Oops! How do you suppose all those KrispyKrony meetings disappeared from the Port Authority calendar?

Ah yes, "Fly the friendly skies of United."

"Two current or former federal prosecutors, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren't authorized to discuss this case, said if the entries were deliberately hidden, 'it's evidence of guilt.'

" 'Concealment is inconsistent with an innocent frame of mind,' said one prosecutor."

-- from WNYC reporter Andrea Bernstein's "Port Authority
Hid Records of Christie Appointee's Meetings With United"

by Ken

In this presidential season Republicans have become so enamored of the Three "I"s -- ignorance, imbecility, and ignorance -- that they seem to have become half-hearted in their devotion to the Kulcher of Korruption that has become a defining feature of right-wing governance.

Fortunately, the Kulcher of Korruption is still treated with respect in KrispyWorld, the land of the Big Rat Bastard Gummer of NJ, Kris Krispy.

I imagine Gummer Krispy is preparing another of his trademarked "You can't pin nuttin' on me, coppers!" tirades, to bully us into accepting that while everyone the Big Rat Bastard Gummer has ever hired seems to have spent most of his/her time in government service lying, cheating, and stealing, not to mention bullying and mugging, this has got nothing to do with him and nobody can prove otherwise, at least not if they know what's good for them.

The latest embarrassment in KrispyWorld is the revelation that the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), which seems to have been a vortex of the corruption and thuggery for which the Big Rat Bastard Gummer's administration has become so famous, has been releasing calendar records scrubbed of a bunch of potentially incriminating entries mysteriously vanished.

The word "redacted" is being used to describe those scrubbed records, but I think that's misleading. When we think of "redacted" records being released, we think of documents with large swaths of type blacked out, and it's at least obvious to any observer that there's something there that has been judged too sensitive or too secret or too something to be viewed by mere mortals. And that doesn't seem to be what we're talking about here. We're talking about "records" that were released which turned out to have had stuff that was simply taken out, making them closer to the phony-baloney heavily edited anti-Planned Parenthood scam-videos.

THE STORY BEING TRACKED HERE --

is one we've already heard a fair amount about: the apparent negotiations that were entered into by United Airlines, the most important user of Newark Airport, and officials connected to the Krispy administration to see what kind of deal United could strike to bring about for substantial reductions in the fees being charged for use of Newark Airport, which is operated by the Port Authority.

How exactly the Krispyites would have been bought off we'll never know, because the apparent negotiations fell victim to the brouhaha of the Big Rat Bastard Gummer's Bridgegate scandal, and the other KrispyKorruptions that started seeping out of the woodwork. It does seem likely, though, that we're talking about reductions in fees that would have amounted to tens of millions of dollars a year.

The one tangible "give" -- and it seems to have been a price of entering into negotiations, not part of the quid pro quo to be negotiated -- is the now-semi-famous "Chairman's Flight" that United restored, a single weekly nonstop flight in each direction, by astonishing coincidence on the very days that PANYNJ Chairman David Samson would have been flying back and forth between Newark and Columbia, SC, some 50 miles from the chairman's vacation home.

It's a route that United had previously abandoned as economically unfeasible, a route that flew at something like half capacity during the period of its resurrection, which was terminated abruptly, by another astonishing coincidence, three days after Chairman Samson was forced by the rising stink to step down from the job.

Veteran WNYC reporter Andrea Bernstein has been on the local transportation beat for some time now, and in that capacity has been watching the charges swirling around the KrispyKrew. Here's the lead of her report on this latest development:

The Port Authority kept secret four meetings between Gov. Chris Christie’s former top staffer at the bi-state agency and representatives of United Airlines when it initially made his calendars public, WNYC has learned.

The hidden meetings were between then-Port Authority Deputy Director Bill Baroni and Jeff Smisek, who at the time was CEO of United Airlines, and Jamie Fox, a former United lobbyist and the current Christie transportation commissioner. They were redacted from documents requested by The New York Times in December 2013 and posted on the Port Authority website.

As I suggested above:

WNYC only learned of the redacted meetings because of a subsequent freedom of information request we filed 14 months later under a new regime at the Port Authority. That request asked specifically for documentation of meetings and communications with United Airlines.

Public officials' calendars are supposed to be public records. However --

Bloomberg News has reported that the first meeting, a dinner at the Manhattan restaurant Novita, was the site of Samson’s initial request for the flight route. Smisek, Samson, Baroni, Fox, and several United executives dined together in September, 2011.  A January 2013 meeting with Smisek and two meetings with Fox in the spring of 2013 were also redacted from Baroni's calendar in the early release.

One meeting with Smisek and one with Fox, concerning the renovation of the Harrison PATH station, remained on those documents.

The other meetings were removed long before federal prosecutors began subpoenaing records of the so-called “chairman’s flight,” to Columbia, S.C., near Samson’s weekend home in Aiken, S.C.

Which leads us to the quotes from those "two current or former federal prosecutors" which I've plunked atop this post, concerning concealment and "evidence of guilt."

Bloomberg News has reported that the first meeting, a dinner at the Manhattan restaurant Novita, was the site of Samson’s initial request for the flight route. Smisek, Samson, Baroni, Fox, and several United executives dined together in September, 2011.  A January 2013 meeting with Smisek and two meetings with Fox in the spring of 2013 were also redacted from Baroni's calendar in the early release.

One meeting with Smisek and one with Fox, concerning the renovation of the Harrison PATH station, remained on those documents.

The other meetings were removed long before federal prosecutors began subpoenaing records of the so-called “chairman’s flight,” to Columbia, S.C., near Samson’s weekend home in Aiken, S.C.

HOW DID THE "REDACTING" HAPPEN?

Well, um, nobody knows.

It’s unclear who removed the meetings from the calendars. The Port Authority declined to say, citing the investigations. Four high-level current and former Port Authority employees said that typically, even though Baroni had resigned, his lawyer would have been given the opportunity to review the documents and claim exemptions before public release.  At the time of the document request, Samson, the focus of the United inquiry, was still Chair of the Port Authority.

Baroni’s lawyer at the time no longer represents his former client. Baroni’s new lawyer, Michael Baldassare, did not comment in response to inquiries.

Then too:

Several key meetings were also missing from Samson’s public calendars, including the Italian dinner with Jeff Smisek and the two United Airlines executives who resigned as a result of the investigations. A meeting between Samson, Smisek and Christie in August 2013 is also missing from Samson’s calendar.

There's still no explanation for the discrepancies.

[T]he page with the calendar entry for the Novita dinner is simply blank, and the other meetings — one with Smisek and two with Fox — appear on Baroni's schedule as redactions under “exemption one” of the Port Authority freedom of information code, which at the time included covered court-ordered non-disclosures, invasions of privacy, and material protected because it’s under investigation.

But a source familiar with Fox’s schedule said the two meetings were public business. The meetings, at L’Express, a Lyonnais restaurant, and at the Port Authority, had to do with a different client, Westfield, which runs retail at the World Trade Center, the source said. "We have no idea why they would do that," said Robert Fettweiss, Fox's attorney, in an emailed statement. "They should have disclosed it. But we have no way to explain the inept decisions they made."

It should be noted that the Big Rat Bastard Gummer's paw prints aren't entirely absent from what was going on between United and his people.

The second meeting with Fox took place during the same week as a United Airlines fund raiser for Christie’s re-election campaign, an unprecedented event for the airline. Just two months later, the lobbying to lower the flight fees began in earnest, according to emails, letters and court documents obtained by WNYC.

About two months after the campaign fund raiser, Christie, Smisek and Samson met in Trenton. Then, for the next two months, United senior vice president Nene Foxhall, repeatedly called, met with and wrote Baroni. On Nov. 13, 2013, Foxhall wrote an email thanking the Port Authority for agreeing to lower the flight fees.

The next day, Nov. 14, Baroni, Christie and Smisek all converged on Newark airport to announce United flights to Atlantic City, a top Christie political priority. That event was also missing from Baroni and Samson’s calendars.

Ironically, the Bridgegate scandal, about which Gummer Krispy has been so contemptuously dismissive, may have saved him from actions that could have redounded to the considerable consternation of his carcass.

The deal to lower flight fees was never consummated. Baroni and Samson resigned amid the Bridgegate investigation. With new scrutiny focused on the agency, the deal fell apart.

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