Christie Ally Inquiry

Inquiry Seeks Port Authority Records That Involve Christie Ally

By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

 Federal prosecutors in New Jersey issued a subpoena last week to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey seeking records relating to its chairman, David Samson, and contracts on two bridge projects worth $2.8 billion that he voted to award to construction companies with some ties to his law firm, according to people briefed on the matter.

The subpoena focused on Mr. Samson’s potential conflicts of interest. It was issued by the United States attorney’s office in New Jersey, which along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation is conducting a criminal inquiry into the lane closings at the George Washington Bridge and other suspected wrongdoing by current and former aides, appointees and associates of Gov. Chris Christie, the people said. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is continuing.

The interest in Mr. Samson, a close political ally of Mr. Christie, represents a significant widening of the scandal that has grown out of the closing of two bridge access lanes in Fort Lee, N.J., in September. Emails between aides to Mr. Christie, a Republican, suggest the closings were politically motivated retribution against the Fort Lee mayor, Mark Sokolich, a Democrat, who had declined the Christie campaign’s entreaties to endorse him for re-election.

The grand jury subpoena came just days after the United States attorney’s office in Manhattan issued a similar subpoena to the Port Authority on Friday, March 7, and then, in an unusual move, withdrew it the following Monday.

The reasons for the withdrawal were unclear, but it could indicate a lack of communication between the two prosecutors’ offices, whose inquiries sometimes overlap. Officials in both offices declined to publicly discuss the brief overlap and privately sought to play down the significance of the withdrawal.

But people familiar with the contents of both subpoenas and some of the recent communications between the two offices indicated that despite the withdrawal, there was still significant federal investigative interest in Mr. Samson and his firm, Wolff & Samson.

The federal inquiry in New Jersey, those people said, will focus on the potential conflicts between Mr. Samson’s public actions as the authority’s chairman and his law firm’s representation of companies doing business with the agency; it is being handled by the United States attorney’s office in New Jersey, which is led by Paul J. Fishman.

A joint committee of the New Jersey Legislature is also investigating the lane closings. Mr. Samson’s name came up early in that inquiry when emails released by the committee suggested that he was more concerned about his belief that the Port Authority’s executive director, Patrick J. Foye, had leaked information on the closings to the news media than about the impact of the closings, which mired thousands of people in traffic. Mr. Samson has also received a subpoena in that inquiry.

The subpoena from Mr. Fishman’s office sought records related to two bridge contracts the Port Authority awarded last April, one for $1.5 billion to replace and maintain the Goethals Bridge, and the other in a $1.3 billion project to raise the Bayonne Bridge so that the largest container ships could pass beneath it, one of the people said.

A lawyer for Mr. Samson, Michael Chertoff, declined to answer specific questions, saying through a spokeswoman, “We are not commenting on any investigations.” Mr. Samson’s law firm did not return a call seeking comment.

The subpoena seeks records relating to the bidding for the contracts, the selection process, any disclosures of potential conflicts or recusals involving Mr. Samson, and his communications with Port Authority staff on the issue, the person said.

It also seeks documents related to any contracts awarded to clients of Wolff & Samson, the person said. The subpoena indicates that the prosecutor handling the investigation is Lee M. Cortes, an assistant United States attorney in the Special Prosecution Division, which handles public corruption cases.

Mr. Cortes is one of three or four prosecutors who, along with F.B.I. agents and several criminal investigators from the United States attorney’s office, have been handling the lane closing inquiry and related investigations.

One of the Goethals Bridge contracts awarded by the Port Authority went to a team that included a fund that is part of the Macquarie Group; another Macquarie Group managed fund owns a 50 percent interest in a business that has long been a client of Wolff & Samson. The client, IMTT, owns a liquid storage facility on the Bayonne waterfront. A spokeswoman for Macquarie Group, Paula J. Chirhart, said the firm had no part in IMTT’s choice of legal counsel.

Mr. Samson and his fellow commissioners also voted to award roughly half of the $1.3 billion Bayonne Bridge project to a joint venture that included Skanska, according to a news release the company issued announcing the contract at the time. Skanska was also a Wolff & Samson client.

Mr. Samson and the two construction companies, which both are prominent contractors, have not been formally accused of any wrongdoing, and officials have not publicly suggested that the bid process was tainted.

Minutes of the April 2013 Port Authority board meeting show that Mr. Samson did not recuse himself from either vote.