here s what it means in english. according to two journalists familiar with those logs, chip michaels, a port authority police lieutenant informed the ft. lee police chief on day one of the political punishment operations that the bridge lane closures were going to last for an entire month. well, that s what those words meant. in other words, ft. lee was going to be told that their city was going to be turned into a parking lot for the entire month of september. brian murphy, come in on this. it seems to me there is a lot of information being shared here. it seems like everybody was in on this punishment operation to send some kind of message the mayor of ft. lee, whether it had to do with trying to get them endorse or trying to get them go along with something or not go along. we don t even know yet. right. we don t know. it looks to me like they re building it s inconceivable that you would be able to do this for four weeks. i just don t see how. are they crazy? when pat foye
placed police authority or bridge authority police officer, the one who drove david wildstein around that day knew exactly what was going on, knew it was some kind of bridge study or traffic study. a four-week jam-up of traffic of the busiest bridge anywhere and it was all a traffic study. what this adds is a plan to jam up the traffic and blame on it a month-long traffic study was known to the christie appointees, the union chief and the same port authority police officer chip michaels who told the ft. lee chief of police that day that the jam-up was going to last a month. every day we re learning that more and more people knew about this plot, including key people in christie s own office. everyone we are to believe, i suppose, but the man in whose name they were doing all this. from the port authority to the governor s office people knew no one was to take a phone call from the ft. lee mayor. they were to maintain radio silence for as long as the
and the first recording in that log, he says that chip michaels, the lieutenant we referred to before had told him on the first day of the closures, they were part of a month long traffic study about traffic to the bridge. that s the first time from our understanding that they ve ever indicated a month long traffic study. that s really long. from there he goes on to record the traffic, it backed all the way up to cliffside park, which is a neighboring community to ft. lee. road rage was a response that he got from passengers caught in the closure. and he documents calls made to the port authority liaison. and basically, to a fault, no response, no response, no response. you really get a sense that they at least from the phone logs, they didn t know why these closures were happening beforehand, then they re dealing
but ft. lee was the object of punishment. and they released 2,000 pages of public documents that they had in their possession as a town related to the bridge lane closure. a lot of this is about them answering requests for information from the public, but they ve also released some communications from during the bridge shutdown, including one really intriguing text message from chip, port authority police lieutenant chip michaels. now, remember on the first morning of the bridge lanes being shut down, as they were putting the shutdown into place, at 7:30 that morning, david wildstein the guy who s job at the port authority whose job was mostly politics. david wildstein turned up at the bridge that morning to see his handiwork. he showed up at the bridge that morning to see what the impact was of shutting down the lanes from ft. lee, at 7:30 that morning, he sent this e-mail saying he was going for a ride around with chip.
christie administration about their own knowledge of this going on during when the lane closures were happening and afterwards, but he s broadened that review. the most interesting document for me in there was the handwritten log from the ft. lee police chief where he s recording his observations during the lane closures and his calls and what he knew about it at the time. and the first recording in that log, he says that chip michaels, the lieutenant we referred to before had told him on the first day of the closures, they were part of a month long traffic study about traffic to the bridge. that s the first time from our understanding that they ve ever indicated a month long traffic study. that s really long. from there he goes on to record the traffic, it backed all the way up to cliffside park, which is a neighboring community to ft. lee. road rage was a response that he got from passengers caught in the closure. and he documents calls made to