New York Times editorial page editor Andrew Rosenthal wrote in a recent blog post that New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie may have destroyed evidence that could have indicted him in the so-called Bridgegate controversy.
A recent investigation by New Jersey lawmakers was unable to find any link tying Christie to last year’s lane closures on the George Washington Bridge. The closures, which caused traffic jams, appeared to be motivated by political retribution against a local Democratic mayor that didn’t endorse Christie’s re-election bid.
“Could evidence have been destroyed? Heaven forbid!” Rosenthal wrote Friday.
At the heart of Rosenthal’s speculation are reports that Christie and one of his staffers deleted a series of text message correspondence between them.
Rosenthal, however, did not show the same skepticism regarding former IRS official Lois Lerner, who was at the center of a scandal in which the tax-oversight agency appeared to have been unfairly targeting mostly conservative and Tea Party nonprofit applicants.
“[I]t’s pretty clear there was no conspiracy,” Rosenthal wrote in April.
It was subsequently reported, however, that Lerner and other IRS officials “lost” emails (some of which have since been recovered) that could have proven crucial to investigation of the matter.
Rosenthal wrote nothing under his byline related to the IRS emails and whether it’s possible Lerner or other officials deleted them as a cover-up.
