In something less than one of those shocking March Madness upsets you get in college basketball, lawyers hired by the Chris Christie administration have completely exonerated Chris Christie in Bridgegate.
In something almost as predictable, just as a way of Christie changing the subject a little, the report also details a relationship between Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s fired chief of staff, and Bill Stepien, his former campaign manager. So they are clearly dirty and bad. The governor is not only good, he’s better than ever.
This was called an internal investigation, and you can’t get more internal than this outside of a doctor’s office. But you better believe it says exactly what the governor of New Jersey has been saying for months, just in much more painstaking detail:
They did it!
Kelly did it to the drivers on the George Washington Bridge last September. David Wildstein, a former Port Authority guy who Christie either didn’t like or doesn’t remember from high school, he did it, too.
But Christie is clean, oh boy is he. The whole world is once again asked to believe that Christie was telling the whole truth and nothing but in that nearly two-hour press conference he gave a few months ago, one that started to feel like the opera by the end.
You remember that one because, let’s face it, how could anybody forget? It was like one of his town meetings where Christie is right and you’re wrong and if you think he’s wrong, shut up.
Dario Cantatore/Getty Images A report blames Christie's former top aides of forcing lane closures at the George Washington Bridge six months ago as a political payback at the mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie during a re-election bid.
HO Gov. Chris Christie's former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, is among others who were blamed in a report for causing Bridgegate.
MIKE SEGAR/REUTERS Christie's former chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, has also been blamed for the fiasco at the George Washington Bridge.
ABC NEWS In an interview with Diane Sawyer, Christie clears himself all over again of responsibility for Bridgegate. Lawyers hired by the Christie administration have already released a report exonerating the governor of wrongdoing.
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And it isn’t supposed to matter, as we’re all presented a self-serving document like this, one written for suckers, that Christie's lawyers did not talk to the following people:
- Kelly
- Wildstein
- Stepien
- Bill Baroni.
Baroni, of course, is another of Christie’s former top lieutenants, and one of his top appointees to the Port Authority, which starts to sound like one great big fun convenience store, at least if you were looking at it — or for favors — on the Jersey side of the Hudson.
Not only do Christie’s guys clear Christie, he goes on with Diane Sawyer on Thursday night and clears himself all over again. Say this for him: This time Christie gets out in front of his own story, before we find out the results of investigations being conducted by the New Jersey state legislature and Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney for the Garden State.
“Sometimes, people do inexplicably stupid things,” Christie tells Sawyer.
I asked a smart guy out of New York City politics on Thursday morning if he thinks Christie still thinks he can be President after Bridgegate, and basically being accused by the mayor of Hoboken of having his people shake her down over Sandy relief money if she wouldn’t play ball on a big development.
The guy said, “I think that (Christie) thinks that 2016 is still a long way away.”
Sometimes, people do inexplicably stupid things.
The report released on Thursday is just a part of the long game for Christie. The much larger narrative, which he has been laying out since the Bridgegate story broke big and loud, is that he was a victim of scheming, lying aides who went behind his back to turn the GW Bridge into a traffic nightmare six months ago, those aides perhaps thinking they were just doing what Christie might want them to do with another mayor who wouldn’t play ball.
Now, because of this inside job from Christie-hired lawyers — does the million dollars the whole thing cost count as some kind of campaign commercial buy? — we are once again asked to believe that a politician one legendary for being a great big micro-manager was completely in the dark about what happened on that bridge.
But he must think he can get by with this internal investigation, at least for the time being. It reminds you of the investigation, paid for by the Joe Paterno family, at Penn State that cleared Paterno of any possible wrongdoing in the hideous story of Jerry Sandusky.
This now becomes the official Christie version of things, even though nobody was under oath, and even though everybody on his side had a clear agenda, the agenda being this: Convincing the world that the governor of New Jersey can still run for President and maybe even win.
Once again he says he is clean. It’s his former top aides and this Wildstein who are dirty. You see what we’re all supposed to believe here, because of this report: People like Stepien and Bridget Kelly were doing to Christie what they were supposedly doing with each other.
Source: Top Stories - Google News - http://ift.tt/1hERgVB
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