Has BridgeGhazi Fall Guy Cut Deal With Feds?
Here’s a big development in the “procedural” stage of the BridgeGhazi scandal that has already dealt a huge blow to corpulent New Jersey Governor (and still Prez-wannabe) Chris Christie, courtesy Esquire‘s Scott Raab.
Bad news for Chris Christie — and very good news for the citizens of New Jersey: Esquire has learned from sources close to the investigation that David Wildstein, the former Port Authority operative who helped plan and execute the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk, is now cooperating with Paul Fishman, the federal prosecutor investigating the soon-to-be-ex-governor and his minions for criminal conduct. Fishman has also increased the number of investigators at work on the case, and has begun presenting evidence and witnesses to a grand jury in Newark.
Wildstein was forced to quit his PA job in December, before Fort Lee’s corpses bobbed to the surface. Christie, who went to high school with Wildstein and put him at the PA as “director of interstate capital projects” — a job created just for him — helped edit the media statement thanking Wildstein “for his service to the people of New Jersey and the region.”
In January, Wildstein refused to testify before a New Jersey legislative committee investigating last September’s George Washington Bridge lane closures, citing his 5th Amendment protection against self-incrimination. It was Wildstein’s cache of e-mails and texts, provided to the committee, that featured the instantly immortal exchange between Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelly (“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”) and Wildstein (“Got it”).
Christie fired Kelly in early January. Both her lawyer and Wildstein’s have said their clients would cooperate with investigators in exchange for immunity from prosecution. The recently released, 360-page “Christie Report” — commissioned by Christie, crafted by the same law firm Christie hired to answer investigators’ subpoenas of his own office, touted by Christie as “vindication,” and paid for by New Jersey taxpayers — found that of all of the folks working in the governor’s, and all the others he appointed to executive positions at the PA, only Wildstein and Kelly had any knowledge that Fort Lee’s nightmare was caused by anything other than an ill-conceived but genuine Port Authority traffic study.
The Christie Report investigators damned both Wildstein and Kelly without speaking with either of them. Unlike Kelly, Wildstein was perfectly positioned at the PA to proffer evidence that could implicate two other Christie henchmen at the Port, both departed — deputy executive director Bill Baroni, and chairman of the PA’s Board of Commissioners, David Samson. (Quelle coincidence! Neither of those two deigned to speak with the authors of the Christie Report.) The report in its entirety is a steaming pile of crap, a classic Christie smear job, designed to reach the only result that might spare his political life: Christie knew nothing.
It’s doubtful that Fishman would’ve bolstered the size of his investigative staff if a deal were not already in place with Wildstein. Just sayin’…
