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" This is the thirteenth post of a series by Scott Raab, an Esquire writer at large and New Jersey resident who has covered the Port Authority for years. Read the entire series here. Anyone who believes that Chris Christie remains a viable Presidential candidate is getting paid to say so. You can make the argument -- as the investigations led by the U.S. attorney and the New Jersey state legislature continue -- that Christie will serve a full second term, but I would bet the other way. Christie&amp;#039;s ongoing support for David Samson, chairman of the Port Authority Board of Commissioners, is a death grip for both of them. Samson&amp;#039;s flagrant conflicts of interest and his enforcer&amp;#039;s role in the Great Fort Lee Clusterfk would be appalling in any case; in Samson&amp;#039;s, he&amp;#039;s a former New Jersey Attorney General who also served as head of Christie&amp;#039;s transition team when the governor took office, not long before he appointed Samson to the PA board. With Christie in office, Samson&amp;#039;s lawyer-lobbyist practice has done a booming business with the full blessing of the governor and the rest of the PA board. It&amp;#039;s no longer a question of whether Samson should step down; what&amp;#039;s more clear daily is that Christie can&amp;#039;t save himself by pushing Samson off the ledge, and Samson ain&amp;#039;t jumping. Only one lawyer in the Garden State -- motto: This Is The Life We Chose -- has more muscle now than Samson: Paul Fishman, the U.S. Attorney whose office is currently investigating the Christie machine and its operations in Fort Lee and Hoboken, and at the PA. Fishman&amp;#039;s strategy and timetable are unknown, as is his appetite for battle. His staff still harbors plenty of holdovers from Christie&amp;#039;s term in as U.S. Attorney, and every one of the lawyers Fishman will face is elite and armed to the teeth, including Samson&amp;#039;s Michael Chertoff, former U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, whose Chertoff Group has done well for itself, including its work with -- pause -- the Port Authority while -- pause -- David Samson was its chair. No word yet, seriously, on if the PA will also pick up Chertoff&amp;#039;s fee for defending Samson. *** Christie shat a second jewel on Wednesday when he derided all this fuss about naked corruption, abuse of power, and the several ongoing investigations as &amp;#039;hysteria,&amp;#039; preferring to focus instead on his own office&amp;#039;s investigation of itself. &amp;quot;All of this stuff will come out over the appropriate period of time,&amp;quot; said Christie. As for the PA problems -- executive director Pat Foye has publicly called Samson &amp;#039;unfit&amp;#039; to stay on as PA chair -- Chris says he&amp;#039;ll sit down with Andy Cuomo, Foye&amp;#039;s patron, and sort it out. &amp;quot;Ultimately, with some of these disputes Governor Cuomo and I have to resolve them. And we do, because Andrew Cuomo and I have a great relationship, and we&amp;#039;ve worked extraordinarily well together over the last three years and will continue to as long as I&amp;#039;m governor and he&amp;#039;s governor.&amp;quot; No doubt. It&amp;#039;s an ill wind that blows no good both ways in politics, and the same week that Christie held his single post-Fort Lee press conference, the Port Authority handed control over construction and Port Authority funding at LaGuardia and JFK airports to -- pause -- Governor Andrew Cuomo. I&amp;#039;m not saying this was a quid pro quo. I&amp;#039;m just saying. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a30841/chris-christie-david-samson-022714/>