Chris Christie's traffic jam is not over: The Bridgegate cover-up might be hiding in plain sight

More than two years after a multi-million dollar taxpayer-funded internal investigation of the Bridgegate scandal "cleared" Gov. Gibson Dunn & Crutcher was retained only after Christie’s January 2014 disavowal of his own version of events that the lane closures were part of a legitimate Port Authority traffic study. In an email, Randy Mastro, the lead partner on the Gibson Dunn Bridgegate team, confirmed to Salon that it had examined the governor’s phone in 2014 “and documents that remained there at the time of our review that were responsive to subpoenas were produced.” Who knows how many personal texts and emails had been deleted by the time the white shoe law firm got on the case, months after Christie’s team had been playing 24-7 Bridgegate defense. The reports authors raised the concern such a practice could be used to “circumvent” New Jersey’s Open Public Records Act and obstruct the public’s lawful access to the correspondence and communications of public officials The Gibson Dunn report says the only evidence they found of anyone in the Governor’s office trying to “conceal, destroy or otherwise cover up evidence” was former Christie staffer Brigid Anne Kelly’s efforts to have a colleague delete a potentially incriminating personal :mail. Gibson Dunn also noted that because Kelly had communicated so much in her private text and personal e:mail “her participation in this plan was not to be found in government files; it was kept hidden in private text messages and personal email accounts to cover up her communications, making it difficult to uncover in any event.” In May of 2015 U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman announced the indictment of Kelly, and Bill Baroni, a former Port Authority official and Christie operative.