TRENTON, N.J. - Gov. Chris Christie apologized Thursday for a days-long traffic jam triggered by an aide as political revenge, as the episode threatened his possible 2016 presidential run and set off a federal investigation.
Christie told reporters in Trenton that he’s “embarrassed and humiliated” by members of his team and said he fired Bridget Anne Kelly, a deputy chief of staff, “because she lied to me.” Christie said she lied when he asked senior aides a month ago whether they knew about lane closings that paralyzed Fort Lee, a town at the end of the George Washington Bridge whose mayor didn’t endorse him.
Christie, a 51-year-old Republican, said he had no knowledge about the actions of his aides and appointees and was “stunned” to learn of them. “There’s no justification for that behavior,”Christie said.
“I am responsible for what happens under my watch,” he said. “I am heartbroken that someone I permitted into that circle of trust for the last five years betrayed my trust.
“I am a very sad person today.”
Christie aides ordered the shutdown of two the bridge’s three Fort Lee approach lanes during four days in September to punish the Democratic mayor, according to emails and texts obtained Wednesday.
Paul Fishman, the U.S. attorney in New Jersey, is “reviewing the matter to determine whether a federal law was implicated,” spokesman Rebekah Carmichael said Thursday. The Legislature is also investigating.
Christie said he has nothing to hide and will direct his staff to cooperate.
The White House won’t be involved in any decision to pursue an investigation, press secretary Jay Carney said during a briefing Thursday.
National Democrats declared Christie’s performance at the news conference was self-centered and evasive.
“He lauded himself for swift action in firing staffers for lying to him,” Mo Elleithee, a Democratic National Committee spokesman, said in a news release. “And he argued that this was not reflective of the culture he’s created in his office. But Chris Christie is not the victim.The people of New Jersey who trusted him are.”
Ari Fleischer, a White House press secretary under Republican President George W. Bush, said the governor acquitted himself well.
“His reaction seemed natural, believable, apologetic and characteristically blunt,” Fleischer said. “The only thing he has to fear is information that contradicts his statement that he didn’t know about the lane closures.”
Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich didn’t break ranks - as dozens of other New Jersey Democrats did - to endorse Christie for re-election in November against his Democratic challenger, Barbara Buono. Christie swamped Buono, 60 percent to 38 percent.
The emails showed that Kelly on Aug. 13 told David Wildstein, a Christie appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the bridge, that it was “time for some traffic problems.”
Last month, Christie said he had nothing to do with the closings, which he asserted were part of a traffic study, joking with reporters that he personally blocked the traffic with cones. That statement, he said Thursday, came after he gathered his staff and gavethem one hour to disclose what they knew. Nobody came forward, he said.
“They all reported that there was no information other than what we already knew,” he said. “I was being led to believe by folks around me that there was no basis to this. I was wrong.”
He said he still has no idea whether there even was a traffic study.
AMBULANCE DELAYED
Christie said his communications director, Maria Comella, called him Wednesday at 8:45 a.m. between his workout with his trainer and his shower to tell him about the emails and texts. He said he got very little sleep, and by 9 a.m.Thursday, he’d decided to fire Kelly.
The governor said he was “blindsided.” He said he would have never joked about the issue had he realized his staff member’s involvement.
Christie called Kelly “stupid” and “deceitful.” Her deception led him to mislead the public, he said, but he did so unwittingly.
“I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or its execution,” he said. “And I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here, regardless of what the facts ultimately uncover, this was handled in a callous and indifferent way.”
Kelly hasn’t commented.Christie said he hadn’t spoken to her or asked to hear her side of the story since the emails were released, saying he didn’t want to be accused of trying to influence a possible witness.
Christie, a former U.S. attorney, said he asked Bill Stepien, a top aide and two-time campaign manager, to remove his name from consideration as leader of the state Republican Party. Stepien,who also was asked to step down as a political adviser to the Republican Governors Association, wrote in a Sept. 18 email to Wildstein:“The mayor is an idiot.”
The governor said he was disturbed by the “callous indifference” displayed by Stepien in the emails released Wednesday.
The gridlock delayed crews responding to medical emergencies, including that of a 91-year-old woman who suffered cardiac arrest and later died. Paramedics hit heavy traffic on Fort Lee Road and met the ambulance en route to the hospital instead of at the scene, Paul Favia, Fort Lee’s emergency medical services coordinator, said in a Sept. 10 letter to Sokolich that was released by the borough clerk’s office.
The daughter of the woman who died said Thursday that she did not believe the inability of an ambulance to reach her mother’s house was a factor in her death.
“I honestly believe it was just her time,” said Vilma Oleri, whose mother, Florence Genova, died Sept. 9, the first day that the closing of lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge set off the snarls.
From Sept. 9-12, delays in crossing the George Washington Bridge that typically last about 30 minutes stretched to four hours or more. On the fifth day, officials on the New York side reopened lanes on what the Port Authority calls the busiest bridge in the world, a key link for U.S. East Coast traffic on Interstate 95.
“We are appropriately going nuts,” Wildstein wrote to Kelly on Sept. 13, as traffic flowed. David Samson, Christie’s appointee as Port Authority chairman, was “helping us to retaliate” for the easing of the snarls, the emails said.
Christie said that he spoke to Samson for two hours Wednesday and believes that he knew nothing about the issue.
At 8:04 a.m. Sept. 10, Sokolich sent a text to Bill Baroni, Christie’s top executive appointee at the authority, saying Fort Lee had “four very busy traffic lanes merging into only one toll booth.”
His text became part of a string discussing the closings. The record doesn’t include the identities of participants other than Sokolich.
“The bigger problem is getting kids to school,” Sokolich wrote. “Help, please. It’s maddening.”
The text string includes a response: “They are the children of Buono voters.”
Baroni, a former state senator, resigned from the Port Authority on Dec. 13. Wildstein also quit.
“This is not the tone that I’ve set over the past four years in this building,” Christie said. “This is the exception. This is not the rule.
“I am who I am. But I am not a bully.”
SUBPOENA RULED VALID
New Jersey Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson on Thursday refused to block a subpoena by the Democratic-controlled Legislature for Wildstein to testify in Trenton about the lane closings.
Wildstein claimed in an emergency court filing that the Legislature lacked the authority to compel his testimony. He also said Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a Democrat, issued the subpoena without proper authority and may not have signed it.
“This is an abuse of power by a legislative committee,” Wildstein’s attorney, Alan Zegas, argued at a court hearing in Trenton. “This is a matter of whether power by a governmental branch has been lawfully exercised.”
Zegas also claimed that the committee overstepped its authority, which includes overseeing Port Authority finances.
Jacobson said that a legislative committee had the proper authority to subpoena Wildstein.
“There is jurisdiction to give a subpoena,” Jacobson said. “There’s no reason for the court to assume any bad faith on the part of this legislative committee. Where there’s a legitimate public end, it’s immaterial whether a political motivation is also present.”
At the committee hearing, which began about 1 p.m .,Wildstein invoked his right to remain silent so as not to incriminate himself and was ruled in contempt.
Still, committee members went on asking him questions for an hour, almost all of them relating to emails and text messages Wildstein previously provided the committee. Wildstein invoked his Fifth Amendment right more than a dozen times in response to the questions at the State House hearing.
Wisniewski, the committee’s chairman, said the committee will subpoena more documents and seek to compel more testimony. Kelly will be among the next round of subpoenas, he said.
“Clearly, the governor is in damage-control mode,” Wisniewski said.
Information for this article was contributed by Elise Young, Terrence Dopp, David Voreacos, John McCormick, Derek Wallbank, William Selway and Esme E. Deprez of Bloomberg News; by Marc Santora,William K. Rashbaum, Michael Barbaro and Kate Zernike of The New York Times; by Angela Delli Sanit, Geoff Mulvihill and Steve Peoples of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/10/2014