Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey has explanations to make, apologies to give and an administrative house to clean now that his top aides and political cronies were shown to have been fully and gleefully aware of the chaos they caused by ordering up lane closings — and a four-day traffic jam — in September at the George Washington Bridge. 
 
 New Jersey residents had suspected for months that the sudden, mysterious shutdown of traffic lanes to the bridge in Fort Lee, N.J., may have had something to do with the refusal of the town’s mayor, Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, to endorse Mr. Christie for re-election. 
 
 That sounded far-fetched, even for someone known to be as sensitive to slights and as politically belligerent as Mr. Christie. He and his aides said such speculation was crazy talk, and he sarcastically joked that he had done it. “I worked the cones,” he said. “Unbeknownst to anyone, I was working the cones.” 
 
 Related Coverage Christie Faces Scandal on Traffic Jam Aides Ordered 
 
 Turns out it was his old friend David Wildstein, whom Mr. Christie had appointed as director of interstate capital projects at the Port Authority, who ordered the closings. Text messages and emails made public on Wednesday show that Mr. Wildstein and Mr. Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, discussed the closings as political payback for Mr. Sokolich, who had no idea the closings were coming. 
 
 The correspondence shows that the lane closings were indeed a stunningly stupid act of petty revenge. They were also an egregious abuse of power. 
 
 “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” Ms. Kelly said in an email to Mr. Wildstein in August, a few weeks before the closings. 
 
 Mr. Wildstein replied, “Got it.” 
 
 When the Port Authority’s executive director, Patrick Foye, learned what was happening in Fort Lee, he immediately ordered the lanes reopened, calling the closings dangerous, “abusive,” and probably illegal. Such big changes to traffic patterns are usually announced well in advance. In this case, the vague explanation by Port Authority officials was that they were for a traffic study that nobody else knew anything about. The gridlock was horrendous; Mr. Christie’s aides were lucky that nobody was seriously hurt in the chaos. 
 
 Mr. Christie, caught out on Wednesday, could no longer scoff at or dismiss the scandal, or blame Democrats for it. There were two possible explanations: either he had been pathetically misled by his scheming staff, and failed for months to get to the bottom of the scandal, or he had spent those months dissembling to any and all. His excuse? He was a dupe. 
 
 “What I’ve seen today for the first time is unacceptable,” he said. “I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge.” He added: “This behavior is not representative of me or my administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions.” 
 
 Mr. Christie can start by getting rid of every one of his aides and cronies who knew about this scheme and show what actions he will take against the person with ultimate responsibility for his administration: himself. ||||| TRENTON — The leader of a New Jersey legislative committee investigating the George Washington Bridge lane closings said newly uncensored emails released today are “disturbing” and that the two officials at the center of the controversy acted like children. 
 
 “There’s no new ground been broken,” state Assemblyman John Wisniewski (D-Middlesex), the co-chairman of the committee, said today at the Statehouse. “But what it does show is kind of a juvenile, cavalier attitude toward their official responsibilities and joking about the power they had to create traffic or delay flights.” 
 
 The records released this morning show David Wildstein, a top official at the Port Authority, and Bridget Anne Kelly, who at the time was a deputy chief of staff in Gov. Chris Christie’s office, joked about causing traffic problems for Rabbi Mendy Carlebach of the Chabad of North and South Brunswick. Carlebach, who is Orthodox and a close Christie ally, is a chaplain for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department. 
 
 "And he has officially pissed me off," Wildstein told Kelly in a text message. 
 
 "Clearly," Kelly wrote. "We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?" 
 
 Wildstein replied, "Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed." 
 
 "Perfect," Kelly wrote. 
 
 Wisniewski said he had not spoken to Carlebach and did not understand why Wildstein and Kelly would have wanted to cause him trouble. He said it was “inappropriate” for government officials to talk about a religious leader in that way, and that it “speaks to the need to reform this agency.” 
 
 “It seems like they really felt comfortable in talking about how they could utilize their authority to apparently get back at people, which is disturbing,” he said. 
 
 The 20 pages of documents, released today, also reveal that Kelly was the unidentified recipient of many of the text messages originally provided by Wildstein, the former director of interstate capital projects at the Port Authority. The committee’s attorney, Reid Schar, negotiated the release of the records with Wildstein’s attorney, Alan Zegas. 
 
 Wisniewski said most of the documents were redacted appropriately because they had nothing to do with the September closing of lanes leading to the bridge in Fort Lee — something Democrats have called an act of politically retaliation against the borough’s mayor. 
 
 One redaction, for instance, was of text messages about a crane failure on a Port Authority job, he said. 
 
 “Not part of this investigation, not part of what we’re looking at,” Wisniewski said. “We don’t need to see that.”
– Chris Christie has responded to today's amazing allegations that his aides deliberately caused massive traffic jams on the world's busiest bridge to punish a political rival: The New Jersey governor insists that he had nothing to do with it and suggests that heads will roll, reports Politico. The statement: "What I've seen today for the first time is unacceptable. I am outraged and deeply saddened to learn that not only was I misled by a member of my staff, but this completely inappropriate and unsanctioned conduct was made without my knowledge. One thing is clear: this type of behavior is unacceptable and I will not tolerate it because the people of New Jersey deserve better. This behavior is not representative of me or my Administration in any way, and people will be held responsible for their actions." If you missed it, emails emerged from several media outlets suggesting that Christie aides ordered two lanes shut down on the George Washington Bridge in September, which led to gridlock in the town of Fort Lee—because Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich wouldn't endorse Christie in his re-election campaign against Democrat Barbara Buono. For her part, Buono has called on the Justice Department to look into criminal charges. "It clearly exposes a web of deceit and subterfuge and political retribution leading straight to Chris Christie," she tells the Star-Ledger. Though Christie didn't mention names, the emails show that a top aide, Bridget Anne Kelly, told a Christie-appointed official at the Port Authority, David Wildstein, that it was "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee." The emails do not implicate Christie himself, notes the New York Times, though the governor initially said nobody affiliated with his office or campaign was involved.