Discussion for article #223719
Any lawyer types know what kind of chance Kelly would have in taking legal action against the Christie Administration/Mastro for defamation? Seems like a fair chance more discrepancies like this are going to arise the more people they interview.
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Wow. Look at that form! He throws somebody under the bus just like his boss does!
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The real story is that O’Dowd also testified that he gave Christie an email given to him by Bridget Kelly in which she was discussing the lane closures. Christie had a press conference afterwards and claimed he didn’t know if anyone in his administration knew about the lane closures at the time.
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I am wondering when Kelly is going to spill the beans. She has no job so things must be getting pretty tight financial wise. She has a 4 children and divorced in 2012. Lawyers don’t come cheap so I wonder what kind of deal they have offered her if at all.
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I would be shocked if there isn’t already some deal in the works. I’m sure nobody but Team Christie wants a mother of four to be the fall guy in this, and I can’t imagine she’d be willing to go to jail for Christie after the hatchet job they did on her in the Mastro Report.
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Depends on who’s paying her to stay quiet. Christie’s got a lot of rich, powerful friends. If I were the feds, I’d be taking nice long look at Kelly’s bank records.
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Any lawyer types know what kind of chance Kelly would have in taking legal action against the Christie Administration/Mastro for defamation.
Start from the point that their different defendants, situated differently. Christie would wanna say we dunno, it’s Gibson Dunn’s report. Kelly might look for a theory that Christie Admin. communicated it nonetheless. If the report said something about Kelly that was false AND damaged her, and this was done with malice, they’d have a problem. Saying who she was sleeping with by itself doesn’t qualify, of course.
Elements in New Jersey are,
In New Jersey, the elements of a defamation claim are:
a false statement about the plaintiff;
communication of the statement to a third party;
fault of the defendant; and
damages suffered by the plaintiff.
"In cases involving matters of legitimate public concern, the plaintiff must prove that the defendant acted with actual malice, i.e., knowing that the statements were false or recklessly disregarding their falsity. Public officials, all-purpose public figures, and limited-purpose public figures [Kelly qualifies probably, but she’d argue that not so] also must prove actual malice. "
http://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/new-jersey-defamation-law
This would have been a high-visibility issue to Gibson Dunn as they put the report together so they would certainly have tried to satisfy themselves that the report could not come back to harm them as they prepared it. But that’s just their perspective.
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That report should have been distributed in two cans. One for the paper part, and the other for the two quarts of whitewash that’s dripping from the paper.
Anybody that knows an ounce of the history here, knows that “lead lawyer” Randy Mastro is simply a script writer for hire. Sort of the ultimate in “Vanity Publishing” - tell him what you want your story to be & he will write it up real pretty for you… and don’t worry about trivial things like the truth.
Numerous parties have rasied concerns about the cost of the Mastro report. I am wondering if these concerns will reach fever pitch once more information comes out. The more staffers that testify under oath stating they have an issue with the way their words are presented, the more of a problem it will be. It would be nice if the people of New Jersey get a refund for this report.
(In unrelated Christie news, last week Gov. Corbett tried to fundraise with Christie, and it backfired epically with the voters here in PA.)
But was he crystal clear about his timeline? Whenever I tuned in, it seemed as if he was hedging about almost every answer when it had to do with specific dates. “It could have been that date, but I’m not certain.” or “I believe it was on the 2nd, but it could have been any time that week.” These were the types of things he was saying when I was listening. It was heavily rehearsed for sure.
When investigating your boss, how long would you be around, if you said he lied?
Randy Mastro is just another hack-attorney, well-known for his ability to be a word-smither !
wordsmith
One with the ability to effortlessly string together words, no matter their actual meaning, in an instance and in such a way it brings a smile to the faces of those listening, sometimes often laughter or tears of admiration for having heard someone with such an amazing skill.
Often one to spawn many a catch phrases or wicked new taunts and subtle insults, as well as song lyrics, raps and strange and often disturbing stories that make little sense.