Christie’s Office Defies ‘Open Records’ Law, Won’t Release BridgeGhazi Emails

We are guessing Team Christie didn’t want this ending up on the Friday local television news. Word leaked out during drive time, and inquiring minds might say this smacks of a cover-up:

Gov. Chris Christie’s office has declined to release emails from the personal accounts of two top aides to the governor involved in the George Washington Bridge scandal, according to a liberal super PAC based in Washington.

American Bridge, a pro-Democratic group that conducts opposition research on Republicans, said today that it filed a request under New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act for the emails. Christie’s office denied it in a letter dated Thursday, the group said.

The super PAC focused on two of Christie’s top aides: chief spokesman Michael Drewniak and former deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly.

American Bridge sought emails between them and Christie, or his top deputies in Trenton and the Port Authority, going back to April 2013.

According to documents submitted to the state Assembly under subpoena, Kelly used her private email account to tell a Christie associate at the Port Authority, David Wildstein, that it was “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”
BridgetKelly.JPGBridget Anne KellyTwitter

Drewniak used his Gmail account while working on a statement with Wildstein when he resigned his job at the port in December, the subpoenaed documents show.

Andrew McNally, an assistant counsel in the governor’s office, wrote back to American Bridge saying, “the subject matter of your request is the focus of numerous investigations from other entities, including state and federal authorities.”

By: dave-dr-gonzo

David Hirsch, a.k.a. Dave "Doctor" Gonzo*, is a renegade record producer, video producer, writer, reformed corporate shill, and still-registered lobbyist for non-one-percenter performing artists and musicians. He lives in a heavily fortified compound in one of Manhattan's less trendy neighborhoods.

* Hirsch is the third person to use the pseudonym, a not-so-veiled tribute to journalist and author Hunter S. Thompson, with the permission of his predecessors Gene Gaudette of American Politics Journal (currently webmaster and chief bottlewasher at Liberaland) and Stephen Meese at Smashmouth Politics.