Fugget about it!Follow

I agree that's what you'd say. Bells and salivating and all that.

I would like to thank gbaji and Jophiel for the continuing existence of The Asylum.

I don't deny there actually was an approved traffic study - we've known about that since the beginning. And all the documentation supports that. But skimming through Exhibit A, the illustrations are mock-ups of what could hypothetically happen were they to close down lanes. It's modeling. It's done that way so they don't have to, you know, actually close the lanes and ***** up traffic needlessly. All the data for this was supposed to come from information captured via cameras (which were in place) and via the normal methods of counting cars, those little rope things strewn across the road.

What a job.. I wonder what would happen if we close 2 lanes of the busiest bridge in the world. OMG! Horrible Traffic.. Let me write that down.

Edited, Feb 21st 2014 5:55am by Almalieque

Alma, frighteningly enough, is closest to the correct answer: When the governor has already publicly fired members of his top staff over this, expressed regrets for it, says that he was deceived about it being a simple traffic study and claimed ultimate responsibility, it's a bit too late to start the "But I bet it really was only a legitimate traffic study!" sleuthing. It's moved fully into the "What did he know and when he know it" phase and there's no moving backwards.

Yup. Gonna dig this up since I didn't get a chance to respond last week.



Did he actually say that though? This is one of the several reasons why this whole thing smacks of "smoke but no fire". I haven't found any quote of Christie confirming that the bridge closings were done for nefarious payback reasons rather than as part of a legitimate traffic study. What he fired Kelly for was her lying to him about her knowing about the study. She more or less took something that was a nothing bit of speculation in the local papers and turned it into a nationwide scandal because she told him that she didn't know about the closings prior to them happening, he repeated that assertion when saying that none of his staff knew about the closing prior to them happening, and then it turned out she had known about them. Which made it look like he had lied about it, when in fact, she had lied to him.

This was what turned this into a nationwide thing. And that's all that has happened. No one has yet confirmed (or even provided anything other than wild speculation) that the closing itself wasn't legitimate. They just keep jumping past that part, assuming it was about payback, and then going after anyone close to the governor who knew about it.

But you still have to prove that this really was done for political payback. That's the piece that's missing. And I'm still waiting for *anyone* to show proof that this wasn't just a traffic study that perhaps was foolishly implemented.




In a sane world where investigators actually assess the facts of the case in front of them and then decide how to proceed, you'd have a point. The problem is that what Plamegate taught conservatives is that when a phony scandal like this occurs, the whole point of it is to get as many conservatives to make statements under oath as possible, under the assumption that someone will say something that doesn't perfectly jibe with some other document or statement, and that person can then be charged with perjury and/or obstruction. This is known as being "Scooter'd". He got nailed because he naively thought that the investigators were actually trying to figure out who leaked Plames identity, when they were really just fishing for staff members who would make a mistake in their testimony.

Pleading the 5th becomes the smart course of action because then the investigation has to actually look at the documents and facts instead of testimony from people who are not experts in avoiding getting trapped when being questioned under oath. And in this case, they're doing it because they know that the documents actually show that there's no evidence of any kind of nefarious conspiracy. Poor judgement with the closures? Sure. But that poor judgement has to be shared by a large number of folks, most of whom are not specifically politically aligned.


I've already shown how a whole list of people outside any reasonable circle of those "in on the plan" who knew the details of the closures, and were involved in the decision making and implementation of said closures. This more or less eliminates the possibility that the closures were about political payback. Thus there is no scandal. The whole thing at this point is about trying to find anything that doesn't match, and going after those people. Doesn't matter if what they find has nothing to do with the closures at all. It's a fishing expedition at this point. Nothing more.

Edited, Mar 3rd 2014 3:12pm by gbaji

Spoiler

Gbaji wrote:

In a sane world where investigators actually assess the facts of the case in front of them and then decide how to proceed, you'd have a point. The problem is that what Plamegate taught conservatives is that when a phony scandal like this occurs, the whole point of it is to get as many conservatives to make statements under oath as possible, under the assumption that someone will say something that doesn't perfectly jibe with some other document or statement, and that person can then be charged with perjury and/or obstruction. This is known as being "Scooter'd". He got nailed because he naively thought that the investigators were actually trying to figure out who leaked Plames identity, when they were really just fishing for staff members who would make a mistake in their testimony.

Pleading the 5th becomes the smart course of action because then the investigation has to actually look at the documents and facts instead of testimony from people who are not experts in avoiding getting trapped when being questioned under oath. And in this case, they're doing it because they know that the documents actually show that there's no evidence of any kind of nefarious conspiracy. Poor judgement with the closures? Sure. But that poor judgement has to be shared by a large number of folks, most of whom are not specifically politically aligned.


I've already shown how a whole list of people outside any reasonable circle of those "in on the plan" who knew the details of the closures, and were involved in the decision making and implementation of said closures. This more or less eliminates the possibility that the closures were about political payback. Thus there is no scandal. The whole thing at this point is about trying to find anything that doesn't match, and going after those people. Doesn't matter if what they find has nothing to do with the closures at all. It's a fishing expedition at this point. Nothing more.

So, you're saying that the IRS chick pleading the 5th on targeting Conservative groups isn't hiding anything? There's no logical reason to plead the 5th if you believe that you're innocent. Maybe at first to get some legal advice, but to constantly deny progress means that you're hiding something. It maybe unrelated to the accusation, but you're hiding something.

In the most simplistic scenario, that's like someone accusing you of putting something in your pocket and you refusing to empty your pocket.

What I may think, and what is proven are two different things. Opinion versus fact, right? I'm not saying you can't believe what you want. I'm saying that if you want to convince others that what you think is true, you have to go a step further and find some proof.

The two cases are significantly different. We know for a fact that conservative groups were targeted in the IRS case. No one is refuting that. No one even questions whether it was done by a few local folks in IRS branch offices, or whether it was done via directives (or even just because of the structure of the approval process) from higher up. Before putting Lois Lerner on the stand, a good year of investigation was done, establishing that Lerner had set up the processes which more or less required that conservative groups applications end out being delayed, and also that she personally had a biased opinion that conservative political groups should somehow not receive tax exempt status (which is in violation of the actual policy and the law).

The reason Conservatives were outraged at Lerner invoking the 5th was because she wasn't really being called in about her own involvement. That had already largely been determined. She was being asked to answer whether she had been directed to do these things from higher up. So she wasn't protecting herself. She was potentially protecting others.

You can argue that maybe those invoking the 5th here are also doing so to protect someone higher up. But the key difference is the lack of solid paper trail even suggesting such a thing. That simply doesn't exist here. It's the point I've been making all along in this thread. I keep trying to find the piece that connects "traffic closures occur" to "governors office closed them to get revenge on democrats" and can't find any. What I see is an "investigation" that starts with the speculation that such a revenge plot occurred, and just leaps to the assumption that it must have happened, and proceeds to investigate all those that it thinks might have been involved.

We have due process for a reason. The cops can't just search your home because they don't like you and then hope they find something incriminating. That's called a fishing expedition. You have to first have sufficient evidence of wrongdoing to proceed. And they don't here. They have proof that some freeway lanes were closed. What they don't have is any evidence at all that the decision to close these lanes was made with the intent of punishing the people of Fort Lee. Zero. Zip. Nada. Doesn't exist.

That's a huge difference.





Um... Except that's precisely how our legal system works. You are protected from the government demanding that you reveal what's in your pocket because otherwise, it'll run around looking through everyone's pockets all the time. That's why they must have a warrant to search your pocket. And while the 5th amendment may be irritating sometimes, if it didn't exist we'd have judges dragging people into court and demanding that they prove they're not guilty. That's not how our system of law works.

The presumption of innocence means that you don't have to tell anyone why you are innocent. The other guy has to prove you are guilty.

And when it comes to investigations rather than trials, the 5th amendment is what prevents fishing expeditions. It makes it so that an investigation has to provide sufficiently powerful paper evidence against someone so as to make the decision to explain themselves more worthwhile to them than potentially damaging. If I can convict you on the evidence I have, it often behooves you to talk. But if I can't, you should stay silent. In the whole lane closure thing, there's so very very little actual evidence of anything that there's no reason at all for anyone to talk on the record. Why should they? The only thing they can do is make some kind of silly mistake and accidentally say something that turns out to be untrue. Then they get themselves into trouble legally, and give the scandal hounds more red meat.

This is precisely what Kelly did wrong. It's entirely possible that when she was asked if she knew about the closures ahead of time, she had completely forgotten that one brief email exchange in which it was mentioned. See, if we start with the assumption that this was a nefarious plot that she was in on, then of course she knew all about this and it was high up on her list of things she was paying attention to, and thus her claiming not to know about it becomes a lie that proves the assumption. But if we instead assume that there was no plot, then this casual conversation would not have stuck with her at all, and the more likely explanation was that she just plain forgot about it. It wasn't important to her, right? If went through the past 6 months of your email and text messages and asked you detailed questions about what information you knew about at specific times, there are good odds that you would get some things wrong as well.


Point being that it doesn't matter why. It only matters that one thing one person close to the governor said was incorrect. That feeds the flames of the scandal. That's why Christie was pissed at her. Whether she deliberately lied, or just plain forgot, she made this into a big thing. And political staff at that level are supposed to know better.

I have not been following this story very closely, I'll admit, but I did find this:



Which seems to indicate that he is acknowledging it was "political shenanigans."

And before you say anything, I realize it is MSNBC, but this is supposed to be a direct quote from some local radio program that Christie was on. I know nothing about Jersey radio, and I don't feel like doing any more research into exactly what program he was on.

Yes there is. Anyone who told you otherwise is a moron, and doing you a disservice.

Exercising your Miranda rights is not the same as you pleading the 5th in court with a lawyer. They both support the notion of self incrimination, but one is much more formalized than the other. So, I stand by my statement that there is no reason to plead the 5th after receiving legal advice/representation if you believe that you are innocent, unless you are hiding something.