17 percent positive, 32 percent negative.
When Fox News’s Kelly asked whether he now had “too much baggage” to run for president, he replied: “That will be for other people to judge. There’s no baggage here because I didn’t do anything. And that eventually will wash out, as it’s starting to already.” Christie told ABC’s Sawyer that he’s far from a final decision about running in 2016 but said the people of his home state still love him. What about people in Iowa, Sawyer asked? “I think they love me in Iowa, too,” he said with a smile. “I’ve been there a lot. I think they love me there, too.” WP-BLOOMBERG
By Dan Balz
New Jersey Gov Chris Christie got what he wanted most from an internal investigation of last fall’s lane closures on the George Washington Bridge — a declaration that he had no knowledge of a scandal instigated by some of his aides. Whether he can use it to turn a corner politically is another question.
Anyone watching Christie at his Friday news conference would conclude that the governor believes he is turning that corner. The last time he met the Trenton press corps, in January, as the scandal was enveloping his governorship, he was humble and contrite. On Friday, he was the Christie of old — pugnacious, impatient and dismissive of any questions that displeased him.
The internal report that was released on Thursday not only exonerated Christie from any involvement in the lane closures, which caused massive traffic delays around Fort Lee, NJ, last September. It also exonerated all current members of Christie’s staff. But it was at best an incomplete report.
The governor’s office hired a team of lawyers, led by Randy Mastro of Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher to carry out the investigation. The report they issued blamed the bridge mess on two people. One was Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, who sent the infamous email saying it was time “for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” and who was fired by Christie in January. The other was David Wildstein, the official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who was the recipient of that message and who earlier resigned his position.
But the legal team did not interview either of those two, or others whose testimony could have helped fill in some obvious holes in its findings.
The release of the report turned out to be only part of what appeared to be a carefully orchestrated series of events designed to help Christie reemerge publicly after almost three months in which he has shunned the spotlight as multiple investigations played out.
Almost simultaneously with the release of the internal report, Christie was sitting down at his home with ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer for his first nationally televised interview since the scandal erupted with full force in January. He told her he did not think he had created the environment that caused his aides to do what they did. He also touched an important political base by giving a separate interview to Fox News’s Megyn Kelly, the first part of which aired on Friday.
Then came the news conference, and on Saturday, Christie was off to Las Vegas to deliver a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition and perhaps to meet privately with casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, one of the Republican Party’s biggest super PAC donors.
One sequence of political scandals goes something like this: revelation, investigation, conclusion, rehabilitation, redemption. With two investigations still underway — one by the Democratic-controlled state legislature and the other by the office of the US attorney — Christie is a long way from completing that full sequence.
But the deliberate ramping up of activity over the past few days shows how eager the governor is to begin trying to rehabilitate his image, even in the absence of a more definitive conclusion about what happened and why back in New Jersey.
Christie has said from the beginning that he knew nothing of the decision to close traffic lanes in an apparent act of political retaliation. So far there is no evidence to disprove his statement. The internal inquiry produced no smoking gun that would knock Christie out of the running for president in 2016.
But the findings are hardly the last word on either what happened on the bridge or on the veracity of a charge by Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of Hoboken, NJ, that the Christie administration threatened to withhold Hurricane Sandy relief funds unless she approved a separate development project. The Mastro report concluded that Zimmer’s accusations had no validity.
The Trentonian newspaper in the state capital gave the report a sceptical interpretation in its Friday editions. Its front page included a picture of Christie and two headlines. One read, “Governor’s lawyers clear Christie of wrongdoing in traffic jam scandal.” Below that, in much larger type, were the words, “Conflict of Interest,” suggesting that this was an in-house job.
That’s how many of Christie’s critics see the report. It is at times a dispassionate explication of events that lays out the timeline of what happened. At other times it offers subjective interpretations and fails to reach a conclusion as to the motivations of Kelly and Wildstein. Without any testimony from either, the report could not say whether their actions represented political retaliation against the Fort Lee mayor for refusing to endorse Christie for re-election. The report said Christie was told about the mess on the bridge by Wildstein but that the governor did not recall the specifics of the conversation.
Kelly’s supporters complained that the report amounted to a sexist attack on a female employee. It revealed that she had a personal relationship for a time with Bill Stepien, Christie’s former campaign manager, that ended around the time of the bridge closures, and it also described her as sometimes “emotional.” Asked what he thought about some of the language used to describe Kelly, Christie said it was for every individual to decide. Her lawyer called the report “venomous, gratuitous . . . sexist.”
All of this means there is more information to come out. Christie, a former US attorney, has acknowledged that the probes being carried out by the Democratic-controlled legislature and by the US attorney’s office could last for months. Until they are concluded, the scandal will be with him.
But Christie isn’t waiting any longer. With some Republican donors who could be in his camp looking around at other potential candidates, such as Jeb Bush, and with other possible rivals for the nomination courting donors and activists and offering policy ideas, he appears eager to put himself back into the middle of the conversation. He also wants to take full advantage of what could be a high-profile post as chair of the Republican Governors Association in a year when there are races in 36 states.
Christie has sustained considerable political damage. His favourable rating in the NBC-Wall Street Journal poll taken last October, just before his reelection, was 33 percent positive and 17 percent negative (with the rest either neutral or having no opinion). In a survey conducted this month, those numbers were upside down, at 17 percent positive, 32 percent negative.
When Fox News’s Kelly asked whether he now had “too much baggage” to run for president, he replied: “That will be for other people to judge. There’s no baggage here because I didn’t do anything. And that eventually will wash out, as it’s starting to already.” Christie told ABC’s Sawyer that he’s far from a final decision about running in 2016 but said the people of his home state still love him. What about people in Iowa, Sawyer asked? “I think they love me in Iowa, too,” he said with a smile. “I’ve been there a lot. I think they love me there, too.” WP-BLOOMBERG
