“Mayors in New Jersey say they’re starting to consider foul play on behalf of the Christie administration in light of the George Washington Bridge lane closure controversy,” WNYC reports.

Meanwhile, CNN reports the Democratic legislator leading an investigation into Christie’s administration “says he believes laws were broken when the governor’s aides ordered lane closures at the nation’s busiest bridge.”

Gawker: “Three days after the release of dozens of emails and text messages implicating key aides of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie in a crackpot scheme to deliberately engineer a traffic jam in Fort Lee, New Jersey, a very interesting puzzle remains unsolved. Who, exactly, texted David Wildstein, Christie’s high school classmate and close aide, that he or she was “smiling” about the Fort Lee traffic jam (but also felt bad about schoolchildren affected by it)?”

French President Francois Hollande “is coming under pressure to clarify his personal situation, after Closer magazine reported on his alleged secret affair with the actress Julie Gayet,” the BBC reports.

“The president is making a key policy announcement on Tuesday amid fears it may be overshadowed by the allegations.”

“One French paper said the report was ‘catastrophic’ in every way for him.”

“The use of private emails adds Christie, a possible Republican presidential candidate in 2016, to a growing list of administrations that use private email accounts and other digital services to conduct official business. In turn, state and federal officials, regardless of political party, have sidestepped public records laws meant to keep government activities transparent,” the AP reports.

“Three weeks after an ethics panel ruled he misspent thousands in taxpayer funds and violated nearly a dozen state laws, Arkansas Lt. Gov. Mark Darr (R) has resigned effective Feb. 1,” the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reports.

“Several Democratic and Republican state legislators have said they would pursue the impeachment process if Darr didn’t step down by the Feb. 10 start of the fiscal session.”

“I don’t know who e-mailed whom, who works for whom. I have been in traffic before and I know how angry I am, and I’m always wondering, who did this.”

– Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), quoted by CNN, commenting on the bridge scandal swirling around Gov. Chris Christie (R).

“I pray that no life has been lost or trip of a hospital- or hospice-bound patient delayed.”

— Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye, quoted by CNN in newly-released documents, overriding the decision made by aides officials loyal to Chris Christie to close lanes on the George Washington Bridge last September.

Newly-released documents show that officials loyal to Gov. Chris Christie (R) “went to elaborate means to make it appear that the September closing of lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, N.J., was part of a traffic study, even though their private communications suggest the move was purely political,” the New York Times reports.

“The documents also show a concerted effort to keep their true motivation hidden, including the insistence by one official of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in an email that communications about the matter should not be conducted by email or discussed publicly.”

Flashback to December 12, 2013 in the Wall Street Journal:

“Mr. Christie, a Republican, complained in a private phone call to Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, that Patrick Foye, the executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was pressing too hard to get to the bottom of why the number of toll lanes onto the bridge from Fort Lee, N.J. was cut from three to one in early September, according to this person. The lane closures occurred without notice to local authorities, officials have said, and snarled traffic for a week in the small borough on the Hudson River bluffs.”