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Christie's Office Targets Former Ally in a Memo - New York Times

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N.Y. / Region |Christie’s Office Targets Former Ally in a Memo



http://nyti.ms/LmJHtB


Gov. Chris Christie’s administration struck back hard and personally on Saturday against a former ally who accused the governor of lying about how much he knew about the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, a scandal that has become the biggest crisis in Mr. Christie’s political career.


In a two-page memo obtained by Politico, and which it said was sent “from the governor’s office,” David Wildstein, a former high-ranking official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was portrayed as a loose cannon who was attacking Mr. Christie only in an effort to save himself and noted that he had been described in newspaper accounts in the past as “tumultuous” and someone “who made moves that were not productive.”


The memo listed five incidents as evidence, saying that “as a 16-year-old kid,” Mr. Wildstein had sued over a school board election; that he had been “publicly accused by his high school social studies teacher of deceptive behavior”; that he had a controversial tenure as mayor of Livingston, N.J.; that he had been an anonymous blogger; and that he “had a strange habit of registering web addresses for other people’s names without telling them.”


The memo went on to attack Mr. Wildstein for ulterior motives in his accusation against the governor on Friday, noting that he has been seeking immunity from prosecutors in the federal investigation into the lane closings in September, and that he wants the Port Authority to pay his legal bills.


Mr. Wildstein has been at the center of the growing scandal, first as an operator for Mr. Christie’s administration and now as the governor’s chief antagonist.


Last month, emails he produced in response to a subpoena from the Legislature showed that a deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie had sent him an email in August calling for “some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” the town at the New Jersey end of the bridge that effectively ground to a halt when the two access lanes were closed for four days in September.


Mr. Wildstein instructed bridge workers to close the lanes. He and others at the Port Authority and in Mr. Christie’s administration and campaign insisted for months that the lanes had been closed as part of a traffic study. But the documents released under subpoena last month showed that they were privately mocking the town’s mayor, a Democrat who had resisted the Christie campaign’s overtures to endorse the governor’s re-election campaign. The executive director at the Port Authority and bridge officials testified in December that there had been no traffic study, though documents later showed that Mr. Wildstein had tried to create the cover of one, to the puzzlement of Port Authority traffic engineers.


Mr. Wildstein’s accusation Friday came in a letter from his lawyer to the Port Authority seeking to have his legal bills paid. In it, his attorney, Alan Zegas, said that “evidence exists” that Mr. Christie had “direct knowledge of the lane closings, during the period when the lanes were shut, contrary to what the governor stated publicly in a two-hour press conference” several weeks ago.


“Mr. Wildstein contests the accuracy of various statements that the governor made about him, and he can prove the inaccuracy of some,” the letter continued.


Mr. Christie had said in his January news conference that he was unaware of the lane closings until they were first reported in The Record, a North Jersey newspaper, on September 13, when the lanes were reopened, and that he had not learned until January that they had any political motive. And he said he and Mr. Wildstein had been falsely described as high school friends, insisting that they were not even acquaintances in high school, although they had met on a political campaign as teenagers. The governor said he had rarely seen Mr. Wildstein since, and had not seen him in the months before his re-election in November, though Port Authority photographs show the two men in friendly moments at a public event during the time of the lane closings.


The Christie administration memo on Saturday said Mr. Wildstein had been held in contempt by the New Jersey legislature for refusing to testify, and that he had “failed to provide this so-called ‘evidence’ when he was first subpoenaed.”


“Bottom line,” the memo concluded, “David Wildstein will do and say anything to save David Wildstein.”


The Christie administration did not respond to a request for comment.


Mr. Zegas, Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer, did not respond to requests for comment on Friday or Saturday.


Mr. Wildstein was hired at the Port Authority by Bill Baroni, a former state senator who was deputy executive director and Mr. Christie’s top appointee at the Port Authority. Mr. Christie has acknowledged that he signed off on Mr. Wildstein’s hiring.


Mr. Wildstein resigned in early December, saying the lane closings had become a “distraction.”


Documents released last month under the subpoena showed that he had dined with the governor’s chief spokesman two evenings before he resigned, and that the governor had personally approved a statement calling Mr. Wildstein a “tireless advocate for New Jersey’s interests at the Port Authority,” and praising his “commitment and dedication.”


The email from the governor’s office also attacked The New York Times, which first reported Mr. Wildstein’s accusations Friday, accusing it of “sloppy reporting.” A brief story on the paper’s website initially reported that Mr. Wildstein said he had evidence that Mr. Christie had known about the lane closings earlier than he previously acknowledged; the story was changed within an hour to say that he said “evidence existed,” and that Mr. Wildstein’s own evidence referred to his accusation that Mr. Christie had been lying about him.


Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for The Times, said on Saturday night, “We regularly update web stories for clarity as we did in this case,” adding, “we do not note changes unless it involves an error.”


Mr. Wildstein’s letter came as the governor prepared to celebrate the playing of the Super Bowl in New Jersey.


The governor was booed at a Super Bowl event in Times Square on Saturday, where he sat on stage with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona, and Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York.


While the other three beamed and waved, Mr. Christie looked down. Mr. de Blasio sat next to Mr. Cuomo and punched him playfully throughout the ceremony, and the two giggled.


Ms. Brewer seemed to try to cheer up Mr. Christie. At ceremony’s end, reporters pushed toward the stage and Mr. Christie stepped to the back. When coaxed to the front by Ms. Brewer to pose for a photo,reporters asked Mr. Christie a barrage of questions.


“Governor,” one shouted, “any truth to the allegations?”


Mr. Christie said nothing and walked off the stage behind a giant speaker blaring Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.”



Nate Schweber and Ashley Southall contributed reporting.













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