Revelations associated with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) bridge scandal continued to unfold overnight, but there was one story in particular that seemed to serve as a capstone to yesterday’s explosive news.
Emergency responders were delayed in attending to four medical situations — including one in which a 91-year-old woman lay unconscious — due to traffic gridlock caused by unannounced closures of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, according to the head of the borough’s EMS department.The woman later died, borough records show.
For reasons that defy comprehension, Christie’s team decided to seek political retribution against the community of Fort Lee, and decided a crippling traffic jam was the way to do it. But what the governor’s top officials didn’t bother to consider was the real-world effect of their dangerous abuse of power.
As Rachel explained on the show last night, this meant a delay for an EMS crew arriving at the scene of a vehicle accident where four people were injured, an hour-long delay for an EMS coordinator to reach someone who called 911 complaining of chest pains, and the elderly woman who died.
Making matters slightly worse, Molly Redden noted there was a missing four-year-old child in Fort Lee that morning and though the toddler was eventually found, local police were initially hampered from responding due to the traffic crisis imposed on the community for no reason.
By the reasoning of Christie aides, this may not have mattered since it might have been the child of “a Buono voter.”
Looking ahead, several state officials have raised the prospect of a criminal investigation, and as state Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D) said on the show last night, there’s an expectation that the matter would be directed to a federal prosecutor because New Jersey prosecutors are appointed by the governor.
In the meantime, state lawmakers expect to hear sworn testimony today from David Wildstein, Christie’s former top official at the Port Authority, but Wildstein has gone to court in the hopes of resisting the subpoena.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."