Who is Mr. Smiley?

By Matt Rooney | The Save Jersey Blog

SmileyThe ten words that have come to find Bridgegate, Save Jerseyans:

“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

“Got it.”

But Bridget Kelly and David Wildstein are already on the hot seat for their infamous emails. 

I’m much more interested in the following text exchange and I’m betting that the U.S. Attorney (and yes, the damn Democrats) share my curiosity:

“Is it wrong that I’m smiling”

“No.”

The “no” apparently belongs to Wildstein.

The identity of the anonymous smiling official delighting in the plight of traffic-plagued Fort Lee residents remains a mystery as of this morning.

We’ll call him or her Mr. Smiley until further notice. We’re sticking with the male gender for now, too; my assumption is that feminist readers won’t object since the mystery speaker is engaged in a form of insensitive villainy. Let’s focus on the big issues.

Bill Baroni
Fmr. State Senator Bill Baroni, one of the key figures featured in the Bridgegate emails.

For starters, who is this grinning texter across the digital knoll?

Someone new to the Bridgegate story? Or one of the previously-implicated officials?

And on a related note, why were these sections heavily redacted?

Did a legitimate privilege or claim of irrelevancy justify the exclusion? We don’t yet know the basis for any of it since Mr. Wildstein invoked his 5th Amendment rights during Thursday’s hearing. I can conjure a variety of scenarios where his attorney might’ve wanted to redact various items, folks, but that’s the kind of idle speculation which we aim to avoid whenever possible.

For now, we’ll look at the timeline and wait for the investigation to unfold and, in the near term, if the incoming Assembly speaker moves to extend the Transportation Committee’s subpoena power. I’m simply telling you, our faithful readers, where a lot of the legitimate speculation (not what you get from the goofy “is Christie toast?” crowd) will occur in the coming days and weeks.

Will the real Mr. Smiley please stand up? You could save us all a lot of time, trouble, and tax dollars!

Matt Rooney
About Matt Rooney 8403 Articles
MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.