Hoboken Mayor Says Christie Aides Withheld Hurricane Sandy Relief
Hoboken’s mayor says New Jersey Governor Chris Christie’s administration withheld millions of dollars in Hurricane Sandy relief money as leverage for a redevelopment plan, an allegation likely to increase public scrutiny following this month’s Bridge-gate scandal.
After Hoboken was badly hit by Hurricane Sandy in October 2012, mayor Dawn Zimmer requested $127 million in aid but received less than $400,000, she said Saturday on MSNBC’s Up With Steve Kornacki. Zimmer named Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno and Christie’s community affairs commissioner Richard Constable as the two officials who pressured her twice to fast-track the approval, and provided emails, public records, and her own personal accounts to support her claims.
“I was emotional about governor Christie,” she wrote in a diary entry dated May 17, 2013. “I thought he was honest. I thought he was moral. I thought he was something very different. This week I found out he’s cut from the same corrupt cloth that I have been fighting for the last four years.”
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