New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is in Deep Trouble

01

Here's what happened:

In September of last year, four traffic lanes from Fort Lee, NJ to the George Washington Bridge were shut down for four days straight, and nobody knows why.
Big deal, right?

Wrong. The George Washington Bridge is the single busiest bridge in the world, with over 70,000 commuters relying on bridge access for transportation. Some of those commuters include schoolchildren and ambulances.

Here's where the story gets shady: the New Jersey state gubernatorial elections were last year. Chris Christie won by a landslide, though there were a few government officials in New Jersey who didn't support Christie. One of them was Mark Sokolich, the mayor of Fort Lee, which is the town that got its traffic lanes shut down.

Starting to see a connection? Good, because emails from some of Christie's staffers were released on January 8, 2014 which imply that Christie's office authorized the lane shutdown as payback to Fort Lee's mayor for not supporting Christie in last year's election.

Uh oh.

To try and stem the tide of outrage that's currently washing over his office, Gov. Christie held a press conference earlier today to explain himself and do some damage control. What followed was a steady stream of throwing his staffers under the bus, and generally dodging any sort of blame or responsibility for what happened in September.

Oh, and the press conference was really freakin' long. Naturally, Twitter has picked up the case and is calling it #bridgegate, providing Christie with a healthy dose of snark over what looks to be political suicide from his office.

Here's an "abridged" version of what they're saying (zing!):
Advertisement
02

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
03

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
04

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
Advertisement
05

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
06

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
07

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
Advertisement
08

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
09

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
10
Did we mention the press conference was long?

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
Advertisement
11
Very long.

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
12

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
13

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
Advertisement
14

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
15

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
16

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.
Advertisement
17

There was a problem rendering this tweet - it may have been deleted.