N.J. Gov. Chris Christie aide is latest to use private emails

[mfcorey1]

WASHINGTON | Personal emails at the center of the brewing scandal for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie may have remained secret, had the public and press relied solely on the state's open records law.
Emails disclosed this past week show a top Christie aide asking the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to shut down three lanes on the busy George Washington Bridge, resulting in major backups for days last September. Those emails were leaked to reporters last week, even though one newspaper requested them nearly a month ago, only to be told they didn't exist.
The use of private emails adds Christie, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, to a growing list of administrations that use private email accounts and other digital services to conduct official business. In turn, state and federal officials, regardless of political party, have sidestepped public records laws meant to keep government activities transparent.
The Record of Bergen, N.J., said it filed an open-records request last month asking for emails related to the Port Authority's decision to close the bridge lanes. The request specifically sought emails between David Wildstein, a Christie-appointed Port Authority official, and employees in the governor's office.
The newspaper received a response from Christie's office 10 days later, stating that the office "reviewed its records" but did not find any responsive emails. Weeks later, however, emails similar to what The Record asked for were made public after being obtained under subpoena by state Assembly Democrats.
It's unclear why the governor's office didn't turn over apparently responsive emails from the Yahoo Mail account of Christie's former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly. She used the service to send messages to Wildstein, who ordered the bridge lanes closed. Representatives in Christie's office did not immediately return messages seeking comment Friday.


Read more at Jacksonville.com: http://jacksonville.com/breaking-news/2014-01-12/story/nj-gov-chris-christie-aide-latest-use-private-emails#ixzz2qGx2ebef

[malaise]

1. Oops

Get thee to the greatest page

[tomm2thumbs]

2. kick and rec for noteworthiness

bump

[DontTreadOnMe]

3. Good thing we have the NSA, we can go look at ALL their emails...

Is the subpoena ready yet?

[nikto]

4. Christie was probably one of the few people the NSA wasn't interested in

NSA watches The Little Folks.

[treestar]

7. Quite the opposite

If there were going to be abuse of power by NSA, wouldn't it be people who have power to do something?

[nikto]

10. You never know...

Which little people may emerge from the masses and do something
the powers-that-be-don't like.

If NSA is spying on politicians, I assume it spies far more on Liberal/Progressive politicians
than Conservative ones.

The NSA info is handled by outsourced CORPORATE security entities (Snowden was an employee of one).

Gotta' be a rightward-corporatist slant in there somewhere.

This is a good related article...

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2014/01/13

[billhicks76]

5. Exactly

Shouldnt there be an onslaught of records requests to the NSA from criminal and civil defendants all across the USA???

[treestar]

6. Amazing they did it by email and not by phone

It would be impossible to prove had they just said it all on the phone. Total hubris. Maybe they thought since they were private accounts, they would not come to light.

[Bernardo de La Paz]

8. Private emails = skulduggery. nt

[Laura PourMeADrink]

9. Ha...Add Emailgate to Bridgegate. nt