According to an internal review, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is free and clear of any charges that he was involved in a high school-style prank to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge. Not cleared: His now-fired deputy chief of staff of intergovernmental affairs Bridget Anne Kelly, who is being thrown under the bus in a pretty sexist way.
Until I read this almost 300 page report, I didn’t have much sympathy for Kelly and neither did most anyone else. She was a central part of an administration attempt to punish political leaders who haven’t supported Governor Christie’s political agenda. Though Kelly has gotten a good deal of negative attention, she’s mostly shared the blame with Christie, her “co-conspirator” David Wildstein at the Port Authority and Christie’s campaign director Bill Stepien. But now that this internal investigation conducted by lawyers hired by Christie is finished, it’s clear that Kelly is the one they’d like us to focus our blame on.
As the New York Times describes it, the report “doubles down on a strategy of portraying Ms. Kelly as duplicitous, weeping frequently and dependent on men for approval and stability.” Let’s dive into this strategy.
Right from the start, Kelly is described as emotional and not good enough at her job. Also she was having a romantic relationship with a co-worker that he ended, which is very relevant, of course:
Something happened to change this dynamic dramatically, however, in August 2013. By that time, Kelly had become Deputy Chief of Staff, assuming the post left vacant by her predecessor, Stepien, who had departed in April 2013 to run the Governor’s re-election campaign. Because Stepien was her “benefactor,” Kelly relied heavily on him during this transition. And at some point after Stepien’s departure to run the campaign, Kelly and Stepien became personally involved, although, by early August 2013, their personal relationship had cooled, apparently at Stepien’s choice, and they largely stopped speaking.
By the way, their relationship had cooled because he ended it, if you forgot that part:
And her first known communication to Wildstein about the lane realignment in mid-August 2013, for example, occurred around the time that her personal relationship with Stepien had cooled, apparently at Stepien’s behest and Stepien and Kelly had largely stopped speaking.
Kelly had a lot of other stuff on her plate too, like “a hospitalized family member” and having to pick up her kids from school and other activities on a regular basis. This might have made things difficult for her:
Like the others involved in the lane realignment, events in Kelly’s personal life may have had some bearing on her subjective motivations and state of mind.
To be clear: at no point are there actually any implications in this report that Stepien or Wildstein’s personal lives were motivating them to involve themselves in the bridge closings.
But Kelly is different. She’s just a really emotional person:
During the senior staff meeting, most attendees looked only at the Governor or down; they did not observe other attendees’ demeanor. Orsen was sitting directly next to Kelly in the back of the room, however, and observed that Kelly seemed emotional during the meeting.
Super nervous:
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