After the bombshell documents that came out originally -- "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee" -- the latest round of documents may seem a little tame. Any litigator, however, knows that the two elements needed to put together a damaging picture are now in place.
Whether in civil litigation or through the legislative investigation process, filling out a picture through document requests is always a two-part process. You ask for everything, but only get a part of that. To move ahead, you need to get enough to be credible to insist you deserve to see more, and you also need to get enough to know what to ask for next. If you don't get anything useful in your first round of requests, it gets harder to keep insisting on more: you are on a "fishing expedition" and your demands are discredited. But even if you get something interesting, you also need to know where to look next. In terms of the federal rules of civil procedure, proper discovery is both what is admissible evidence and what can lead to the discovery of admissible evidence. The same applies to some extent in legislative investigations.
Unfortunately for Governor Christie, everything now lines up for a long and damaging investigation, as outlined below the fold.
It is abundantly clear that "time for some traffic problems" seems to evidence an improper motive for the lane closures in Fort Lee. Christie's problem, and the problem of some other people as well, is that once that evidence is out there, it becomes very difficult to slow down further investigation. Perhaps Christie threw his henchmen under the bus, but in doing so he created a situation where he cannot be seen trying to impede a continuing investigation. So, quite simply, there is going to be more digging.
With a broadening investigation, what we get is not pay dirt immediately, but lots of territory for prospecting. For each person copied on any of the emails, there is now reason to go directly to their email servers and start looking at all of their email. One of the most telling facts already is that the key players used their own GMail account, rather than government accounts, to discuss their plans regarding the lane closures. That means their personal email accounts are now fair game.
I looked at some of the most recent emails produced pursuant to the subpoenas, and what they contained was not, on the face of it very exciting. What is exciting, however, is that every single email account linked to those documents is now open for further investigation. What will come of all this?
The short answer is: the truth (to the extent there is such a thing). Litigators who do discovery of this sort all the time will confirm that, in general, once you have a general impression of what happened, it is most likely that what you find with further discovery and investigation is simply a more detailed version of the same thing. Did Christie know about the bridge plot? Hard to say, but if we get more and more emails and documents, it is likely that what we will find is that he did know the character of the people he appointed, that he knew they were vengeful, and that he supported what they were doing; in fact, that he appointed them because he knew what they were like. Regardless of what his specific role was in the bridge scandal, it is almost certain that as more linking documents are turned up, we will find confirmation in our impression of Christie as a spiteful politician who uses his power vindictively.
To some extent, this should not be much of a surprise.
What is also not much of a surprise, but nevertheless deeply unsettling, is the fact that Christie's henchman, David Wildstein, was making upward of $200,000 a year for his position with the Port Authority. As the documents are assembled, we will find out how many appointees were drawing big public salaries for carrying out petty personal business. That picture is already sketched in and it will be interesting to see the crayons at work filling it out in full color.