A senior adviser to President Barack Obama said allegations that Governor Chris Christie knew about lane closures on the George Washington Bridge may be “a killer” to the New Jersey Republican’s presidential ambitions.
“I don’t think there’s any coming back,” John Podesta, counselor to Obama, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Political Capital with Al Hunt” airing this weekend.
A lawyer for David Wildstein, a former Christie ally and ex-official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, released a letter today saying the governor knew of the lane closures as they were happening and that Wildstein has proof. At a two-hour news conference Jan. 9, Christie said he didn’t know at the time about four days of traffic jams that may have been engineered to punish the mayor of Fort Lee, New Jersey.
“That long press conference he gave, the absolute denial, and throwing his people under the bus the way he did, how hurt he was by them,” Podesta said in his first television interview since joining the Obama White House. If it’s true Christie knew about the lane closures, “I don’t think there’s any coming back.”