I generally enjoy Bill Maher, but I think he is flat wrong about this. The scandal is now much wider than the question of whether Christie knew about or authorized the shutdown of three out of the four local access tollbooths to the George Washington Bridge. Christie's statements about when he found out about the closures have been contradictory, and the statement he made in his marathon press conference about his staff's lack of knowledge has been proven by documentary evidence to be outright false. Federal investigators appear now to be focusing in on the attempted cover-up of what happened as much as they are focused on the actual event. And in that respect, it seems to me this scandal very much parallels Watergate.
And also very much like Watergate, the investigation of one incident has led to uncovering evidence that seems to point to other scandals, some of which are potentially much more serious than the Bridge thing. We now have major questions concerning: (1) the Christie administration's alleged attempted shakedown of the Mayor of Hoboken over its much-needed share of Federal disaster relief moneys, of which Christie was the trustee, in order to extract approval of a development project proposed by a developer who was a client of of the law firm of David Samson, who was Christie's appointee to the chairmanship of the Port Authority; (2) of Christie's simultaneous redirection of $6 million in federal Sandy relief monies to the construction of an affordable housing complex for senior citizens in the town of Belleville, where there was relatively minor storm damage and whose Democratic mayor, unlike the mayor of Hoboken, agreed to endorse Chistie'e re-election bid; and (3) Christie's abuse of his influence at the Port Authority to create a position for his former ally David Wildstein, whose only function, according the Port Authority's Executive Director, was to serve as Christie's political operative, to name just three.
I'm sorry, but for a man who is (or was) a very likely prospect to be the GOP's 2016 nominee for President, scandals such as these, as well as the culture of corruption to which they point, are most definitely worthy of the kind of detailed reporting that Rachel Maddow, and also Steve Kornacki, have provided. Oh, and that reminds of of yet another parallel to Watergate. Those of us who are old enough to remember Watergate will also remember how many people, both among the media and the general public, said things like, "What's the big deal about a petty burglary?"
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