The press conference today and accompanying report supposedly exonerating Chris Christie of any wrongdoing in the Bridgegate scandal make quite a few leaps of faith when it comes to accepting Christie’s self defense at face value, and leaves even more questions unanswered. Given that no original documents were released along with the report, and despite the $1 million price tag for New Jersey taxpayers of this investigation, we’re left with few answers and only more questions about Chris Christie’s involvement in this scandal. Here are our top five:
1) Attorney Randy Mastro asserted that Christie had no reason to remember discussions of bridge lane closings and resulting traffic with David Wildstein on September 11, 2013, but he also started that “people lie, documents don’t.” Why is Chris Christie any less likely to lie than David Wildstein?
2) Port Authority Chairman David Samson did not cooperate with this internal Bridgegate investigation. Will Chris Christie hold him accountable for refusing to follow Christie’s own directive that members of his administration would cooperate?
3) Why were questions about the Christie/Samson meeting in August 2013 ignored by Attorney Randy Mastro? When asked, Mastro responded, “If you give me your name and number, I’ll get back to you.”
4) Christie attorney Randy Mastro claimed he examined Christie’s phone logs and text messages, but he never discussed whether any messages from August and September 2013 were recovered. Does this mean there is evidence that Christie selectively deleted portions of his text message history?
5) When will the Christie administration publicly release all of the documentation they handed over to their attorneys for this sham investigation? Will the evidence provided for this investigation be turned over to the legislative committee investigating Bridegate?
Published: Mar 27, 2014