if you'd like to know what Bridget Gate is ALL about.........about a BILLION DOLLARS!
In the 1970s, former Mayor Burt Ross was forced to enter the Witness Protection Program after informing the FBI that a developer with mob-ties, Arthur Sutton, and his associate, Joey Diaco, attempted to bribe him with $500,000 into approving their project. In the 1980s, New York billionaires Leona and Harry Helmsley wanted to build four high-rises on the land, but plans were scrapped when Leona had to serve time in prison for tax evasion. More recently, Town & Country LLC had its project approved by the Fort Lee Planning Board but defaulted on its mortgage, and Tucker Development Corp. took over the western half of the property in 2008.
The property “has had a history second to none,” Mayor Mark Sokolich said Wednesday. “That history ends today.”
that history ends today.....think that one again
Groundbreaking marks start of Fort Lee project
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2012 LAST UPDATED: THURSDAY OCTOBER 18, 2012, 11:49 AM
BY LINH TAT
FORT LEE — A project hailed by its supporters as an “iconic gateway” into Bergen County and one that will redefine New Jersey’s skyline broke ground Wednesday, shepherding in a new chapter in the history of a property that has lain dormant for more than 40 years, marred by tales of poor planning and corruption.
From left, Bergen County Executive Kathleen Donovan; Matt Ascher, Northwestern Mutual; Cathy Marcus, Prudential Real Estate Investors; Steve Pozycki, SJP residential properties, Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich; Allen Goldman, SJP residential properties; David
A rendering of The Modern complex in Fort Lee.
Fort Lee Redevelopment Associates LLC — the developer for one-half of the borough’s largest redevelopment effort to date — took a historic step toward building Bergen County’s tallest structures: two 47-story glass-encased luxury residential towers that will soar to 498 feet. The approximately half-billion-dollar project will also include a restaurant, 1.75-acre public park, three-screen movie theater, museum and snack kiosk.
“I feel like we’ve just reached the summit of Mount Everest after a long, hard climb,” said Allen Goldman, president of SJP Residential Properties, the managing partner of Fort Lee Redevelopment Associates. He predicted the project, once called The Center at Fort Lee but now renamed The Modern, “will forever change the borough of Fort Lee and the skyline of New Jersey.”
The Modern makes up the eastern half of a 16-acre downtown mixed-use project south of the George Washington Bridge. The redevelopment area is bounded by Bruce Reynolds Boulevard, Central Road, Main Street and Lemoine Avenue. The western half, called Hudson Lights, will be developed by Illinois-based Tucker Development Corp., and will feature approximately 175,000 square feet of shops and restaurants, 477 residential units and a 175-room hotel.
Redevelopment Area 5 is expected to be an economic boon for the borough, with annual tax revenues projected to exceed $10 million, though critics worry about traffic congestion and increased overcrowding in the schools as a result of new residents.
And Fair Share Housing Center, Inc. sued the developer, borough and Fort Lee Planning Board in June, saying the latter was wrong to approve some 900 residential units without specifying how many would be affordable housing. A state Superior Court judge dismissed the case in August, saying it was a matter for the state Council on Affordable Housing. The council is currently reviewing similar objections that Fair Share Housing filed with the state agency prior to the judge dismissing the complaint.
Previous developers attempted to build on the land but flopped due to poor planning, bad financing, and corruption.
In the 1970s, former Mayor Burt Ross was forced to enter the Witness Protection Program after informing the FBI that a developer with mob-ties, Arthur Sutton, and his associate, Joey Diaco, attempted to bribe him with $500,000 into approving their project. In the 1980s, New York billionaires Leona and Harry Helmsley wanted to build four high-rises on the land, but plans were scrapped when Leona had to serve time in prison for tax evasion. More recently, Town & Country LLC had its project approved by the Fort Lee Planning Board but defaulted on its mortgage, and Tucker Development Corp. took over the western half of the property in 2008.
The property “has had a history second to none,” Mayor Mark Sokolich said Wednesday. “That history ends today.”
He and other elected officials and project team members drove golden shovels into the dirt in a ceremonial groundbreaking at 12:55 p.m.
Among them was Councilman Armand Pohan, who was the borough attorney in the 1970s when Ross was mayor. Given the many false starts associated with the property, Pohan has consistently been guarded in his optimism. But this week, he expressed hope that the latest proposed project will come to fruition. Unlike past developers that failed, Fort Lee Redevelopment Associates has secured the financing it needed. Prudential Real Estate Investors and The Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. are equity partners in the project, and PNC Bank and Wells Fargo Bank are the construction lenders.
If completed, the project will be Fort Lee’s largest development since the 1960s, when the six high-rises that make up the Horizon House cooperative apartment complex was built on 32 acres. Goldman has said he expects tenants to move into the first residential tower by fall 2014. The second tower should be complete in 2015 or 2016.
Is a Billion Dollar Development Project at the Heart of Bridgegate?
BRIAN MURPHY – JANUARY 12, 2014, 5:23 PM EST15422
This morning I was a guest on MSNBC’s “Up With Steve Kornacki” where Steve Kornacki offered up some new reporting on the September 2013 George Washington Bridge closures. (See segment #1 and segment #2) After that segment Steve had me offer some context regarding the politics of real estate development in New Jersey in general and in this case in particular.
I helped Steve out with the reporting on this segment and hope you digest both clips. He and I are in the unique position of having worked for one of the central figures in this still-developing scandal, David Wildstein, one of Chris Christie’s appointees at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. Prior to that, David had been the pseudonymous editor of a political news website in N.J. called PoliticsNJ.com. I worked there in 2002, and Steve succeeded me from 2002-2005. Neither of us knew Wildstein’s true identity while we were reporting for the site. Speaking for myself, I found him to be an excellent editor. He always had sources to suggest on a story, let me report it wherever it led, and always had my back. He never let me down. Steve, I am sure, would say the same.
So far, we’ve learned a lot about the consequences of the traffic tie-ups orchestrated in Fort Lee by Wildstein and a now-fired deputy chief of staff in Christie’s office. Commutes were made hellishly long, school buses were snarled in traffic for hours, and EMS responders were held up for so long that some calls were answered on foot. All because two of the three toll lanes that usually serve one on-ramp in Fort Lee, on the New Jersey side of the George Washington Bridge, had been closed. Merging that traffic into just one toll lane caused cars to stack up on the ramp, then onto the approaching streets, then onto side streets, until eventually Fort Lee, the town that hosts the west side of the bridge, was completely clogged.
The unanswered question in this story has been “why?”
Why did deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly text David Wildstein on the morning of August 13 that it was “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee”? Why did Wildstein already know enough about this plot to simply reply “Got it.”?
The explanation that’s been offered so far is that Governor Chris Christie, a Republican, was so obsessed with portraying himself as bipartisan in advance of a 2016 presidential run that he wanted to lock up as many local Democratic endorsements as possible during his gubernatorial campaign. The story is that the mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, refused his request, and Christie’s people punished him, and his hometown, as an act of retribution.
For obvious reasons, this explanation is deeply unsatisfying. Mayor Sokolich can’t recall being asked for an endorsement – at least not with any pressure – and Governor Christie has claimed that he couldn’t pick Mayor Sokolich out of a lineup. Moreover, it seems unlikely that so many top aides and appointees would spend so much time and energy, and put themselves in so much legal jeopardy, to punish one mayor for not giving them an endorsement they hadn’t really pushed to get.
So if not that, what?
When I left PoliticsNJ.com for graduate school in history at the University of Virginia, I left with a keen understanding of the power and influence wielded by independent authorities and agencies in state and federal government. I ended up writing a PhD dissertation about banks and infrastructure projects in New York during the early republic, a project I’m in the final stages of turning into a book. Nowadays I teach at Baruch College at the City University of New York.
So, when I look at the George Washington Bridge, here’s what I see:
At the top of the photo you see the on-ramp to the GWB. And those two big empty parcels of land… what’s going on there?
Let me tell you.
If you’ve seen Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich mention a “billion dollar redevelopment” going on in his town during his media appearances, you might think that he’s just bragging about some political accomplishment. Something he cares about, but that you don’t need to worry about. Yet those two pieces of land are where that billion dollar project, a commercial, residential and business complex called “Hudson Lights,” is being built.
Now consider the project’s proximity to the bridge. When we think about transportation infrastructure, we usually think only about the ‘thing’ being built: the bridge, tunnel, rail line, road, etc. But those projects have value because they connect things. They’re built because they allow people and goods to move, and they can dramatically increase the utility and value of the properties they connect. The Erie Canal did this in the early republic. Then the railroad. Then the subway, the highway, the airport.
The Hudson Lights project is a billion dollar project because it offers unparalleled access to the George Washington Bridge. But take away that access and it’s no longer a billion dollar project.
Mark Sokolich knew this back in September when the toll lanes from Fort Lee had been cut from three down to one. He asked Port Authority Deputy Executive Director Bill Baroni on September 12: “what do I do when our billion dollar development is put on line at the end of next year?”
He begged Baroni to respond. He gave him two office numbers and his home and cell number. Baroni gave him silence.
This is the first mention of Hudson Lights in the documents released so far under the NJ Assembly Committee subpoena directing Wildstein to produce all materials related to the GWB closures.
We know that because of its location, the long-term viability of this project could be threatened by any permanent changes to the GWB toll lanes that negatively impacted the on-ramp adjacent to the site.
But something else was going on here during these weeks in August and September that hadn’t been discussed until today’s show.
On August 15, two days after the go was given to cause traffic problems in Fort Lee, Mayor Sokolich and the Fort Lee town council held a meeting during which the redevelopment project’s contract was discussed. We don’t know what happened, as it was a closed session. But one week later, on August 22, the mayor was authorized by the council to finalize documents relating to how one phase of the redevelopment was to be financed.
In other words, even though the permits were in place, the zoning approvals were done, the designs were finished, there was one last thing to lock down: the money.
When we look back at ribbon cuttings and ceremonial openings of big things – I always think back to the Erie Canal – it can seem like those projects were inevitable. Of course, they aren’t. Nothing is in place until everything is in place. And what we now realize, from looking at documents hidden in plain sight, is that the financing for Mark Sokolich’s legacy project wasn’t in place yet. Moreover, the most crucial weeks that would decide whether this project would be capitalized are coincident with the weeks between when the traffic shut-down was ordered and when the traffic shut-down was lifted. It was only after Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye learned of Baroni and Wildstein’s shenanigans that the financing was finally sewn up. In fact, it was the very first business day after the lanes were re-opened that the developers announced they’d raised $218 million. A Bergen Record story about the funding said that the groundbreaking had been pushed back “because of a combination of factors…including nailing down financing as well as lining up a high-profile tenant.”
I find it hard to believe that would-be investors in this project weren’t alarmed by the prospect that Port Authority officials had decided, without warning, to begin running experiments to see what would happen if local access to the GWB was temporarily, and then permanently, restricted. And in light of Mayor Sokolich’s first question to Chris Christie during their face-to-face meeting in Fort Lee this past week, asking the governor to promise not to exact revenge on Fort Lee for the trouble this scandal is causing, it seems even more significant that the governor was musing about making permanent changes in public during his December 2 press conference in Trenton. The cat was completely out of the bag on whether there had been a legitimate “traffic study,” and yet the governor persisted in characterizing the allocation of toll lanes as something that gave an unfair benefit to Fort Lee at the expense of the rest of the human race. Even in December, it seemed, Fort Lee and this project still faced a threat.
When you realize that infrastructure and development projects are extensions of politics – things that partisans get involved with when they’re not running election campaigns – then you realize that places like the Port Authority and projects like Hudson Lights can be seen as legitimate venues for political appointees and operatives to extract favors and enforce discipline. We like to think that by creating an agency we formalize and professionalize the activities that agency handles, like, say, running the GWB and the Lincoln Tunnel. But these are inherently political animals, and they are always at risk of being misused for narrowly partisan purposes. After all, the tolls collected on the bridges and tunnels don’t go to pay for payroll and paving alone; they’re used to underwrite bonds for bigger capital projects. The Port Authority spent $25 billion on such projects since 2002; about a third of that has gone toward rebuilding the World Trade Center, leaving just under $16 billion for everything else. That’s a pile of money just too big to ignore, and the inherent power it vests in the top brass of the Port Authority means that they’re not just ordinary political appointees. They’re political entrepreneurs, always looking for new ways to get in on new deals and make things happen for their bosses.
I think that begins to get at what was going on here. We now know that a major redevelopment project, one that depends on Port Authority assets and relationships, was put in jeopardy at a vulnerable financial moment, and in a way that put the viability of the entire project at risk.
But we still don’t know why. This batch of subpoenaed documents isn’t going to tell us, and the people who know – who really know – either aren’t talking or haven’t yet been questioned.
Governor Christie told us in December that he had a talk with his top appointee at the Port Authority, Chairman David Samson, about the number of toll lanes allocated to the Fort Lee on-ramp. Clearly it’s time to find out why they were having that chat in the first place and if they were ever aware that there was a billion dollars at stake, just a few steps away from where the governor joked, “I moved the cones.”
Made man: Malibu resident recalls spurning goodfellas
Malibu resident Burt Ross, 69, made national headlines when he turned down a $500,000 bribe from the Mafia as a young New Jersey mayor nearly 40 years ago.
Malibu resident recalls turning down bribe
Malibu resident Burt Ross, seen here in the early 1970s wearing a bulletproof vest after he turned members of the Mafia into police for attempting to bribe him with $500,000.
Posted: Wednesday, February 13, 2013 1:00 pm
By Ed Kamen / Special to The Malibu Times | 1 comment
In 1974, the Mafia made Burt Ross an offer he couldn’t refuse.
He said no.
Ross not only lived to tell about it, but he aided in an investigation, as well as giving damning testimony in court, that led to the prosecution of seven New Jersey gangsters. All that, while being a first-term mayor of one of the most corrupt cities in America.
“Life twists and turns in ways you just can’t predict,” Ross said, speaking at a special event at Pepperdine University Wednesday. Speaking publicly about the incident for the first time in 10 years, Ross also discussed “The Bribe,” the book his brother, Philip, wrote in 1976 about the case.
In 1971, Ross was a Harvard-educated stockbroker with a law degree from New York University. But he was restless. At a fund-raising event, Ross said he was approached to run for mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., not far from his hometown of Teaneck.
“This was no plum job,” he said. “I was to be a sacrificial lamb. Democrats don’t win in Fort Lee. End of story.”
But with a young, dedicated campaign team, which included his brother, he shocked the political establishment and won in a landslide, even though Republicans outnumbered Democrats two-to-one. At 28, he was the youngest mayor in the United States.
Fort Lee, just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan, was known for two things: It was one of the most densely populated cities in America and, “It was a favorite place for gangsters to live and play,” Ross said.
“I wanted something to get rid of the boredom,” he added. “And being mayor is anything but boring. I learned quickly that it’s one thing to run for office, it’s another to serve.”
Replacing the old political machine with young, idealistic staffers, Ross’ administration quickly passed landmark rent-regulation legislation. Ross also rooted out the corruption around him— exposing the city tax collector as a tax evader and ousting the police chief, who shamelessly cavorted with known underworld figures.
But those accomplishments would become secondary once a developer named Arthur Sutton proposed a massive, three-million-square-foot, $250 million regional shopping center in the heart of Fort Lee. Ross was against it.
One fateful night in May 1974 came a knock on Ross’ front door. Standing before him was a man who called himself “Joey D.”
“He was straight out of central casting,” said Ross, “right down to his pinkie ring.”
Joey D. wanted a vote delayed on necessary variances by the board of adjustment the following day. Ross said there was nothing he could do. First, Joey D. offered Ross $100,000 to delay the vote, but when Ross balked, he upped it to $500,000. Ross refused. Not even the gun in the gangster’s belt could change his mind.
What Ross did do was contact law enforcement. The district attorney’s office was skeptical. This was the era of Watergate and rampant political corruption on all levels. “They never had anyone come forward like that,” Ross recalled. “They weren’t prepared.
“I was caught between a rock and a hard place, between a desperate mobster and a disbelieving district attorney.”
But after another visit from an even more threatening Joey D.—Joey Diaco, a well-known crime figure—the FBI entered the picture and made Ross an offer of their own. It was one he had been urging himself from the beginning: Tape their conversations.
Wearing a listening device in his belt, and watched by undercover FBI agents, Ross met with Sutton and Diaco at a restaurant. The wire got it all.
Still, it took another 13 days and another nerve-wracking meeting before the FBI made arrests, seven in all. Little did Ross know, that was just the beginning.
The mayor of Fort Lee was forced to go into hiding as the FBI put together its case and he was able to testify in court and end the ordeal. Even after his return to his mayoral duties, Ross had around-the-clock protection and even wore a bullet-proof vest.
“Actually, the scariest thing was the protection,” he said of his gun-toting bodyguards.
In the end, the seven were convicted and sentenced to five years in prison, although a later judge reduced the sentences to six months.
Ross, who moved to Malibu a year ago with his wife, Joan, in order to be closer to their children, left politics after his one term of office was completed, although he did have an unsuccessful run at a congressional primary in 1980.
But after all these years, the 69-year-old Ross doesn’t flinch when asked if he’d do anything differently, like maybe taking the money.
“I think I did it instinctively,” he said of his refusal. “I didn’t like being told what to do.”
1/09/2014
Random Observations on Chris Christie's Epically Long Press Conference:
1. Just for shits and giggles, let's take Christie at his word at his press conference answering questions about his staff's involvement in limiting access to the George Washington Bridge as political retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey. Let's believe everything he said (even though he said he had just heard about the scandal at 8:50 the previous morning and insisted twice that he had lost sleep over two nights which, unless he's living some kind of Groundhog's Day, isn't possible unless he knew that something was going to break, in which case his whole press conference was a lie, but, still, let's pretend, shall we?).
Even looking at what he said in the most generous light possible, what we're left with is a governor who, by his own admission, has surrounded himself with people who are dishonest, who prefers to remain ignorant about problems, who is more concerned with personal betrayal and hurt feelings than public consequences, and who is out of touch with the day-to-day operations of his own government. In other words, he's all bluster and no substance, an incompetent boob. In otherer words, he reached under his gut, took out his tiny penis, and fucked himself in front of the press. In otherest words, the round man waved bye-bye to the Oval Office.
2. But what he said was actually a pretty disturbing portrait of rampant narcissism, as is Christie's way. There was Christie presenting himself as the poor fool, the victim of a lying woman (with its underlying implication of "C'mon, everyone. Bitches be crazy"). He said of Bridget Kelley, "I've terminated her employment because she lied to me." And for no other reason. That's fucked up right there. The sin wasn't mucking up the traffic of the busiest bridge in the United States for some phantom political game. It wasn't delaying ambulances, police, and school buses. No, it was that she lied to Sultan Christie.
Is that too far? Look at the transcript. No less than a half dozen times does Christie refer to Kelly's "lies." And Christie said he didn't ask Kelly why she conspired with David Wildstein to screw the entry lanes to the GWB from Fort Lee because she might be called to testify before a legislative committee? No, fuck that. Again, taking him at his word, you don't ask because you don't want to know.
3. Advice to Chris Christie: When there's ample video evidence, recorded proudly by your own staff, of you being a bully, don't say, "I am not a bully."
4. Advice to Chris Christie, Part 2: Stop giving civics lessons in your press conferences. Yeah, we fuckin' get it. "Politics ain't bean bag" or however the fuck you wanna put it. Really, fucko? We delicate pussies would have never figured that out without you informing us. Oh, and without watching TV news once during our lives.
5. Advice to Chris Christie, Part 3: Yeah, you may have 65,000 state employees. But you don't have that many in your own office. So just stop equating your deputy chief of staff with the poor schlub inputting mailed-in tax forms in some basement office in Newark. You know what Kelly's job was. Or see #1.
6. Advice to Chris Christie, Part 4: In general, stop pretending you don't know people. Port Authority official Wildstein? Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee? Dude, Sokolich backed you on a couple of things. He's one of those Democrats you always tout as making you so glori-fucking-fied bipartisan. There's a photo of you with him. He was elected and reelected at the same time as you. You look like the liar you are when you say such things.
7. And what the fuck exactly is the atmosphere in the governor's office if your minions feel free to do such fuckery?
8. What the Rude Pundit didn't hear amid the apologies and the "Buck stops with me, but, you know, I was lied to, but, sure, the buck stops with me, even though, hey, I was lied to" was Christie saying that anyone should be investigated for possible criminal charges, like misuse of government funds, for starters. We already know what David Wildstein will do under oath: take the Fifth so he doesn't, well, shit, incriminate himself. Someone's gonna be offered immunity and a deal, which leads to...
9. Yesterday, the Rude Pundit said what he thought happened to make the bridge debacle possible. But he's calling "bullshit" on the whole press conference. He's calling "bullshit" on Christie's whole internal investigation, which looks like it'll have the same momentum as OJ Simpson looking for the "real" killers. It was an act of political preservation, delivered with braggadocio and pomposity ("Look how good I am at apologizing"). As such, it'll fool the idiots and the simpering reporters who laughed at Christie's exasperated jokes.
But, somewhere not so very far away, Hillary Clinton just started shifting strategy to how she'll defeat Rand Paul in the general.
5 reasons Chris Christie might be lying
Applying the techniques of lie detection to Christie's press conference yields some very interesting results
AMY PUNT
“I am embarrassed and humiliated by the conduct of some of the people on my team,” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said during his press conference on Jan. 9 regarding the George Washington Bridge scandal. “I am who I am, but I am not a bully.” While he worked hard in the nearly two-hour press conference to dispel any rumors of his involvement, many have already noted that Christie’s speech was more remarkable for the questions it didn’t answer than for the ones it did.
Left looming is: How could a man like Christie not know that his deputy chief of staff ordered lane closures on the George Washington Bridge? And how does a former U.S. Attorney, with his eye on a 2016 presidential campaign, not ask follow-up questions when told the closures were a result of a traffic test?
How indeed?
Most people feel it’s relatively easy to spot a liar, and judging by the media coverage on this scandal, many people feel that Christie is lying, but without a smoking gun, i.e. damning emails or personal testimony from his staff or the Port Authority, it’s hard to prove.
But his press conference itself may offer some insights. In “Liespotting: Proven Techniques to Detect Deception,” author Pamela Meyer asserts that only when we step back from someone’s words to view the whole picture can we begin to see the combination of indicators that will help us successfully identify a liar. She writes:
After listening closely to the details of someone’s speech, take a mental step back to consider what the combination of his facial expressions, body language, and verbal clues says about his attitude toward being questioned. Attitude is a crucial indicator.
Is the subject interested in helping you solve a problem or answer a question? Is he forthright or evasive? How confidently does he speak? A deceptive person might be guarded and hesitant to firmly acknowledge or deny anything you suggest about his actions or behavior. A truthful person will cooperate from the start and will signal that he is on your side.
But what if that person is an expert at identifying liars? And what if that person knows how to look like he’s telling the truth? As a former lawyer, Christie would be a master at it. In his speech he went out of his way to make the listener feel he was just as surprised as anyone and that he was going to do everything in his power to get to the bottom of the lane closures. But closer examination of what he said and what he didn’t say offers a very different picture.
While liespotting isn’t an exact science, and there are always exceptions, knowing how to identify certain telltale behaviors can provide some very interesting clues. Below, five mistakes Christie made in his press conference that may be signs of less-than-truthful behavior.
1. Too much detail regarding unimportant issues. According to Meyer, a subject will often offer specific details that have nothing to do with the question of his guilt as a way of validating his claim of innocence. It’s as if the specificity will add credibility to what he’s about to tell you. However, when you listen closely, you’ll observe that the abundance of details does not lead to relevant information.
When explaining how he learned of the breach in his office regarding the bridge lane closures, Christie said that he finished his workout at 8:50 and received a call from his director of communication at 8:55. Then he said, “I found this out at 8:50 yesterday morning. By 9:00 this morning, Bridget Kelly was fired. By 7:00 yesterday evening, Bill Stepien was asked to leave my organization.”
This may sound credible, but it begs the follow-up question, where’s the inquiry? Why fire your deputy chief of staff without talking to her further to find out who else might have been involved and what her motive might have been. As a former attorney, Christie knows that establishing motive is critical to securing a conviction of guilt, and if she’s the linchpin, why isn’t he speaking to her to find the others involved? Instead, when asked why Kelly lied to him, he said, “I have not had any conversation with Bridget Kelly since the email came out. And so she was not given the opportunity to explain to me why she lied because it was so obvious that she had. And I’m, quite frankly, not interested in the explanation at the moment.”
Notably, Christie indicated nine separate times throughout the conference that he was interviewing his staff and would continue to interview them. He details conversations with people he said are not involved. But why spend so much time talking to innocent people? If you want to find the guilty, talk to those you know are guilty. At one point, he said,
And so now, having been proven wrong, of course we’ll work cooperatively with the investigations. And you know, I’m going through an examination, as I mentioned to you, right now. That’s what I’m doing. I’m going through an examination and talking to the individual people who work for me, not only to discover if there’s any other information we need find, but also to ask them: How did this happen? How did, you know, how did this, you know, occur to us?
Here again, he’s giving the appearance of being cooperative by offering details, but those details lead to no real information except to tell us how serious he is about interviewing. In fact, though the conference lasted almost two hours, Christie said very little.
2. Evading questions. During the question-and-answer period Christie stuck to his talking points: Apologize. Appear cooperative. Promise to do better next time. He also avoided answering this question from a reporter: “So, I’m just asking, what do you ask yourself about — they either thought this is what the boss wanted, or they, as a group, they were willing to go rogue and do this and then try to cover it up.” Christie’s response:
And what does it make me ask about me? It makes me ask about me what did I do wrong to have these folks think it was OK to lie to me? And there’s a lot of soul-searching that goes around with this. You know, when you’re a leader of an organization — and I’ve had this happen to me before, where I’ve had folks not tell me the truth about something, not since I’ve been governor but in previous leadership positions — you always wonder about what you could do differently. And believe me, John, I haven’t had a lot of sleep the last two nights, and I’ve been doing a lot of soul-searching. I’m sick over this. I’ve worked for the last 12 years in public life developing a reputation for honesty and directness and blunt talk, one that I think is well-deserved. But, you know, when something like this happens, it’s appropriate for you to question yourself, and certainly I am. And I am soul-searching on this… And so I don’t want to overreact to that in that way either, John. But if you’re asking me over the last 48 hours or last 36 hours I’ve done some soul-searching, you bet I have.
He used a lot of words to say little beyond, “I’m sorry.” It’s not an answer, it’s an accusation. He’s saying, “I’m contrite. Isn’t it enough? Can’t you see I’m really hurting?” We’re to feel sorry for him and even guilty for suspecting him.
It’s also important to note that he repeats the question in full twice — once as if to clarify and again as part of his answer. Meyer warns that that kind of repetition indicates someone is about to lie. It’s natural to repeat a question in part, to make sure you hear it, but beware when someone repeats your question in full as part of their answer. This could be a subject’s way of buying time while he considers what he’s going to say next.
3. Lack of genuine emotion. Christie is a force of nature. He is breathtakingly self-confident and passionate about what he believes in. He’s expressive with his hands, his face and his body. A Google image search reveals Christie using his hands in almost every speech, hugging people and laughing heartily. Christie is not a stuffed shirt. His baseline behavior is that of a warm, sincere, powerful leader, quick to anger, but also quick to love.
But in Thursday’s speech, Christie kept his arms on the podium, his face expressionless and his words measured, despite the fact that he kept repeating how heartbroken he was. “I don’t think I’ve gotten to the angry stage yet, but I’m sure I’ll get there,” he said, as if he knew it was strange not to appear angry.
The fact that this behavior is so out of character for him is significant. In “Liespotting,” Meyer advises, “…you’ll want to take into account the subject’s baseline speaking habits before rushing to assume he’s fabricating a lie.” In Thursday’s speech Christie’s body was frozen, his movements robotic, and he lacked all of his customary warmth and charm. While this is not a guarantee of guilt, in the context of the inherent problems with his defense, it’s disquieting.
4. Leaks. These can be the most damning of all. A leak is a facial expression or physical gesture that sneaks out without the liar’s knowledge. These telltale signs can be facial expressions or physical gestures that are out of sync. For example, a subject angry at an accusation slams his fist on the table, but his face betrays the slightest smile for just an instant. A leak could also be an errant phrase tacked on to the end of a statement that then changes its entire meaning. “I don’t micromanage first,” Christie said at the end of an explanation regarding his management style:
I am — there’s this — there’s this, you know, kind of reputation out there of me being a micromanager. I’m not. I mean, I think if you talk to my staff, what they would tell you is that I delegate enormous authority to my staff and enormous authority to my Cabinet. And I tell them, come to me with the policy decisions that need to be made, with some high-level personnel decisions that need to be made. But I do not manage in that kind of micro way, first.
Later he assures the press corps that he will always tell them the truth, as he sees it. It’s the “as I see it,” that weakens the phrase. But the fact that he feels the need to say it at all is somewhat suspect. According to Meyer, if anyone is telling you they are telling you the truth, that person probably is not.
5. Contradictions. Twice during the press conference Christie changed his story. At the start of his speech he clearly explained that four weeks ago he took his staff into his office and told them that if they had anything to do with the bridge lane closures they had one hour to tell either chief of staff Kevin O’Dowd or chief counsel Charlie McKenna. Later in the conference, aggressively leaning over the podium, Christie said that four weeks ago he took his staff into his office and told them that they should tell him, Mr. O’Dowd and Mr. McKenna right then and there if they were involved with the bridge debacle.
Then, when asked how he might respond to a subpoena, Christie quickly dismissed the question by saying, “I’m not going to speculate on that at this time.” A strange way to answer given how many times he previously claimed he would do everything to cooperate.
Once again, none of this proves Christie is lying. But if Meyer’s book is any guide, it’s at least time to ask him some more questions.
