| Notes |
Federal prosecutors are investigating whether United Airlines offered a special flight route for then-Port Authority Chairman David Samson in exchange for tens of millions of dollars a year in flight-fee reductions.
Bloomberg News has reported that the first meeting, a dinner at the Manhattan restaurant Novita, was the site of Samson’s initial request for the flight route. Smisek, Samson, Baroni, Fox, and several United executives dined together in September, 2011. A January 2013 meeting with Smisek and two meetings with Fox in the spring of 2013 were also redacted from Baroni's calendar in the early release.
One meeting with Smisek and one with Fox, concerning the renovation of the Harrison PATH station, remained on those documents.
The other meetings were removed long before federal prosecutors began subpoenaing records of the so-called “chairman’s flight,” to Columbia, S.C., near Samson’s weekend home in Aiken, S.C. Two current or former federal prosecutors, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they aren’t authorized to discuss this case, said if the entries were deliberately hidden, “it's evidence of guilt.”
“Concealment is inconsistent with an innocent frame of mind,” said one prosecutor. |