Former NYC Mayor Rudy Giuliani has been one of Gov Chris Christie's biggest allies, publicly defending him since the Bridgegate scandal surfaced. Giuliani joined Chuck Todd on NBC's Meet The Press to lend support to Randy Mastro's Bridgegate report. However, I was a bit surprised when Giuliani didn't fully embrace the report as the be all, end all for the Bridgegate investigation that Christie hopes it is and instead admitted that the report did not "vindicate" Christie from the scandal even after the New Jersey governor told Megyn Kelly that the report "exonerated" him from all culpability.
TODD: But Mister Mayor, I want to start with you. You're a former U.S. Attorney. If somebody came to you with an investigation that came to a conclusion like the one that Christie's investigation did but it did not interview the five most important players in the investigation including Bridget Kelly, Bill Stepien, David Wildstein, David Samson, Bill Baroni, all these people all involved in it, would you accept that as a complete investigation as a former U.S. attorney?
MR. RUDY GIULIANI: No, no, I wouldn't. I would not accept it as a complete investigation but I would accept it for what it's worth. In other words, I would go through it in great detail because it can give you a tremendous amount of information. So far, no one has gotten to interview those people including the Joint Committee.
The NY Daily News made the same observation that I did:
Even Chris Christie’s political allies admit the internal review claiming the embattled New Jersey governor had no personal involvement in the Bridgegate scandal doesn’t have nearly enough information to clear him of wrongdoing.
Giuliani did his best to claim that the report cleared the governor of knowing beforehand about the lane closings.
TODD: Well, I understand that. The-- the governor's lawyer, though, called it vindication. I-- I take it you-- you don't think you should use those words?
MR. GIULIANI: Well, I would say it's a vindication of the position that the governor didn't know beforehand and didn't order it about as clear as you can get it barring these two or three witnesses who might have something different to say now than they said then. But based on what they were saying back then with witnesses who were interviewed, it is a vindication of the fact that the governor didn't know beforehand.
Without interviewing all the key witnesses, this claim is bogus. And in the Mastro report, David Wildstein claimed that he told Christie about the closing in September:
The Port Authority official who oversaw the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge said that he had informed Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey about it at a Sept. 11 memorial while the closings were occurring, according to results from an internal investigation released on Thursday by lawyers for the governor.
This knowledge contradicts Christie's timeline contention of when he knew about the scandal so why isn't the media questioning him on this valuable piece on information?
