A former New Jersey environmental official says the office of Gov. Chris Christie pushed through a favorable settlement that potentially saved the oil giant ExxonMobil billions of dollars. Last week, New Jersey quietly agreed to accept just $250 million from Exxon after initially seeking $8.9 billion for environmental contamination more than a decade ago. The settlement came just two months after the state attorney general’s office made a strong demand for the original $8.9 billion claim, saying in a court brief: “The scope of the environmental damage resulting from the discharges is as obvious as it is staggering and unprecedented in New Jersey.” Writing today in The New York Times, Bradley Campbell, the former commissioner of New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection, says Governor Christie’s chief counsel, Christopher Porrino, “inserted himself into the case, elbowed aside the attorney general and career employees who had developed and prosecuted the litigation, and cut the deal favorable to Exxon.”