GOVERNOR'S OFFICE/TIM LARSEN Governor Christie and first lady Mary Pat Christie look on while Rabbi Mendy Carlebach lights the Menorah during the Hanukkah Holiday Reception at Drumthwacket in Princeton, N.J. on Monday, Dec. 10, 2012. Echoing a now-familiar refrain in the scandal surrounding the lane closures at the George Washington Bridge, newly released portions of private messages central to an ongoing legislative investigation contain jokes about causing “traffic problems,” this time at the home of a New Jersey rabbi who had allegedly upset a Port Authority official. 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. “There is clearly a conviction that what they are doing is wrong, and they are doing it anyway.” 
 
 Christie spokesman Colin Reed declined to comment on a list of emailed questions, including whether Christie took responsibility for the tone set at the authority or saw any need to reform it. On Thursday, Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak met with the U.S. Attorney’s Office, his attorney said, as a “fact witness.” 
 
 The texts — exchanged between Wildstein and Christie’s former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly — include snarky jokes aimed at Rabbi Mendy Carlebach, who is a Port Authority police chaplain, including the jibes about causing traffic jams on his street and delaying international flights to Israel. The texts occurred six days after Kelly sent to Wildstein her now-infamous email, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” setting off more than four days of gridlock in the borough in mid-September. Mr. Wildstein added that Rabbi Carlebach “has officially pissed me off.” 
 
 Seven minutes later, Ms. Kelly raised the prospect of creating traffic problems at the rabbi’s home. “We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?” wrote Bridget Anne Kelly, then a deputy chief of staff for Mr. Christie. “Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed,” wrote Wildstein, an executive at the bi-state agency that controls the region’s airports. “Perfect,” Kelly wrote. 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. Rabbi Carlebach says he has been a longtime supporter of Mr. Christie, and he was listed as a Middlesex County co-chairman in the Jewish Leaders for Christie coalition, according to an email from the governor’s re-election campaign on Sept. 3. He is a member of the state’s Homeland Security Interfaith Advisory Council and was a chaplain at the Republican National Convention in 2004 and 2008. As a policy I don’t endorse, but I support the governor.” 
 
 In a statement on Thursday night, Rabbi Carlebach called his work “apolitical” and said he had worked with “a number of governors and their administrations.” 
 
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 Rabbi Carlebach said he did not recall whether Mr. Christie or any of his representatives asked him to consider endorsing the governor more explicitly. The exchange began with a picture of the rabbi, who was identified as Mendy Carlebach of South Brunswick Township, posing with a man who appears to be the House speaker, John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio. Photo 
 
 In an interview, Rabbi Carlebach said he was unsure why he might have drawn the officials’ ire. Christie and Boehner have had a hot-and-cold relationship, brought to a head when Christie famously heaped insults on Boehner and the Republican Party leadership for holding up federal aid for Superstorm Sandy in a series of media appearances in January 2013. “I think this qualifies as some sort of stalking,” Kelly wrote to Wildstein in response to the Boehner photo, adding, “You are too much.” 
 
 Wildstein replied: “He is the Jewish Cid Wilson,” an apparent reference to a Leonia resident and Bergen Community College trustee who is active in politics and community organizations. Wilson said he never met Wildstein and was “deeply appalled and offended” that his name came up in the texts. Mr. Stepien, through his lawyer, has said he knew nothing of the plot to close the lanes and broke no laws. It goes to show how deranged he is to make comments about people he’s never met.” 
 
 Wilson broadcast his reaction to the reference Thursday morning on Twitter. A lawyer for Ms. Kelly declined to comment, and a lawyer for Mr. Wildstein did not respond to messages seeking comment. Chris Christie, two people central to the scheme jokingly discussed engineering traffic problems at a less prominent site: the home of a rabbi. I’ve said this for a long time, and from the very beginning: No matter what we find in terms of Chris Christie’s knowledge or lack of knowledge before or after, he set the atmosphere that this kind of behavior is acceptable.” 
 
 Assemblyman John Wisniewski, D-Middlesex, a co-chairman of the joint committee investigating the lane closures, said the new messages did not break new ground, but they enhanced a picture that had already emerged of the Port Authority leadership. “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. 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. It was Nov. 12, the night before the Port Authority Board of Commissioners was to have its regularly scheduled meeting, in Jersey City. “Are we being fired?” Baroni asked Wildstein at 7:24 p.m. The 20 documents also identified for the first time those who sent explosive text messages that were released earlier. Wisniewski said he had not spoken to Carlebach and did not understand why Wildstein and Kelly would have wanted to cause him trouble. He wrote on Facebook that he had never met Mr. Wildstein or Ms. Kelly, adding that it was “quite clear that David Wildstein is a psychopath and deeply troubled.” 
 
 In an interview, State Assemblyman John S. Wisniewski, chairman of the committee investigating the lane closings, said that the officials’ exchange demonstrated “a juvenile attitude toward responsibility.” Mr. Wisniewski, a Democrat, added that the documents included an acknowledgment that some officials were “engaged in conduct that could potentially lead to their termination.” 
 
 The committee’s chairwoman, Loretta Weinberg, a Democrat who serves as the State Senate majority leader, suggested that Mr. Christie himself had “set an atmosphere that this kind of banter was perfectly appropriate.” 
 
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 Before the governor’s re-election last November, his campaign aggressively targeted the endorsements of Democratic mayors, religious leaders and other groups in the hopes of running up an impressive margin of victory. The messages took place on the night they learned that The Wall Street Journal was going to report that Mr. Foye had ordered the toll lanes to be reopened in a scathing email to Mr. Wildstein; Bill Baroni, the deputy executive director of the Port Authority; and other agency officials, warning that the closings had broken protocol, and possibly state and federal laws. Carlebach, who is Orthodox and a close Christie ally, is a chaplain for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department. In an apparent reference to Patrick J. Foye, the New York-appointed executive director of the Port Authority, Mr. Stepien wrote, “Who does he think he is, Capt. “I am clueless,” he said, adding that he has not had any “bad interactions” with Mr. Christie or any of his aides.
– A big batch of emails among current and former Chris Christie aides is out, and while no bombshells appear to be in the mix, one exchange in particular is getting a lot of attention. Weeks before bridgegate, Christie's then deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, joked with former Port Authority official David Wildstein about a local rabbi, Mendy Carlebach. It begins with Wildstein emailing a photo of Carlebach. Wildstein: "And he has officially pissed me off." (It's not clear why.) Kelly: "Clearly. We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?" Wildstein: "Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed." Kelly: "Perfect." The Star-Ledger quotes state Assemblyman John Wisniewski, who is leading an investigation into the Fort Lee traffic mess, as saying the emails show a "kind of a juvenile, cavalier attitude toward their official responsibilities and joking about the power they had to create traffic or delay flights.” The New York Times story includes a similar take: The emails "lend new context to the highly charged environment in which Mr. Christie’s aides operated, an atmosphere of political paybacks where the planned lane closings for Fort Lee could be joked about as a weapon to be wielded against people who irked or defied them." As for the rabbi, he's bewildered. "I have totally no idea," he tells the Bergen Record when asked what he did to tick off the aides. "None of it makes any sense."