Christie Has Been a Corrupt Hypocrite for a Long Time

Christie (upper right) doesn't seem so happy to be in Green Bay anymore...
From an Albert Gattullo tweet.

Oh, the irony- that Governor Chris Christie, long before Bridgegate, and long before he and Jerry Jones became traveling buddies all over America to watch the Cowboys- would do and say this:

New Jersey law says toll records cannot be released to any person or governmental agency unless they have a subpoena or court order. E-ZPass terms and conditions declare that "account information will not be disclosed to third parties without [customer] consent except as required or permitted by law."

Despite those protections, Lautenberg's records became fodder in Christie's attempts to diminish the senator. At the 2012 press conference, Christie cited E-ZPass records to question whether the senator spent enough time attending to his state's business.

“What was he doing going through the tunnel or over the bridge 284 times for free in '05 and '06?” Christie asked. “Was he ever in Washington? And when he wasn't in Washington what was he doing in New York? Did he ever spend any time in New Jersey?” Citing the travel records, Christie called Lautenberg "an embarrassment to the state."

Even before Baroni first publicized Lautenberg's toll history, such accounts were apparently being shopped quietly to the press as a means of embarrassing the senator. A source who worked for Lautenberg at the time confirmed that his office received a media inquiry about his travel records several months before Baroni's appearance at the 2012 hearing. The source said that led Lautenberg aides to conclude that Christie or the Port Authority was trying to use the private records to plant an unflattering story about the senator.

After Baroni testified about Bridgegate in 2013, Christie's campaign manager, Bill Stepien, sent a text message to him saying: “I know it’s not a fun topic, and not nearly as fun as beating up on Frank Lautenberg, but you did great, and I wanted to thank you."

The New York Times  reported that "aides to Mr. Christie cheered Mr. Baroni’s performance" at the Lautenberg hearing. The Times also reported that Baroni "sent word through mutual friends to people on Mr. Lautenberg’s staff that he regretted the scene" in which he divulged the travel records, but that "the instructions, he explained, had come from Trenton."

In 2014, Andrew Perez, then a fellow at the Huffington Post, filed an open records request with Port Authority officials asking for all documents related to Lautenberg’s enrollment in the E-ZPass program, as well as any communications at the Port Authority about those records. He also asked for the Port Authority’s internal policy on employees accessing citizens’ private travel data.

“I figured that since Baroni and the governor already disclosed these records, they should be provided to me, and I expected the Port Authority should have a detailed policy on who at the Port Authority was allowed to access E-ZPass records,” Perez told IBTimes. 

Instead, the Port Authority rejected his request, saying that “certain records are exempt from disclosure” under the agency's policy of not releasing documents that "constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy of an individual." Along with that rejection notice, the agency did release a document promising E-ZPass customers “nondisclosure” of their records.

"If we now know the Port Authority says these records cannot be divulged, then the big question is: How did Mr. Baroni and Gov. Christie get access to them?" said Loretta Weinberg, one of the Democratic state senators who led the New Jersey legislature's investigation into the Bridgegate affair. "The privacy policies appear to have been breached in order to try to embarrass a U.S. senator and browbeat him into not asking tough questions. Not only must the governor answer for this, but his Port Authority commissioners and the Port Authority executive director need to explain how these records were obtained in the first place."

IBTimes asked P.J. Wilkins, the executive director of E-ZPass, whether public officials like governors have the right to review customers’ travel records without a subpoena or court order. He answered: “In all my years of [working at] E-ZPass, I have never seen that happen.” He said that without a subpoena, “I don’t know why somebody would be given that kind of access to these records.”

Is Christie ever in Jersey? Does he do any work there? Did he actually close the George Washington Bridge, threaten Mayors with retaliation, and obstruct a prosecutor? If there has ever been a bigger hypocrite and general annoyance in American politics, I can't find them.