Chris Christie Is Over

Chris Christie Is Over

Even though 2016 appears to be the year of painful, public disqualification from higher office, you may be forgiven for not noticing the extraordinary implosion of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. After all, the Trump surrogate and White House Transition chair has benefitted from his early endorsement of the Republican presidential nominee in unusual fashion: Christie’s power in the Grand Ole Party has decreased, rather than increased. The likelihood of a plum position in the Trump administration—Attorney General, perhaps, since Christie was spurned as the Republican running mate—is decidedly dim, what with the presently apocalyptic predictions about November 8.

Instead, Trump’s gift to Christie has been shadow: the top Republican’s national meltdown has obscured that of the one-time rising Republican star and sitting New Jersey governor. But make no mistake—Christie’s is a fall of epic proportions, precipitated by an unfathomably petty revenge plot. The contrast of the two, the top-heavy-ness of the fallout compared to the insignificance of the initial transgression, would be comic, were it not so tragic. Remember that in November of 2012, Governor Christie had a 72 percent approval rating. Today, it stands at 21 percent.

While most of America has been busy digesting a nearly-daily intake of sexual assault allegations, paranoid screeds about a rigged election, and a wildly vituperative back and forth between party elders and their Republican leader, Governor Christie’s political career has been quietly, steadily unraveling.

There are some who will point to the governor’s early and eager embrace of Trump as the beginning of his political demise (others may point to his wife’s obvious disdain for the man for whom her husband was putting his reputation on the line), but the ongoing trial of Christie aides Bridget Kelly and Bill Baroni for their roles in the Bridgegate scandal has revealed a culture of craven and unusually vindictive acts (even for New Jersey pols). The testimonies are devastating to Christie’s political ambitions.

Most damning, two of his top aides* (former Deputy Chief of Staff Kelly and former Port Authority official and one-time Christie henchman, David Wildstein) have now testified under oath that Christie knew of the lane closures—ones that would strand thousands of motorists on the George Washington Bridge—in advance. Prosecutors have maintained that the lanes were closed by Kelly and Baroni as retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee, Mark Sokolich, who refused to endorse Christie during the governor’s reelection campaign, and whose residents were most affected by the obscene traffic delays, (the defense teams have maintained their clients’ innocence against nine charges of corruption and fraud).

On Friday, Kelly testified that she reviewed the plan with Christie on August 12, 2013—nearly a month before the lanes were closed for an alleged “traffic study.” This directly contradicts what Christie has maintained all along, most famously in his 108 minute-long press conference on January 9 of 2014, immediately following the Bridgegate allegations—saying he had no knowledge of the lane closures:

“I had no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or it execution,” said Christie, “and I am stunned by the abject stupidity that was shown here.”

The fact that three of his consiglieres have testified exactly otherwise is very bad for Christie, but it’s perhaps the stuff the governor did afterwards that is unprecedented.


Read it here: http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/10/chris-christie-is-over/505241/