The problem for Christie isn’t what his aides did

It’s what they thought he wanted them to do

By Ezra Klein, WashPost, Updated: January 18 at 12:06 pm

Chris Christie's problem was never that some of his closest aides thought it would be a good idea to punish a mayor by closing lanes on a bridge. Christie's problem was that some of his closest aides thought he would think it was a good idea to punish a mayor by closing lanes on a bridge. And now the press is going to start finding out why his top aides thought that.

MSNBC's Steve Kornacki just found one reason:

The story here is devastating for the New Jersey governor: Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of Hoboken and a Christie ally, says the governor's office refused to release badly needed hurricane relief funds unless she approved a development project from a Christie-connected firm. Zimmer showed Kornacki a diary entry she wrote after spending a day with Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno:

At the end of a big tour of ShopRite and meeting, [Guadagno] pulls me aside with no one else around and says that I need to move forward with the Rockefeller project. It is very important to the governor. The word is that you are against it and you need to move forward or we are not going to be able to help you. I know it’s not right — these things should not be connected — but they are, she says, and if you tell anyone, I will deny it.

(More here.)