UPDATE: Port Authority Exec: GWB Lane Closures 'Abusive' Decision

The head of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey called the sudden closure of several lanes of the George Washington Bridge a “hasty and ill-advised’’ and “abusive’’ decision that damaged the public interest, according to documents released by a state committee today.

The state Assembly transportation committee today released 907 pages of subpoenaed documents related to the Fort Lee bridge-lane-closing scandal plaguing Gov. Chris Christie’s administration.

Among them is a sharply worded September email from Patrick Foye, the authority’s executive director, demanding that several high-ranking members of the authority immediately open the lanes shuttered near Fort Lee.

Writing on Sept. 13, several days into the closures, Foye also promised to find out who was responsible for the decision.

Damning emails released Wednesday seemingly revealed that Christie’s deputy chief of staff, Ramsey native Bridget Anne Kelly, worked with a Port Authority executive to orchestrate punitive lane closures at Fort Lee’s entrance to America’s busiest bridge.

The documents released on Friday, many of which are copies of email-communications between Port Authority officials and staffers, show how the bi-state agency's officials scrambled into damage-control mode when the lane-closure decisions first became public in the fall.

In one Sept. 13 exchange, Baroni expressed concern that Foye was venting his concerns in an email to other Port Authority officials and said: "Pat, we need to discuss prior to any communications."

"Bill we are going to fix this fiasco," Foye shot back.

"I am on way to office to discuss. There can be no public discourse," Baroni responded.

One Sept. 17 email from David Samson, chairman of the Port Authority's Board of Commissioners, showed how the former New Jersey attorney general was concerned that Foye "leaked to the WSJ his story about Fort Lee issues."

"Very unfortunate for NY/NJ relations," he wrote in the email, which came four days after Foye ordered the re-opening of the lanes.

The email communications say reporters were instructed to "sniff" out a story about the lane closures after Wall Street Journal editors were stuck in the ensuring traffic mess. Samson said the newspaper's reporting of the incident "confirms evidence of Foye's (sic) being the leak, stirring up trouble..."

Christie, a potential presidential candidate, took questions for more than an hour Thursday in a press conference that stood in bold relief when played alongside a clip of Christie sarcastically answering a question about the “traffic study” from the same wooden podium several months ago.

After the press conference, the governor travelled to Fort Lee, where he apologized to its mayor, Mark Sokolich, and its citizens. Sokolich accepted Christie's apology, and also said late Thursday afternoon that he believed the governor had no role in the closures.

Emails first obtained by The Record show Kelly told a Port Authority official close to Christie that it was “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” about two weeks before the lanes were closed.

“Got it,” replied the Port Authority executive, David Wildstein, who resigned last month as national media and incensed local politicians turned up the heat on the scandal.

Wildstein appeared before a Legislative hearing Thursday afternoon and continually invoked his 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination, and the committee found him in contempt.