New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie speaks at a press conference announcing new objectives to crack down on human and sex trafficking earlier this week.
The attorney for the man who oversaw the road closures that have embroiled New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in a political firestorm said there is evidence that the GOP presidential hopeful knew of the traffic mess while it was taking place, contrary to what the governor said in January.
The allegations, which Mr. Christie’s office denied, are the first from a former ally that contradict the account the governor gave at a lengthy news conference about the closing of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, a busy link between his state and New York City.
Mr. Christie, long seen as a contender for the 2016 GOP presidential nomination, has denied knowledge of the closures, which are being investigated by a federal prosecutors.
The attorney representing David Wildstein, who has resigned from his position at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, said Friday that the lanes were closed at “the Christie administration’s order” and cited unspecified evidence that the governor was aware of the matter. The closures, from Sept. 9 to Sept. 13, caused five days of traffic jams in Fort Lee, N.J., a borough on the western end of the bridge.
“Evidence exists…tying Mr. Christie to having knowledge of the lane closures, during the period when the lanes were closed, contrary to what the governor stated publicly,” said the attorney, Alan Zegas, in a letter contesting the Port Authority’s refusal to pay his client’s legal bills. He added that Mr. Christie made statements about Mr. Wildstein that he could prove were inaccurate.
The Christie administration released a statement late Friday, asserting that Mr. Wildstein’s attorney’s letter “confirms what the governor has said all along—he had absolutely no prior knowledge of the lane closures before they happened and whatever Mr. Wildstein’s motivations were for closing them to begin with.”
“As the governor said in a Dec. 13 press conference, he only first learned lanes were closed when it was reported by the press and as he said in his Jan. 9 press conference, had no indication that this was anything other than a traffic study until he read otherwise the morning of January 8,” according to the statement.”
“The governor denies Mr. Wildstein’s lawyer’s other assertions.”
Also on Friday, Mr. Christie’s former campaign manager, Bill Stepien, invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself in response to a subpoena from a state legislative committee investigating the bridge matter. Emails show Mr. Stepien writing disparagingly of the Fort Lee mayor, a Democrat who had declined to endorse the governor in his re-election campaign, though they don’t show he had knowledge of the closures.
The new developments came as the bridge scandal was fading from the national headlines and the New Jersey governor was set to play host to the Garden State’s first Super Bowl on Sunday.
One immediate question for the Christie camp is whether the controversy would affect his tenure as chairman of the Republican Governors Association. The New Jersey governor was seen as an attractive pick to lead the group, because he is a major fundraising draw with an appeal beyond traditional Republican voters.
Republican pollster Whit Ayres said Friday that Mr. Wildstein’s claims weren’t sufficient to conclude that Mr. Christie knew about the lane closures, or that he would suffer additional political damage.
“If what the governor said in his press conference turns out to be completely true, he’s fine,” Mr. Ayres said. “If there’s hard, verifiable evidence that what he said is not true, he’s in big trouble. What I’ve seen today hardly lives up to that standard.”
“Anybody can say anything in politics, but that doesn’t make it true,” Mr. Ayres said. “This hasn’t changed anything until you get hard, incontrovertible evidence, particularly from someone who may have a motive to say certain things. That’s just courtroom 101.”
New Jersey Republicans on Friday expressed some skepticism about the Wildstein letter, saying that the accusations carried less credibility as they came in an appeal for legal costs and it didn’t follow a clear train of thought.
Assemblyman John Wisniewski, the Democrat who has led the investigation into the lane closures, said Mr. Wildstein’s attorney’s allegations “at a minimum validate the skepticism that many people have had about the governor’s prior statement.”
Mr. Wisniewski also said Mr. Zegas’s letter raised the question of whether Mr. Wildstein fully complied with a legislative subpoena.
Mr. Wildstein turned over emails to the Legislature, but nothing that implicated Mr. Christie personally.
The timing of when Mr. Christie learned of the bridge closures could be crucial.
At the Dec. 13 news conference, Mr. Christie said he learned of the matter after press reports of an internal Port Authority email in which a top authority official chastised other officials for the surprise lane closures. The Wall Street Journal first published details of that email from the authority on Oct. 1.
“I think that was the first I heard of it,” he said. “But it was certainly well after the whole thing was over before I heard about it.”
Then, in a Jan. 9 news conference, Mr. Christie said he first learned of the lane closures from newspaper reports right at the end of the traffic snarl.
“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,” Mr. Christie said.
“I continue to have faith in Chris,” said Bobbie Kilberg, a major GOP donor from Virginia.
If proof that the governor didn’t tell the truth emerges, Mr. Christie has “major problems,” Mr. Ayres said. But so far, there is little to go on beyond Mr. Wildstein’s attorney saying evidence exists, Mr. Ayres said.
Mr. Christie had returned to a more public role this past week, spending Thursday and Friday making appearances on local sports-radio stations to speak about the Super Bowl. Hosts of the shows said that Mr. Christie agreed to be interviewed as long as he wasn’t posed any questions about the bridge matter.
The developments on Friday were a further sign that Mr. Wildstein, once seen as an enforcer of Mr. Christie’s agenda within the Port Authority, was a big and growing liability for Mr. Christie. Mr. Zegas has already publicly appealed for criminal immunity for his client, saying Mr. Wildstein had “a story to tell.”
Mr. Wildstein’s choice of Mr. Zegas to be his lawyer was significant, New Jersey attorneys said in recent weeks. Mr. Zegas has represented high-profile clients and is known as a forceful defender of their interests, and notably eager to strike deals with prosecutors when it is possible to reduce his clients’ criminal exposure.
Mr. Zegas’s letter also threatened to push back on Mr. Christie’s efforts to distance himself from Mr. Wildstein. In the Jan. 9 news conference, Mr. Christie challenged reports that had portrayed the two men as friends. Mr. Christie went on to play down their interactions when the two were in high school, and said he had “had no contact with David Wildstein in a long time, a long time, well before the election.”
“I could probably count on one hand the number of conversations I’ve had with David” since he began working at the Port Authority in 2010, Mr. Christie said.
“Mr. Wildstein contests the accuracy of various statements that the governor made about him and he can prove the inaccuracy of some,” Mr. Zegas wrote.
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