NEW JERSEY (CNN) — “I have absolutely nothing to hide,” New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Thursday about a pending review by a U.S. attorney’s office into September’s Fort Lee lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.
For several days in September 2013, there was one experience that united motorists in New Jersey. They felt the total despair, rage and frustration that came with trying to drive near or on the George Washington Bridge.
For many, it meant a commute from hell. Some parents couldn’t get their kids to school, while others were late getting to work.
“It was utter chaos those days. People were pouring into the store, complaining,” Debbie Minuto recalled Thursday in her shop, Binghamton Bagel Cafe, in the small town of Fort Lee. “The bridge is a lifeline here. You take away the bridge, you take away our livelihood.”
Christie, who has been accused of being responsible for the fiasco in an effort to punish a local mayor for not endorsing him for a 2016 president run, said he would instruct his staff to “cooperate and answer any questions.”
“I don’t know whether this was a traffic study that morphed into a political vendetta or a political vendetta that morphed into a traffic study. … We’ll find out over time, maybe,” Christie said
He reiterated that if his staff was executing a vendetta against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich, it wasn’t Christie’s vendetta. He said he didn’t know whether his staff asked Sokolich for an endorsement, and Christie said he never personally asked Sokolich for one.
A New Jersey Assembly committee voted Thursday to hold David Wildstein, a former political appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, in contempt for refusing to answer questions at a hearing on the Fort Lee lane closure controversy.
Wildstein, the former director of interstate capital projects for the Port Authority, citing his lawyer’s advice, refused to answer questions from the committee that is investigating the September closure of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge.
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