The Star-Ledger:
The Democratic lawmaker investigating September’s controversial lane closures at the George Washington Bridge has subpoenaed any correspondence on the matter between Gov. Chris Christie and Port Authority officials.
The lane closures turned a 30-minute commute from Fort Lee, New Jersey to New York City into a four-hour nightmare and created traffic jams that threatened the ability of first responders to reach destinations. They were ordered and overseen by senior officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey who had been appointed by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.
Both officials—one of whom is a high school friend of Christie's—have resigned from the Port Authority. They claim the lane closures were part of a traffic study, but not only had nobody else in New Jersey or at the Port Authority heard of any such study, if the lane closures really were part of a study, why would they have resigned?
Instead of a phantom traffic study, this is what seems far more plausible:
A host of circumstantial evidence, not to mention a mother lode of common sense, suggests that aides close to him shut several traffic ramps to the George Washington Bridge after the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee failed to see the wisdom in endorsing the Republican governor.
Christie, of course, denies that there's anything to the suspicion, but he hasn't done anything to offer a credible alternative explanation. And the issue is now attracting national interest: On Monday, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller
asked the Department of Transportation to investigate the matter, and as you can see in the video at the top of the post, it's even made the national broadcast of Inside Edition.
Christie clearly hopes his blusterous personality can make this whole thing go away, but in the end, there's only one thing that can settle this issue: An open and transparent account of what actually happened. And until that happens, the more it's going to look like the reason Christie is stonewalling is that he's afraid of what such an account might show.