Chris Christie In 2016? Fah-Bridgegate-aboudit

New Jersey GOP Gov. Chris Christie officially has a scandal and cover-up on his hands as new evidence from a NJ newspaper directly links his office to an effort to use the state's port authority to cause massive traffic headaches for an entire town in order to punish a mayor who wouldn't back Christie's re-election bid last year.

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.

He can't deny it any more.

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. 

Though the governor publicly ridiculed the very idea that his office was involved, we now know with certainty that what Christie said wasn’t true. Christie’s deputy chief of staff was directly involved in planning the incident and even received updates from Wildstein before their plan was set in motion.

For all the projection by screaming wingnuts involving President Obama and the "victimization" of Republicans, when Republicans actually get the power of government, they use it to exact revenge on people who didn't vote for them.  That's par for the course, but Christie lied to New Jersey voters and the country about not being involved in this mess when he clearly was.

Christie just got caught.  Now the George Washington Bridge is tied around his neck.  Going to make it hard for him in 2016, and it should have made it hard for him to get re-elected n 2013 as Governor.

The same article highlights text messages between Wildstein and an unnamed official in which they mocked the traffic paralysis they imposed on Fort Lee and ridiculed the local mayor, Mark Sokolich. In reference to school buses that couldn’t help children get to school on time, Wildstein specifically wrote, “They are the children of [Christie's 2013 opponent for Governor Barbara] Buono voters.”

So no, Christie wasn't above screwing with the kids of people in heavily Democratic areas of the state and would have been more likely to vote for his political opponent.  What say you, Barbara Buono?

“When I heard about it when it initially surfaced in September, I knew it was an act of political retribution,” Buono told the Daily Beast. “And to suggest that Christie wasn’t aware and didn’t direct it, I thought was ludicrous at the time.” 

“This is a guy who runs a paramilitary operation,” she added. “His people don’t sneeze without checking with him first. But I think what really was the most damning [revelation] was the cavalier attitude that these folks had about subjecting children and the public to public safety hazards. These are terrible people, and the ringleader is Chris Christie.”

Your move, Chris.