TRENTON — In another day of political drama and legal maneuvering, two new legislative committees were formed Thursday to investigate the George Washington Bridge scandal and within hours, 20 subpoenas were issued to 17 key people and three organizations in the unfolding story.
The moves in Trenton provided a quick signal that the widening investigation into what role Gov. Chris Christie’s administration may have played in the bridge lane closures, which led to massive traffic jams last September, will be aggressive — and not likely to end anytime soon.
Legislative officials would not disclose the targets of the new subpoenas until all are delivered. But according to two sources with knowledge of the investigation, those in the governor's inner circle who have been subpoenaed include Kevin O'Dowd, the governor's pick to serve as the state's new attorney general; Michael Drewniak, Christie's chief spokesman; Bill Stepien, his former campaign manager; Charles McKenna, the governor's chief counsel; Bridget Anne Kelly, former deputy chief of staff; and Matt Mowers, another former aide.
In other developments Thursday:
• Both the state Senate and Assembly created their own special committees to investigate the scandal that has already cost four people their jobs.
• Christie retained a former federal prosecutor to respond to questions from the committees.
• Two officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, who were forced to resign over the scandal, have asked the agency to pay their legal bills.
• In Washington, a U.S. senator who has opened his own inquiry into the closures said he has received "zero evidence" the lane closings were part of a legitimate traffic study, after the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey responded to questions from his committee.
The investigations come amid continuing questions over the why the Port Authority shut down several local bridge toll lanes without warning for four days, then tried to keep a lid on what had happened.
"What we’re really looking at is the ‘why?' Â" said Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex), who has spearheaded the continuing investigation.
"We know who sent out the request to close those lanes. We know who received it," Wisniewski said of the investigation. "We don’t know why it was sent. We don’t know who gave that person authorization to send it."
Wisniewski said the subpoenas sent out last night seek documents from the individual recipients. Subpoenas for testimony will follow, he said.
Emails and other documents already subpoenaed by Wisniewski’s committee from several Port Authority officials and released last week appear to show the lane closures were ordered by a former member of the governor’s office. Subsequent emails to the governor’s campaign manager suggest a political motive in what some believe was an effort to punish the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie for re-election in November.
In one, sent by Kelly to David Wildstein, a top Port Authority executive, she told him: "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."
"Got it," he replied.
Kelly was fired by the governor after the email was made public. She has retained legal counsel, as has Stepien, the campaign manager referenced in several of the documents related to the bridge lane closures that have surfaced. Stepien also lost his consulting job with the Republican Governor’s Association, now headed by Christie.
Wildstein resigned from the Port Authority in December, and was followed a week later by the resignation of Bill Baroni, the agency’s deputy executive director who testified before the Legislature that the closures were the result of a traffic study.
Both Thursday asked the Port Authority to pay their legal bills, spokesman Chris Valens said. The agency’s legal department was weighing the request, he said.
Valens said neither Baroni, who made $291,000 a year, nor Wildstein, who made $150,000, were getting severance.
The governor, who said he had nothing to do with the lane closures and was unaware of the involvement of anyone on his staff in what he has suggested may have been a "rogue political operation," has repeatedly apologized for what happened, but taken no responsibility.
Despite efforts to distance himself from the events of September, the emails that have come to light have raised questions about who else in his administration knew about the closures, or the cover-up at the Port Authority that followed.
75-0 VOTE IN ASSEMBLY
The Assembly on Thursday, by a 75-0 vote, created a special committee that will continue the investigation started by Wisniewski’s transportation committee.
The new panel, which will also be chaired by Wisniewski, has already retained Reid Schar, the former federal prosecutor who put Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich behind bars. Schar will advise the panel as special counsel. According to his agreement with the Assembly, his firm will charge $350 an hour for partners, $300 non-partners, $125 for paralegal/assistant work.
While the legislation authorizing a special committee had support from both sides of the aisle, Assemblyman Jon Bramnick (R-Union) said the investigation must be done in a bipartisan manner and minority members of the panel must be allowed to view all subpoenaed documents before the public does.
He also said guidelines should be established to protect people who may appear in subpoenaed documents but who had no role in the lane closures.
"We’re going to need a process here to make sure that collateral damage is not done," Bramnick said. "Let’s protect those people who had nothing to do with the wrongdoing that we’ve seen."
On the other side of the Statehouse, the Senate approved a similar special committee by a vote of 33-0 "to further investigate all aspects of the finances, operations, and management of the Port Authority and any other matter raising concerns about abuse of government power or an attempt to conceal an abuse of government power."
That panel will be led by Sen. Loretta Weinberg (D-Bergen), whose district includes Fort Lee and who was among the first to raise a public outcry over the still unexplained lane closures.
"The investigation will be deliberative, thoughtful and thorough," Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) said. "It will pursue all aspects of this case and go wherever the evidence takes it. We want to get the full story and we want the truth about what happened and who was involved."
Weinberg said the Senate panel will subpoena records from three high-ranking officials at the center of the scandal: Port Authority Chairman David Samson, Port Authority Commissioner William "Pat" Schuber and Regina Egea, the governor’s incoming chief of staff, whose names appeared amid the thousands of pages in emails and text messages the Assembly Transportation Committee received through a subpoena.
"Unanswered questions have multiplied as this case has unfolded over the past four months," Weinberg said. "We will conduct an aggressive investigation with an open mind. We won’t jump to any conclusions but we intend to get to the bottom of this."
REPUBLICANS WARY
Senate Republicans joined Democrats in voting to form the committee, but raised concerns about the potential cost of creating an investigative body similar to the Assembly panel and cautioned the Democrats to tread carefully and maintain their objectivity.
"We should all be very, very careful of drawing conclusions now," Sen. Kevin O’Toole (R-Essex) said before the vote.
In anticipation of the legislative votes, the governor Thursday announced his office had retained former federal prosecutor Randy Mastro of the law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, to help conduct an internal review of operations and respond to requests for information.
The firm will "review best practices for office operations and information flow, and assist with document retention and production," the administration said in a three-paragraph statement.
Christie spokesman Colin Reed would not say who is paying for the special counsel or whether the retention of the law firm means Christie plans to conduct a more vigorous internal investigation than first announced.
Mastro was an assistant U.S. attorney who specialized in organized crime cases and led the federal government’s landmark racketeering suit that compelled the International Brotherhood of Teamsters to hold elections and undergo court supervision, the administration said. He also served as a deputy mayor of New York City.
Mastro, though, may have a conflict. Court records show he represented the Port Authority last year in an unrelated case. Administration officials did not respond to requests for comment.
Pearl Piatt, a spokeswoman for Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said in a statement, "There is no conflict of interest in our firm’s separate representation of the Port Authority and the governor’s office in these separate matters."
The questions of the governor, in the meantime, will not just be coming from the Legislature. A separate inquiry is also underway in Washington, where Sen. Jay Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, has also asked what was behind closures on access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in September.
The Port Authority, in a response to the committee’s questions, said Thursday the closures were "aberrational," but could not explain why they happened.
"Given that the issue is under investigation and the board still does not have many of the facts as to the motivations behind actions taken at the GWB, the information being provided to you outlines the normal process of the Port Authority with respect to toll lane closures and the operational decisions made at this point in time," Port Authority Board Secretary Karen Eastman wrote to Rockefeller.
The answers that were provided were gleaned from public testimony before an Assembly panel Dec. 6 by Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye’ Cedric Fulton, the authority’s director of bridges tunnels and terminals, and GWB General Manager Robert Durando.
Recapping the testimony, which has been widely reported, Eastman told Rockefeller the closings were ordered Sept. 6 by Wildstein, a political appointee who served as director of interstate capital projects, a position created for him that had with no job description.
Eastman said the Port Authority’s engineering department expressed concern beforehand over potential accidents, a concern that was addressed in determining how they closed down the lanes, and told Rockefeller that Wildstein told bridge officials not to inform the agency’s executive director or anyone else about the closures.
"The Port Authority officials who ordered the September 9 to 13 George Washington Bridge lane closures did not follow their agency’s own procedures," Rockefeller said in a statement. "The Port Authority’s response provides zero evidence that the purpose of these closures was to conduct a legitimate traffic study."
Star-Ledger staff writers Matt Friedman, Ryan Hutchins, Brent Johnson, Susan K. Livio, Ted Sherman, and Steve Strunsky contributed to this report.
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