Governor ‘unaware’ staff caused traffic chao

New Jersey governor Chris Christie yesterday apologised to his constituents and said he was “embarrassed and humiliated” by his staff but had no idea his aides may have closed highway lanes to exact political retribution.

Christie said he was firing deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly “because she lied to me”.

Kelly is the latest casualty in a widening scandal that threatens to upend Christie’s second term and likely run for president in 2016. Documents show she arranged traffic jams to punish the mayor of Fort Lee — a borough in New Jersey — who didn’t endorse Christie for re-election.

The revelations thrust a regional transportation issue into a national conversation, raising new questions about the ambitious governor’s leadership on the eve of a second term designed to jumpstart his road to the White House.

The US attorney in New Jersey, Paul Fishman, said he was “reviewing the matter to determine whether a federal law was implicated”.

The messages do not directly implicate Christie, but they contradicted his assertions that the closings were not punitive and that his staff was not involved.

Christie acknowledged yesterday that was a lie, because his staff didn’t tell him what they had done. He also said he had “no knowledge or involvement in this issue, in its planning or execution” and was stunned by the “abject stupidity that was shown”. Nevertheless, he said, he was responsible for what happened.

Emails and text messages were obtained on Wednesday by the Associated Press and other news organisations amid a statehouse investigation into whether the lane closings that led to the tie-ups were retribution against the mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Christie for re-election last autumn.

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Kelly wrote in August in a message to David Wildstein, a top Christie appointee on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

A few weeks later, Wildstein closed two of three lanes connecting Fort Lee to the heavily-travelled George Washington Bridge, which runs between New Jersey and New York City.

Fort Lee mayor Mark Sokolich called it “appalling” that the traffic jams appear to have been deliberately created.