Chris Christie: Culture Didn’t Lead to Bridgegate

New Jersey governor Chris Christie held a “town hall”-style meeting on Thursday in Brick, Ocean County, and got the usual questions about Superstorm Sandy recovery efforts. But then he got a question about Bridgegate! If you can believe it, the question was more of a statement about how innocent the governor is.

The Asbury Park Press’s Erik Larsen writes 71-year-old Leonard A. Ludovico described the situation as a “witch hunt” and told Christie he knew that “you would not risk your political career and your integrity on something as lane closures on the George Washington Bridge.”

Christie says he didn’t have anything to do with it — and, indeed, Chris Christie has been cleared of all wrongdoing. So the new tact for critics is to say Christie fostered a culture that led to the retributive lane closures. (Critics could just call Christie a liar and say the report is a whitewash, but for some reason this isn’t acceptable in politics.)

Christie told Ludovico how to deal with friends who don’t believe the governor’s innocence, the Associated Press’ Angela Della Santi reports:

“Point to something, factually, that proves that,” Christie replied. “If, in fact, I created a culture where people were going after each other, then how did we do all these things together with Republicans and Democrats?”

Eh, I don’t know how convincing that will be.