On another, older topic (Bridgegate), a smoking gun

[pdq]

...of sorts, consisting of an interesting text exchange between two Christie staffers occurring contemporaneously with Christie's press conference of Dec 13, 2013. In that conference, Christie denied any involvement in the lane closures by his staff or campaign manager.

During the conference, Christie said:

...I've made it very clear to everybody on my senior staff that if anyone had any knowledge about this that they needed to come forward to me and tell me about it, and they've all assured me that they don't.

While watching this, Christine Renna, Christie's Director of Governmental Affairs texted Peter Sheridan, a staffer on Christie's re-election campaign team:

Ms. Rnna: "Are you listening? He just flat-out lied about senior staff and [Christie's former campaign manager Bill] Sepien not being involved"

Mr. Sheridan: "I'm listening."

Mr. Sheridan: "Gov is doing fine. Holding his own up there."

Ms. Renna: "Yes. But he lied. And if emails are found with the subpoena or...uncovered in discovery...it could be bad".

Well, guess what? They were, and it's bad. After Christie's crew threw the Port Authority under the bus, saying the lane closures were strictly all their doing, Port Authority executive Bill Baroni, and others, have ended up in court, and apparently, even though Renna deleted the text exchange, Baroni's lawyers were able to recover the texts. Oops.

The plot thickens. Then again, if Trump wins and appoints Christie his AG, we could see the first AGUS in jail since Nixon's pal John Mitchell.

[$tevie]

I just came here to post this.

[pdq]

From the Politico coverage:

According to Michael Baldassare, an attorney for Baroni, who filed the brief early Wednesday morning, Renna deleted the texts after the Democrat-led Legislature began issuing subpoenas in the case, and never told lawmakers about them. The filing claims she “testified under oath before the Legislature in a manner not consistent with the existence and deletion of those texts.”

“All available information strongly indicates that Ms. Renna deleted those texts and never turned them over to the Legislature or the U.S. Attorney’s Office,”

Uh-oh.

We should hear more soon enough. The trial of Baroni and Bridget Ann Kelley (two Port Authority appointees thrown under the bus by Christie's crew) starts next month.

The Politico piece ends with a juicy line:

Henry Klingeman, Renna’s attorney, said “Ms. Renna will answer questions publicly when she testifies at the upcoming trial, not before."

:popcorn:

[rjmacs]

And the prize for First Person Pardoned by President Drumpf goes to......

[mrbigstuff]

I love this ####