Nutty and Slutty

In seeking to exonerate Chris Christie of Bridgegate, Randy Mastro of Gibson, Dunn goes back to the playbook used to discredit Anita Hill when she testified against Clarence Thomas’ nomination to the Supreme Court in 1991.  Hill was disparaged and dismissed as “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty.”

In his Bridgegate report, Mastro dismisses Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer, who claims she was threatened with denial of Sandy relief funds unless she approved a development project Christie wanted, as nutty.  Mastro provides photos of Zimmer yawning and smiling and argues — really — that people who feel threatened don’t yawn or smile.

As for slutty, Mastro offers us Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, who had an affair with Christie’s campaign manager, Bill Stepien, that ended just before Kelly ordered the lanes closed on the George Washington Bridge.  While Mastro doesn’t establish a  motive for closing the lanes, he thinks it has something to do with Bridget getting dumped by Bill:

“Like the others in the lane realignments, events in Kelly’s personal life may have had some bearing on her subjective motivations and state of mind. … Her first known communication to [David] Wildstein about the lane realignment in mid-August 2013, for example, occurred around the time that her personal relationship with Stepien had cooled, apparently at Stepien’s behest and Stepien and Kelly had largely stopped speaking.”   So Kelly may not have a face that launched a thousand ships, but she has a temperament that stopped a thousand cars.

Mastro blames the whole thing on Kelly and Wildstein:  “Mayor Sokolich also appears to have been targeted for some reason yet to be determined.  Whether Kelly had her own ulterior motive for doing so or was simply supporting her friend, Wildstein, is also yet to be determined.”

Fortunately, we have real investigations being conducted by the New Jersey legislature and federal prosecutors to figure out all this “yet to be determined” stuff, which will have a major impact on the “yet to be determined” 2016 GOP presidential nominee, who, I promise you, won’t be Chris Christie.

It’s easy for me, sitting in California, to laugh at this piece-of-crap report because, unlike the poor taxpayers of New Jersey, I didn’t help pay $1 million for it.  Although as a federal taxpayer, I did help Christie use Sandy funds to pay for ads he starred in to help his re-election.  Christie clearly loves to promote himself using other people’s money.

Christie may have lost 100 pounds since his obesity surgery, but he’s still full of shit.  Christie claimed at the outset of the scandal that he didn’t know about the lane closures before or during their occurrence.  But Mastro’s report notes that David Wildstein claims he told Christie at a 9/11 event while the lanes were still closed.  Mastro swats away this claim as no biggie, saying Christie doesn’t remember such a conversation, and he was very busy with people wanting their pictures taken with him.

I expect as the real investigations proceed, we’ll hear a lot more about Christie’s relationship with Wildstein and a lot less about Kelly’s relationship with Stepien.

Mastro pathetically tries to lift Christie up by kicking Kelly when she’s down.  But smearing Bridget Anne Kelly won’t make Bridgegate go away, and it sure as hell won’t make the GOP’s problems with women voters go away.

“The Governor Must Go”

From “Chris Christie should resign if bombshell proves true,” Editorial Board, New Jersey Star–Ledger:

“Forget about the White House in 2016. The question now is whether Gov. Chris Christie can survive as governor.

“David Wildstein, the man who ordered the George Washington Bridge lane closures, is now pointing the finger directly at Gov. Chris Christie, saying the governor knew about the lane closures in September when they occurred.

“That directly contradicts Christie account at his Jan. 13 press conference when he made this statement: “I had no knowledge of this — of the planning, the execution or anything about it… I first found out about it after it was over.”

“If this charge proves true, then the governor must resign or be impeached. Because that would leave him so drained of credibility that he could not possibly govern effectively. He would owe it to the people of New Jersey to stop the bleeding and quit. And if he should refuse, then the Legislature should open impeachment hearings.

“By the governor’s own standard, lying is a firing offense. Here’s what he said about his deputy chief of staff, Bridget Kelley, at the same press conference: “There’s no justification for ever lying to a governor or a person in authority in this government. As a result, I’ve terminated Bridget’s employment.”

“One hopes that he would consider lying to the people of New Jersey as an offense of equal magnitude.

“Wildstein’s statement means that others who have been implicated in this scandal will probably come forward now as well, hoping to strike deals with prosecutors before their testimony becomes redundant.

“When you layer of top of this the criminal investigation in Hoboken, and a separate investigation of Sandy spending by the federal Departmentof Housing and Urban Development, it becomes difficult to see how Christie can function.

“This is a shocking development.  Christie is now damaged goods.  If Wildstein’s disclosures are as powerful as he claims, the governor must go.”

“Cut from the Same Corrupt Cloth”

From “A Hostage to Christie in Hoboken,” Amy Davidson, The New Yorker:

“The bottom line is, it’s not fair for the Governor to hold Sandy funds hostage for the City of Hoboken because he wants me to give back to one private developer,” Mayor Dawn Zimmer told Steve Kornacki, of MSNBC, this weekend. By Sunday, she said she was meeting with the United States Attorney’s office, showing them diary entries and other notes she made last May. That was when, she says, Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno pulled her aside in a ShopRite parking lot (why is so much New Jersey state business conducted in parking lots?) for a few words about large sums of money.

There were two pools of cash: what a developer called the Rockefeller Group and others might make from four acres of North Hoboken, and what the city might get from a quarter-billion-dollar Sandy relief fund that Chris Christie had a say in distributing. At ShopRite, according to Zimmer, “with no one else around,” the Lieutenant Governor

says that I need to move forward with the Rockefeller project. It is very important to the Governor. The word is that you are against it and you need to move forward, or we are not going to be able to help you. I know it’s not right—these things should not be connected—but they are, she says, and if you tell anyone I will deny it.

Christie officials have now denied it, though the protestations have been flustered and, at times, demonstrably disingenuous and off point.

“I don’t know what they were trying to get in the Bridgegate, but I do know what they’re trying to get in Hoboken. They’re holding our Sandy funds hostage in order to get pushed through and expedite the Rockefeller project,” Zimmer told CNN’s Candy Crowley.

The Rockefeller project involved a skyscraper and surrounding complex across from Manhattan, in a densely populated area a short PATH train ride from the city. … Nineteen blocks were candidates for redevelopment. Strangely, a study commissioned by the state found that only three blocks were appropriate—the very three owned by the Rockefeller Group. …[T]he other property owners went to the planning board and “asked why ‘a redevelopment plan for the exclusive benefit’ of the Rockefeller Group would ‘[favor] a single property owner to the detriment of all other property owners in the North End Area.’ ” The board then voted not to accept the study, holding up the project. This was the heart of the problem, Zimmer said, that she was told to make go away.

 

Incidentally or not, the Rockefeller Group had hired the law firm of David Samson, Christie’s top appointee to the Port Authority.

 

“I thought he was honest. I thought he was moral,” Zimmer wrote of Christie in a diary entry, last May, which she’s now given to prosecutors. “I thought he was something very different. This week, I found out he’s cut from the same corrupt cloth that I’ve been fighting for the last four years. I am so disappointed. It literally brings tears to my eyes.”

 

If Zimmer really felt that way—if he had really hurt her—why would she smile politely and say hello? They have pointed to a tweet: “To be clear I am very glad Governor Christie has been our Gov.” The reason she had to be clear was that she wasn’t endorsing him for governor, something that, as we’ve learned, the Governor really wanted mayors to do. Even in her interview with Kornacki, she talked about Christie policies she admired. Zimmer didn’t sound like someone with a grudge; she described herself as someone who just felt stuck. Zimmer’s explanation for her silence is the same one heard in a lot of middle schools: she thought that she and Hoboken would have a harder time if she didn’t, and the people she wanted as friends wouldn’t be on her side. “I was really concerned that, if I came forward, no one believed me, that we would really be cut out of the Sandy funding,” more of which was on the table, she told Crowley.

 

Photograph: Andrew Burton/Getty

 

Doesn’t Even Begin to Scratch the Surface

If you read one story today, make it “Hoboken Mayor: Christie Team Shook Us Down for Sandy Relief,” Brian Murphy, Talking Points Memo (http://talkingpointsmemo.com/cafe/hoboken-mayor-christie-team-shook-us-down-for-sandy-relief).

Some excerpts (but read the whole thing):

“On MSNBC’s ‘Up with Steve Kornacki’ this morning, Hoboken, N.J. mayor Dawn Zimmer offered an extraordinary account of her dealings with the administration of Governor Chris Christie concerning federal Hurricane Sandy relief aid. She described an effort by top state officials – the lieutenant governor and a cabinet member – to coerce Hoboken’s city government into fast-tracking approval of a proposed redevelopment project by withholding Sandy aid from the government and residents of her city. That project, she says she was told, was ‘very important to the governor.’ And if she worked to get it approved, ‘the money would start flowing to you.’

“It just so happens that the proposed project in question is situated on three blocks of land owned by the Rockefeller Group, a client of the law firm of Wolff & Samson. That firm was founded by Christie confidante David Samson, a former state attorney general who Christie tapped to head his transition team in 2009. In 2011 the governor appointed Samson to become the chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, where he remains today.

“Hoboken received only 1% of the aid they had requested for Hurricane Sandy relief and planning funds even though it was one of the hardest-hit communities in the state during the storm. At one point, 80% of the 50,000 person city was flooded. If you remember the footage of water gushing through an underground subway station, that was in Hoboken; it has, in fact, the highest per-capita use of public transit of any city in America. Yet so far the state of New Jersey has given the city about $350,000 from the billions of dollars in federal disaster relief and planning aid that it is charged with administering. That’s about $6 per resident. It has been enough to pay for one major planning study and to buy one backup generator for an $18 million emergency storm water pump.

“50,000 people. 80% flooded. $6 a head.

“News outlets and the mayor have both wondered if the anemic aid was a punishment for Zimmer not endorsing the governor’s reelection bid. Mayors in Jersey City, Elizabeth, and other New Jersey municipalities have been asking the same question since Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich raised the possibility that his refusal to endorse Christie led to the lane closures on GWB and the four-day-long traffic nightmare in that town.

“This Hoboken story and the Fort Lee/GWB story might seem like separate tales. But they’re not. Moreover, these latest revelations put to rest the notion that Hoboken’s Sandy aid or the Fort Lee/GWB story have anything to do with local Democratic officials’ endorsement of the governor during his reelection campaign. Forget about the endorsements. It never really added up anyway.

“It’s time to retire hashtag headline word ‘Bridgegate.’  The term doesn’t even begin to scratch the surface.”

Murphy notes that of the nineteen-block neighborhood that was part of a 2013 study for redevelopment (a technical term that means you qualify for tax abatement, tax credits, grants, and other goodies), only the three blocks owned by the Rockefeller Group (David Samson’s client) were deemed eligible.

Stealing from the Storm?

You’d think Chris Christie has enough problems, but noooooooooo.  Now the Feds are investigating his use of $25 million in Hurricane Sandy relief money that was spent on producing and running ads promoting the Jersey Shore last summer.

Christie rejected a $2.5 million bid for ads that didn’t feature him.  He accepted a $4.7 billion bid for “Stronger than the Storm” ads that starred him and his family while he was running for re-election.  So he got great publicity along with New Jersey’s beaches.

Quote of the Day

“The President has kept every promise he’s made.”

GOP NJ Gov. Chris Christie speaking about Hurricane Sandy.

Is this the way to get the Republican nomination in 2016?  We’ll find out.

Our Three-Party System

“At times — particularly when action is required — it’s as if there’s a Democratic Party, a Republican Party, and a Tea Party; and the only coalition sturdy enough to reliably avoid crises is one comprised overwhelmingly of Democrats along with a few dozen Republicans.

“That’s how the fiscal cliff bill passed. That’s how the supplemental approps for Sandy victims cleared the House yesterday. And more and more it appears as if that’s how the debt limit will ultimately be increased. It sounds strange given how fiercely Republicans have fought President Obama for the past four years, but we seem to have reached a point where an uncomfortable center-left coalition governs the country when Congress must act.”  Emphasis added.

From “An Uncomfortable Alliance,” Brian Beutler, Talking Points Memo

Aborted Coup Attempt Against Boehner

CQ Roll Call is reporting* that there was an organized effort to oust John Boehner as Speaker of the House, and that it was abandoned only 30 minutes before the vote.  The group agreed to move forward if they had 25 votes.  At the last minute, one person walked away, and they decided not to proceed with 24 dissidents, even though they needed only 17 votes to force a second vote.

At that point, everyone in the coup group was released, and half of them either voted against Boehner or didn’t vote at all.  The hope had been that if they could get to a second ballot, someone plausible would emerge in the Republican Conference to run against Boehner.

An interesting side note is that Boehner decided to pull the Hurricane Sandy bill because of word of the impending coup attempt.

We’ll see how long Boehner lasts.  Uneasy lies the head…

* “Boehner Coup Attempt Larger Than First Thought,” Jonathan Strong

Let’s Not Disturb the GOP’s Delusion

I got one of those self-serving mass emails today from that sleaze Dick Morris, who had been predicting a Mitt landslide.

He says that O won because of Sandy and because Mitt’s “Orca” get-out-the-vote computer app didn’t work.

I think if the GOP wants to believe they’ll win so long as there is no hurricane and they fix their app, that they don’t need to fix themselves, why not let them labor under that delusion and keep losing?

For a party that preaches personal responsibility, they certainly seem incapable of internalizing that message.

For a party that criticizes Obama’s “gifts” to get votes, they’re certainly fond of their “carried interest” gift that lets Mitt and his friends pay a lower tax rate than I do on far less income.

 

By Their Own Logic

Karl Rove has a piece up in the WSJ blaming Hurricane Sandy for stopping Mitt’s Big Mo and giving us four more of the Kenyan Muslim Socialist.  As I pointed out in a post yesterday, Nate Silver established pre-Sandy that Mitt’s momentum had already stopped.

This is a big problem for Rove because he talked a lot of zillionaires into supporting his Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, and he threw their millions down the toilet in what really should have been a slam dunk for the GOP, not just to win the WH, but the Senate as well.  So his  “evil genius” reputation is at stake (well, it’s still half right), and he’s tap dancing pretty strenuously.

But as the GOP tries to blame Sandy for their shitty candidate and party, let’s follow their logic to its end.

Back at the time of Katrina, the religious nuts said it was God’s punishment for the gays and the abortions.

So if God sent Sandy just before the election, and Mitt would have won without Sandy, doesn’t that mean, um, that God wanted Obama to win?