Bridgegate Lives!

[elleng]

When President Trump nominated Christopher Wray on Wednesday to lead the F.B.I., it appeared that Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey had finally made an imprint on an administration he was supposed to have helped shape all along. The governor had publicly endorsed Mr. Wray for the job on June 1 and let it be known on the day of the nomination that he was his guy. “When I was at the absolute lowest point of my professional life, he’s who I called,” Mr. Christie said, referring to when the Bridgegate scandal broke in January 2014.

Mr. Wray, a lawyer with King & Spalding and a former federal prosecutor, served as the governor’s counsel during Bridgegate and helped him avoid legal consequences, including testifying in court. But he could not protect the governor from the political ramifications of the scandal, which revealed a cutthroat reward-and-punish style of politics that played a part in torpedoing Mr. Christie’s presidential hopes. . .

Christopher Wray, President Trump’s nominee for F.B.I. Director. Credit King and Spalding, via Reuters
Several Bridgegate figures are now in the Trump inner circle — no surprise, considering that Mr. Trump and Mr. Christie have been friends since they first dined together in the early 2000s. At the time, Mr. Christie was a federal prosecutor and Mr. Trump was running a highly regulated casino business. . .

Bridgegate culture was exemplified most recently by the firing of James Comey from the F.B.I.: If you’re not giving us absolute loyalty, you’re dead to us. One of the president’s closest advisers, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, had professed admiration for Bridgegate, the week of orchestrated traffic chaos in Fort Lee, N.J., in September 2013, meant to punish the town’s mayor for not endorsing Mr. Christie for re-election.

“For what it’s worth, I thought the move you pulled was kind of badass,” Mr. Kushner wrote in an email to David Wildstein, the Port Authority official and Bridgegate mastermind, who now faces up to 27 months in prison.'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/10/sunday-review/bridgegate-lives.html?

[tavalon]

1. I wonder if Christie can still be charged for collusion in Bridgegate?

[sharedvalues]

2. White House employees, pay attention.

"Bridgegate culture is about winning, and giving second and third chances only to the most powerful, while underlings lose their jobs, or worse.


One of those pushed aside was the governor’s former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, who wrote the infamous “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” email that set the scheme in motion. Federal prosecutors said at trial that she neither conceived the plot nor had the sole authority to sign off on it. Near penniless, she faces 18 months in federal prison."

(Article goes on to describe several higher ups who knew but faced no consequences.)