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stevenleser

(32,886 posts)
Mon Feb 3, 2014, 10:39 PM Feb 2014

xPost from GD: Transcript from my Feb 2-3 Radio Show piece on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie

http://steveleser.blogspot.com/2014/02/transcript-from-my-feb-2-3-radio-show.html

To hear this from my Radio Show Podcast, click here to hear at BlogtalkRadio.com http://www.blogtalkradio.com/lesersense/2014/02/02/coverage-of-bombshell-new-evidence-and-allegations-against-chris-christie-more-1 or here to hear at KCAA http://kcaaradio.celestrion.net/kcaa-podcasts/leser/20140203.html


Folks, I was on the Kelly file hosted by Megyn Kelly on Friday night to discuss the latest allegations about New Jersey governor Chris Christie and they do not paint a nice picture of him.

If you haven’t heard, the attorney for David Wildstein, the erstwhile Port Authority director of interstate capital projects and the person most responsible for implementation of the closed lanes on the George Washington Bridge, says that he has evidence that Chris Christie knew about the scandal during the time the bridge lanes were closed, which is much earlier than Christie says he did and also that he was aware of the Patrick Foye email before he said he was.

There is a common character these scandals take when in the person at the center of them is guilty of doing something wrong and is desperately trying to hide that fact.

They come out and do a big press conference where they deny everything, they say they did nothing wrong and had no idea about wrongdoing, and then drip, drip, drip, the evidence that they did not tell the truth and that they are guilty of whatever it is they are being accused of slowly and painfully comes out. Not all at once and sometimes the first revelations aren’t exactly smoking guns, but it starts with evidence that there were things said in that big press conference that were just not true.

Something told me when Governor Christie held his January 9th press conference where he denied participating in or in fact all prior knowledge of any wrongdoing in his administration regarding Bridge-gate, that this was not going to be the end of his problems with that issue.

For starters, the suggestion that Christie, who claims to be this extraordinary leader and manager and is in fact a micromanager and bully and who portrays himself as this guy who is on top of everything but on this one issue issued a couple of dozen denials that he knew what was going on until way after it was over, those two versions of Christie that he wanted to feed us seemed incongruous non credible.

He claimed in his press conference that he didn’t begin to know something was wrong until press reports began to surface about Patrick Foye’s email. Patrick Foye is the Executive Director of the Port Authority and his forceful email on September 13th, the fifth day of the George Washington bridge lane closures is what ended the lane closures.

The bridge closures occurred from September 9th to September 13th. Press reports about Patrick Foye’s email didn’t start coming out until October 1st. That is when Governor Christie says he realized the lane closures were some kind of issue.

What I want to make sure everyone understands is that the dual level George Washington Bridge which connects Manhattan and New Jersey and serves 102 million vehicles per year is the most heavily trafficked bridge in the world.

This bridge is arguably the most important piece of infrastructure in a metropolitan area with a lot of important infrastructure. In order for someone to believe Christie, you would have to believe that the Governor of a state would ignore a massive ongoing five day crisis with the most important piece of infrastructure in his state and wouldn’t look into it at all.

Honestly, who would believe that? Obviously the justice department doesn’t believe that which is why a Federal investigation complete with the FBI having agents involved is currently going on with regards to bridge gate.

I want to talk about some of the important reasons I think that Governor Christie is guilty of wrongdoing in Bridge gate, but before I talk about that, I think it’s important to remind you all that there is a second federal investigation going on regarding the Christie administration concerning the Christie administration’s use of the Superstorm Sandy funds and there are several allegations involved.

The first is that Christie improperly chose between two bids for marketing the relief efforts. There was a bid that would cost $2.5 million dollars and a bid that would cost $4.7 million dollars and again this was just for marketing, not actually rebuilding anything. The costs would come right out of the relief funds. Christie chose the $4.7 million dollar effort and here is the kicker, the $4.7 million dollar plan involved advertisements featuring Christie and his family. The lower priced campaign did not.

Also, as reported by NJ.com, Gov. Chris Christie helped channel $6 million in federal Hurricane Sandy recovery dollars to a project conceived years before the storm struck, in an Essex County town that was not particularly hard hit, records show. The funding, pushed for personally by the Republican governor, was announced less than two weeks before the town’s Democratic mayor Raymond Kimble formally endorsed him for reelection. The development is an $18 million senior center and housing complex in Belleville called Franklin Manor. One third of the cost — $6 million — is being paid for by a $1.8 billion pot of federally funded Community Development Block Grants to help the state recover from Sandy.
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(More at above link)
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xPost from GD: Transcript from my Feb 2-3 Radio Show piece on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (Original Post) stevenleser Feb 2014 OP
quid-pro-quo sheshe2 Feb 2014 #1
Thank you She she! I'm proud of this piece. stevenleser Feb 2014 #2
You should be proud of it! sheshe2 Feb 2014 #3
Thank you for all the clear concise information on Christie-gate.. Cha Feb 2014 #4
You make me think of Dylan's 'A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall'! IrishAyes Feb 2014 #6
Well said. Thank you. IrishAyes Feb 2014 #5

sheshe2

(83,981 posts)
1. quid-pro-quo
Mon Feb 3, 2014, 11:03 PM
Feb 2014

From your link

I feel sorry for my friends just over the Hudson river in New Jersey. People don’t deserve to have elected officials who engage in corrupt practices. These quid-pro-quo and retaliatory actions take money away from doing the state’s business, they waste the taxpayers money. The people of New Jersey did not deserve to have Superstorm sandy relief funds spent needlessly on a more expensive ad campaign that featured the Governor and his family. They didn’t deserve to have superstorm sandy relief funds go to a mega-complex in a city that received little to no damage in the storm. They didn’t deserve to have EMS responders in Fort Lee require four times the normal response time to respond during the lane closures and the people of New Jersey didn’t deserve a situation where parent’s in Fort Lee couldn’t get their kids to school those days. The estimated money lost to New Jersey commuters alone in gas and time from bridge-gate is estimated at over $20 million. That’s just the beginning in terms of estimating money lost from that event.


Oh yes, the party of fiscal conservatives. Steal from the hardworking middle class to line their own pockets with cash.

Please tell me they are truly going down for this!

Thanks Steven, that was a great show.

 

stevenleser

(32,886 posts)
2. Thank you She she! I'm proud of this piece.
Mon Feb 3, 2014, 11:15 PM
Feb 2014

I haven't seen all of this info brought together in one place anywhere up until now.

sheshe2

(83,981 posts)
3. You should be proud of it!
Mon Feb 3, 2014, 11:24 PM
Feb 2014

Well done.

It's a complicated story to follow. So many twists and turns. I have read so much about it, yet it was here and there. You brought the ends together.

I hope they pay Steven, all of them. Christie included. At the very least I want him to resign, he owes that to the State of NJ.

Thanks again, Bravo!

Cha

(297,877 posts)
4. Thank you for all the clear concise information on Christie-gate..
Tue Feb 4, 2014, 08:18 AM
Feb 2014

You were right, Steve.. Christie's marathon presser was full of easy lies..

Remember those on this board who thought he'd slide? Way too early to tell at that point even if one did get sucked in by Christie's woe is me-I'm so betrayed-I know nothing-scheme.

He said he hadn't had any sleep for two nights yet he just found out about it "yesterday". Big clue from mr micromanager himself.. and, when you have the obvious lies.. there will be more to come. In our wildest imagination we never would guess how much more!

So much corruption.. so little time to keep up with it all! Good job, Steve. I've read a lot about this from the beginning and your transcript seems to have everything nicely woven together.

From your link..

"The first is that Christie improperly chose between two bids for marketing the relief efforts. There was a bid that would cost $2.5 million dollars and a bid that would cost $4.7 million dollars and again this was just for marketing, not actually rebuilding anything. The costs would come right out of the relief funds. Christie chose the $4.7 million dollar effort and here is the kicker, the $4.7 million dollar plan involved advertisements featuring Christie and his family. The lower priced campaign did not."

Christie excelled at wasting Sandy Fed Funds and New Jersey taxpayers' money.. Booker's special election being a prime example that apparently too many in NJ didn't give a shit about.

More linkage..

"a. New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie called New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week to complain about a Cuomo appointee's handling of a growing controversy over traffic pattern changes on the George Washington Bridge, a person familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Christie, a Republican, complained in a private phone call to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, that Patrick Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was pressing too hard to get to the bottom of why the number of toll lanes onto the bridge from Fort Lee, N.J. was cut from three to one in early September, according to this person. The lane closures occurred without notice to local authorities, officials have said, and snarled traffic for a week in the small borough on the Hudson River bluffs"


What's up with complaining to Gov Cuomo about Pat Foye, the Executive Director of the PA of NY and NJ, investigating exactly what he should have been investigating in order to find out what happened with the GWB Closures? That doesn't even make any sense. And, where is Gov Cuomo on this? I can't wait to hear what he has to say about it.

If they're saying Christie knew about it during the closure then whose idea was it to close the lanes? Hmmmm?

snip//

"Governor Christie expected his staff to threaten and carry out such measures. It is demonstrated in repeated instances how this was the case. I think Governor Christie expected that the mayor of Fort Lee Mark Sokolich would support his re-election because of the killing of the Hudson train tunnel which would have diverted traffic and business from Fort Lee. Christie looked at that as a favor and expected quid pro quo in the form of an endorsement of his reelection."

This is new to me.. Sokolich didn't want the Tunnel built so Christie didn't get it done to help out Ft Lee and he expected the Mayor to endorse him for re-election?.. and when he didn't there was a .. "time for some traffic problems in Ft Lee"? Wow.. that's pretty huge.. Were there other reasons Christie didn't want the Tunnel built?

There will be lots of books on the rise and fall of this sociopathic, political schemer, chris Christie.. a movie too.. you know they will. In the mean time.. the subpoenas and documents will continue and the question remains .. who will be the next Christie aide/staffer who wants immunity or will they all go down with the ship?

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