Chris Christie’ other lingering controversy
By Steve Benen
As it turns out, an entirely different controversy can draw the scrutiny of federal investigators.
Federal investigators have some questions for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and his staff – and it’s not over the revenge traffic scandal that dominated last week’s headlines.The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general will investigate whether the governor’s office improperly used federal aid money after superstorm Sandy for political gain, NBC News has confirmed.
After the storm devastated parts of New Jersey in 2012, the state launched a public-relations campaign to encourage tourism, using taxpayer-financed, post-Sandy emergency funds. In all, the Christie administration spent $25 million on the ads.
But several agencies competed for the p.r. contract, and the Christie administration chose the firm that wanted to put the governor and his family in the commercials, which aired during Christie’s re-election campaign. Indeed, there were other firms that submitted significantly lower bids, which were passed over. Those firms did not intend to include the governor’s family in the televised commercials.
“This time, he’s outdone himself,” the Star-Ledger editorialized in August when the ads began airing. “This time, he siphoned off money that was intended for victims of Sandy to promote himself in a series of TV ads. That is a new low, one that should play prominently in his campaign for re-election.”
The investigatory process was initiated by Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), who asked HUD’s inspector general to examine whether the Christie administration misused disaster-relief funds. Pallone told CNN yesterday that the inspector general conducted a preliminary review of the spending and concluded that there was enough evidence to launch a full-scale investigation into the state’s use of federal funds.
The audit is expected to take several months.
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‘Explosive documents’ connect Christie, bridge scandal
01/08/14 10:30 AM—UPDATED 01/09/14 12:43 AM
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By Steve Benen
Up until now, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) could claim some distance between his office and the scandal surrounding the George Washington Bridge. Yes, his administration apparently caused deliberate, dangerous, and paralyzing traffic last September. Yes, his administration closed lanes in secret, ignored Port Authority procedures, and crippled the community of Fort Lee.
But, the governor has said, his office wasn’t involved in any wrongdoing. There have been allegations that the governor and his team were punishing a local mayor for refusing to endorse Christie’s re-election campaign, but the evidence was circumstantial.
That is, until this morning. The Bergen Record”s Shawn Boburg published details that connect the scandal to the governor’s office in ways that raise the stakes of the controversy considerably.
A cache of private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and his two top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee,” apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock, and insults used to refer to the borough’s mayor, who had failed to endorse Christie for re-election.
The documents obtained by The Record also raise serious doubts about months of claims by the Christie administration that the September closures of local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were part of a traffic study initiated solely by the Port Authority. Instead, they show that one of the governor’s top aides was deeply involved in the decision to choke off the borough’s access to the bridge, and they provide the strongest indication yet that it was part of a politically-motivated vendetta – a notion that Christie has publicly denied.
In mid-August, just a few weeks before the lane closures, Bridget Anne Kelly, one of three deputies on Christie’s senior staff, emailed David Wildstein, the top Christie executive at the Port Authority who ordered the closures.
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” she told him. “Got it,” he replied.
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