The Star-Ledger has just published this article reporting that Samson refuses to provide any more records to bridge scandal committee.
TRENTON — Attorneys for former Port Authority Chairman David Samson said today they will not provide any additional documents to the legislative committee investigating the George Washington Bridge scandal, accusing the panel of bias and violating its own rules of confidentiality.
At the same time, the attorneys said the U.S. Attorney's Office, which has reportedly subpoenaed all the panel's records, is “effectively treating the committee as a conduit for the government’s own investigation,” which they said violated Samson’s Fifth Amendment rights against self incrimination.
“Unfortunately the way this committee has conducted itself, combined with Mr. Samson’s constitutional rights to fundamental fairness, now compel him to decline to produce the documents requested by the committee’s subpoena,” the attorneys said in a letter to Reid Schar, counsel to the legislative committee.
Today was the last day Samson had to comply with the Supoena. Samson's attorneys also criticized the subpoenas as being "excessively broad."
“Those materials were discussed with the press, replete with criticism of our client and conclusory statements suggesting that some members of the committee had prejudged the matter or exhibited evident bias,” the attorneys said in the letter to Schar.
We are not supposed to make any inferences about guilt or innocence when people invoke their Fifth Amendment rights. So far, Bridget Kelly and Bill Stepien have refused to turn over documents or testify. Their decision was supported by a Superior Court judge who ruled that the committee's subpoena's were too broad. David Wildstein, turned over documents but refused to testify.
So far, more than a dozen people have received subpoenas. Previous documents submitted by Samson show him to be "intimately involved with Port Authority operations, a characterization reinforced by David Wildstein's testimony.
4:33 PM PT: Changed one sentence in paragraph about Fifth Amendment clarifying that this is Samson's way of claiming the Fifth.