An article published Tuesday by The Bergen Record called into question the accuracy of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s (R) attack against the character of former Port Authority of New York and New Jersey executive David Wildstein.
Christie’s office came out swinging at Wildstein on Saturday, following the release of a letter from Wildstein’s lawyer alleging that Christie knew about the George Washington Bridge lane closures while they were happening. In a response memo reportedly sent to friends and supporters, Christie’s office offered “5 Things You Should Know About The Bombshell That’s Not A Bombshell.” Among the accusations Christie’s office leveled against Wildstein: that he “was publicly accused by his high school social studies teach of deceptive behavior.”
But the story apparently didn’t end there. According to the Record, it ended with Wildstein and the teacher agreeing that there had been merely a “misunderstanding.”
The incident occurred in 1979, when Wildstein was a high school student and running for a seat on the Livingston, N.J. school board. Wildstein asked a teacher, Albert Adler, to sign a piece of paper — which turned out to be a letter endorsing Wildstein’s candidacy. The letter later appeared in a local weekly newspaper under Adler’s name, and Adler then told the newspaper that he did not write the letter. He even issued a statement suggesting that he had been the victim of “political manipulation.”
But a few days later, Wildstein and Adler patched things up. According to the Record, they issued a joint statement to the weekly newspaper on April 10, 1979, saying the episode had been “an honest difference of opinion” and “basically a misunderstanding.”
