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This is the sixteenth 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

It's trench warfare lately on the legal front here in New Jersey, and yesterday came word New York was rolling out artillery of its own -- the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, who filed a subpoena on Friday, focusing on the Port Authority Chairman, David Samson -- defiant Louise to Chris Christie's embattled Thelma -- and his patent, profitable conflicts of interest.

That was Friday. On Monday, the Southern District prosecutor, whose territory includes the Port Authority headquarters in Manhattan, withdrew that subpoena, all sudden like and mysterious. It was a tracer bullet directed across the Hudson at Paul Fishman, the U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, whose job it is to investigate all of the multiple aspects of Christiegate. The subpoena itself was bizarre -- a New York federal prosecutor essentially announcing he's targeting the one high-level Christie appointee refusing to resign from the Port. Which is supposed to be the job of New Jersey's federal prosecutor, Paul Fishman.

Poor Paul Fishman. Nobody seems to believe that Paul's going to go hard after indicting Samson, arguably the most powerful lawyer in the state, a 74-year-old fixer and a Christie mentor. The media call Fishman 'deliberate,' but maybe that struck a high-profile, ball-busting federal prosecutor like Preet Bharara, head of the Southern District New York office, as Paul Fishman just dithering.

Fishman's in a tough spot. Samson hired Michael Chertoff to defend him, and Chertoff was Fishman's boss for many years when Chertoff was U.S. Attorney for New Jersey. Lawyer after lawyer in North Jersey has questioned Fishman's ability to face down Samson without fear or favor. Bharara's subpoena made it plain that New York had strong interest in making sure the wet work got done.

"If Fishman already had an investigation open of David Samson," a former federal prosecutor said, "I'd think he'd be the one to prosecute. It's hard to know the calculus, but the targets know how to play the system. [New York's] involvement makes it less likely New Jersey will accede to the political winds."

Barara -- he's 79 for 79 so far in prosecuting insider-trading cases -- sent a simultaneous message to David Samson: You're dead meat. If Fishman fails to make a case against Samson, Preet Bharara will.

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