http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/04/16/1292189/-Chris-Christie-s-plausible-deniability-claim-takes-a-hit?detail=email
attribution: REUTERS
The big story coming out of Monday's document dump of the notes from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's internal whitewash investigation of his lane closure scandal was that aides in his office were instructed to ignore requests of mayors who hadn't endorsed the governor's re-election bid, but there's another interesting detail that caught my eye.
The governor, who called [David] Wildstein an "odd duck," said in the notes that his hiring at the Port Authority was pushed by [Bill] Baroni, who wanted to pay him $200,000. Christie said he later agreed at $150,000 salary.
Wildstein, of course, was the Port Authority official who carried out the lane closures. Baroni was his boss. And the revelation that Christie personally weighed not only on whether to hire Wildstein but also on his salary belies Christie's insistence that he didn't get involved in the minutiae or Port Authority business.
Here's the way Christie set forth his plausible deniability defense during his January press conference:
There's this, you know, kind of reputation out there of me being a micromanager. I'm not. I mean, I think if you talk to my staff, what they would tell you is that I delegate enormous authority to my staff and enormous authority to my Cabinet. And I tell them, come to me with the policy decisions that need to be made, with some high-level personnel decisions that need to be made. But I do not manage in that kind of micro way, first.
Therefore:
So what I can tell you is if people find that hard to believe, I don't know what else to say except to tell them that I had no knowledge of this -- of the planning, the execution or anything about it -- and that I first found out about it after it was over.
But even though Christie has repeatedly said that the reason people should believe he didn't have any role in the lane closure scandal is that as governor he didn't have time for low-level goings-on at the Port Authority, we now know that he did in fact have time for such things.
personally i don't and have not believed he knew nothing he said he never talked to one guy and there are pictures of him standing next to the guy after the lane closings. you know if you shine a light on something long enough you start seeing things that were not evident at first glance, the bigger the target the better chance of detail being obscured.
