By Michael Aron
Chief Political Correspondent
In an excerpt aired this morning, Charlie Rose asked Gov. Chris Christie what the lane closure scandal says about Christie himself.
“I thought about this in the last week. I’ve had 25 people serve on my senior staff over seven years, and I had one person who didn’t get it. One out of 25, so I don’t think it says anything about me. I think it says everything about that person,” he said.
The governor insisted again he knew nothing about the scheme or its political motive.
“Even [David] Wildstein said that all [Bill] Baroni said to me was that there was traffic at the George Washington Bridge and that the mayor was not getting his phone calls returned. Now Charlie, I have to tell you, I have absolutely no recollection of any of them saying anything like that to me that day so let’s be clear,” Christie said.
“So you’re saying you have no recollection. You’re not saying I can swear to you that they never said anything like that. You’re saying I don’t remember,” said Rose.
“I don’t remember any of it, but what I will tell you is this, Charlie. If they would have told me that, ‘hey we’re creating traffic at the George Washington Bridge in order to punish the mayor for not endorsing you,’ I would have remembered that,” Christie said.
The co-chairs of the legislative committee that investigated Bridgegate want to reconvene the panel and get the governor to testify under oath.
“I think the governor owes it to the people of the state of New Jersey to testify truthfully before the Legislature about how his office was involved in this and what his role was,” said Assemblyman John Wisniewski.
Wisniewski also wants to recall three witnesses he says told the committee one thing and the jury another.
“I guess the governor would have us believe today that they lied in court. So what? If you think that integrity in government is overrated and if you think having elected officials do their job and tell the truth is not important, then you’re right, so what,” Wisniewski said.
Assembly Republican leader Jon Bramnick called a news conference today to chastise Wisniewski for putting investigations ahead of issues.
“For 14 years, we had not solved the TTF while John Wisniewski was the chair of the Transportation Committee. And the only reason we solved it was because we had a compromise when it went bankrupt. So with respect to hearings it would have been nice if he had done hearings for 14 years on TTF so we didn’t end up in a crisis. This announcement by Mr. Wisniewski, by Assemblyman Wisniewski, will create even more congestion and more of a log-jam than we saw at the bridge,” Bramnick said.
Bramnick accused Wisniewski of playing the politics of personal destruction.
“Every single leader in our region is under suspicion, whether it’s Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo or Gov. Christie, whether it’s Hillary or whether it’s Donald Trump. We have reached the point where the focus — and we’re all guilty of this — the focus is the negative,” Bramnick said.
Former press secretary Carl Golden says Bridgegate has badly damaged Christie, to the point where it’s now being reported Christie has drifted away from the Trump campaign.
“I don’t know whether all of that is true, whether it’s partially true, whether it’s people floating these stories to see what kind of reaction they get. But I think it’s pretty clear that he has been harmed. Nothing good for the governor came out of this trial. Absolutely nothing good,” Golden said.
He says even the trial jury got a bad taste from what it heard about Christie.
“The two jurors who were interviewed, one said Christie should have been on trial and the other called him the master puppeteer of everything that was going on. So if those two are willing to say so publicly, presumably people on the jury felt the same way, and that’s very damaging as well,” he said.
“Here’s a guy who wants to be in charge of Donald Trump’s transition, in charge with finding people to run our national government. If you believe the governor, he’s not even capable of running a bridge,” Wisniewski said.
The governor is not giving an inch.
“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told my political career was over. Here I am,” Christie said.