In Brief: Bwhahahaha on BridgeGate

There were two criminal investigations of note reporting in today, and I want to just cover in brief the first one.  Following more than a year of digging into who was responsible for shutting down traffic at a key interstate bridge - with serious interference with business, law enforcement, and public safety, AKA BridgeGate - one of the people involved with that shutdown pled guilty:

A former ally of Gov. Chris Christie pleaded guilty Friday to helping to engineer traffic jams at the George Washington Bridge in 2013 and concocting a cover-up along with two other officials with close ties to Christie.

David Wildstein did not implicate Christie in the scheme that has cast a long shadow over the Republican governor’s White House prospects in 2016.

Wildstein, an official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey at the time of the tie-ups, pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy...

...Before Wildstein appeared in court, Christie declined to comment Friday as he left a hotel in McLean, Virginia. Christie has insisted all along that he knew nothing about the scheme...

Considering how all three - Wildstein and the other officials - were all close to Christie and had worked with him for years, Christie's alibi of not knowing about the scheme comes across like a child's poor excuse when caught leaving toys all over the playroom.

Here's the questions about BridgeGate: Who profited from the bridge shut-down?  From whose office did most of the plans originate?  Who behaves regularly with a my-way-or-else mindset - the same mindset behind the bridge shutdown - when dealing with enemy and ally alike?  The answers keep pointing back to Chris Christie.

The entire BridgeGate scandal has the markings of the act of a bully, a behavioral trait easily applied to Christie and one he cannot avoid now.  While that bullying behavior may appeal to Christie's voting base, it's not a winning one (remember the thing Machiavelli warns against: inspiring hate is the one thing a Prince must never do).  Bullying leads to hate of the bully, and more and more people have gotten to hate Christie...

And now all it's going to take is one of the other two who haven't pled yet - Bridget Kelly who was Christie’s deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni who was appointed by Christie to serve at the Port Authority (in charge of the bridge) - to give up any detail at all showing Christie knew.  And Christie won't be able to bluff or bully his way out of anything again.