One of Donald Trump’s “Best people,” Chris Christie, allowed his top aides to bite the bullet Friday, as the news broke that Bridget Ann Kelly and Bill Baroni were both found guilty in orchestrating lanes closure on the George Washington Bridge in 2013.
Bridget Anne Kelly, the former deputy chief of staff to Christie, and Bill Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, both faced seven counts of various charges including conspiracy, fraud, and civil rights deprivation.
The verdict is a major setback in Christie’s political career, following a controversy that spans nearly three years and put a significant dent in the Garden State Republican’s presidential ambitions. Christie is heading planning for Republican nominee Donald Trump’s transition if he wins the presidency.
Christie has also functioned as a high profile surrogate for Trump, and was included on a schedule of campaign stops in New Hampshire this weekend put out by the organization.
Gov. Chris Christie's former Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Anne Kelly, center, leaves Martin Luther King Jr. Courthouse after a hearing, Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, in Newark, N.J. Three years after gridlock paralyzed a New Jersey town next to the George Washington Bridge for days, two former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Kelly and Bill Baroni, Christie's former top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, are being tried on charges of politically motivated lane closures of the George Washington Bridge in 2013. (AP Photo/Mel Evans)
Somebody is lying. New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has maintained that he knew nothing of the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge, lane closures carried out by his closest administration officials. But testimony after testimony cast more and more doubt on Christie’s claim.
In bombshell testimony Friday, Bridget Anne Kelly said that she told New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) that access lanes to the George Washington Bridge would be closed for a traffic study a month before the plan actually was carried out in September 2013.
The former deputy chief of staff testified that the governor approved the study, which prosecutors allege actually was cover-up for a revenge plot against a local Democratic mayor.
Christie has long maintained that he knew nothing about the lane closures that brought traffic in the town of Fort Lee, New Jersey to a days-long standstill until he read about them in the press in late September or early October 2013. Yet Kelly and other former Christie allies have contradicted what Christie’s said about what he knew of the lane closures and when throughout the federal trial investigating the so-called Bridgegate scheme.
Telling her version of the saga for the first time from the witness stand Friday, Kelly testified that former Port Authority official David Wildstein informed her on Aug. 12, 2013 that he was moving forward with a traffic study that he said would create major traffic problems in Fort Lee, according to WABC. Kelly testified she then informed Christie about the study, and alleged he said he was alright with it.
“He said, ‘All right.’ He didn’t really react. He said that’s fine. He said, ‘How is the relationship with Mayor Sokolich’ of Fort Lee?” Kelly testified, according to Philly.com. “And I didn’t know. I really didn’t know.”
The next day she sent the email that would cast a shadow over Christie’s administration for years to come: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee,” she wrote to Wildstein.
David Wildstein, the former Port Authority Executive appointed by New Jersey Governor, Chris Christie, finally admitted what the rest of the country already knew, that lanes on the world-famous George Washington Bridge was intentionally closed to spite the mayor of Fort Lee for not endorsing Chris Christie’s 2013 bid for governor.
According to reporting by The New York Times, other Christie administration officials are also expected to be indicted in the Bridge-Gate Plot that brought the bridge and other areas in Fort Lee to a stand still. These officials include Christie’s former Chief of Staff Bridget Kelly and a Christie appointee at the Port Authority, Bill Baroni.
Meanwhile, Chris Christie, the governor who claimed he had no clue what was happening right under his nose in his own administration, is seriously considering a run for president… seriously!
Attention Motorists Using the George Washington Bridge (GWB) During the Overnight Hours:
Beginning Monday, June 16, The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey will resume a steel deck improvement project on the upper level of the GWB that may cause significant overnight delays.
Three of four upper level bridge lanes will be closed in either the eastbound or westbound directionduring the hours below:
Monday to Thursday from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.
Friday night from 10 p.m. to 10 a.m.Saturday morning
The work will also require several 10-15 minutes traffic holds during the hours above
NOTE: Closure hours will be adjusted to accommodate Yankee games and Meadowlands events.
Passenger vehicles should use the GWB lower level (which will be fully open to cash and E-ZPass) to minimize their delay OR consider seeking an alternate route. Trucks are required to use the upper level at all times. Highway message signs, 511 and traffic reports will advise motorists in advance which direction will be under construction (on any given night). Visit ourwebsite for the most up-to-dateclosure schedule and project details.
The lady at the center of the BridgeGate scandal is no longer staying quite. In a statement issued by her lawyers, Bridget Kelly slammed the assertions made by Christie’s lawyers that she closed the lanes on the George Washington Bridge last September because of a failed relationship she had with Bill Stepien.
The response.
Having reviewed the report of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, LLP, as well as listened to the comments of Randy Mastro, Esq., we note that by Mr. Mastro’s own admission, he did not have access to all information. Of course, without reviewing all pertinent evidence, any conclusions that are to be drawn are by definition incomplete. The report’s venomous, gratuitous, and inappropriate sexist remarks concerning Ms. Kelly have no place in what is alleged to be a professional and independent report.
There appear to be two distinct versions of the George Washington Bridge lane closings. On the one hand, Mr. Wildstein, through his counsel, has taken one clear position. On the other hand, Mr. Mastro has staked a different view. Thus, Ms. Kelly’s evidence could be critical to verifying either of the two competing versions of events. A preemptive strike to isolate Ms. Kelly and impugn her credibility is not surprising. Despite Mr. Mastro’s editorialized comments to the contrary, Ms. Kelly is not a liar. She is a single mother of four children who was deeply devoted and committed to her job at the Office of the Governor. She worked tirelessly to pursue the goals of the Office during her tenure.
The only credible investigation into the lane closings is being conducted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office. If Ms. Kelly were provided with the appropriate procedural safeguards, she will be fully cooperative and provide truthful and complete answers to any questions asked of her by the appropriate law enforcement authorities.
The investigation was done by his own people. They found nothing wrong and that’s their final answer.
With his office suddenly engulfed in scandal over lane closings at the George Washington Bridge, Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey two months ago summoned a pair of top defense lawyers from an elite law firm to the State House and asked them to undertake an extensive review of what had gone wrong.
Now, after 70 interviews and at least $1 million in legal fees to be paid by state taxpayers, that review is set to be released, and according to people with firsthand knowledge of the inquiry, it has uncovered no evidence that the governor was involved in the plotting or directing of the lane closings.
The review is the first of multiple inquiries into a scandal that has jeopardized Mr. Christie’s political future. It will be viewed with intense skepticism, not only because it was commissioned by the governor but also because the firm conducting it, Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, has close ties to the Christie administration and the firm’s lawyers were unable to interview three principal players in the shutdowns, including Bridget Anne Kelly, the governor’s former deputy chief of staff.
Last week, Bryan Fischer said that pleading the Fifth was a sure sign of guilt. Of course he wasn’t talking about the participants in Chris Christie’s BridgeGate scandal, because those people are on his side of the political isle.
Well now it seems that pleading the Fifth and refusing to turn over subpoenaed documents are not enough. The main characters in the BridgeGate scandal now want a judge to legalize their decision.
Two figures in a political payback plot that has overshadowed New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s administration will attempt to convince a judge that they shouldn’t be forced to turn over documents to a legislative panel.
Lawyers for former Christie campaign manager Bill Stepien and fired Deputy Chief of Staff Bridget Kelly have asked the judge to throw out their subpoenas.They say handing over personal emails, text messages and planning calendars would be like testifying against themselves.
They also cite the possibility of criminal prosecution as a legal basis for not complying with a request for correspondence involving a plot to create traffic jams near the George Washington Bridge.
More than a dozen individuals and organizations close to Christie have complied with similar subpoenas.
“Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” – the now infamous quote by Bridget Kelly that closed down lanes on the busiest bridge in the world – was not the first time Christie’s people spoke about willfully causing problems for the constituents of New Jersey.
Documents released by Wildstein to a state legislative committee probing the incident, in which lanes were shut near the busy George Washington Bridge, causing a huge traffic jam, reveal that on August 19 he and Kelly discussed another traffic scheme.
“We cannot cause traffic problems in front of his house, can we?” Kelly wrote in a message to Wildstein.
“Flights to Tel Aviv all mysteriously delayed,” Wildstein wrote in reply.
Kelly and Wildstein appear to be joking.
“This is part of the drip, drip, drip of bad news for Christie,” said Lee Miringoff, a political observer and a pollster with Marist College.
The Star-Ledger newspaper has identified the rabbi as Mendy Carlebach of the Chabad of North and South Brunswick who was also a chaplain for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey Police Department.
“He has officially pissed me off,” Wildstein wrote.
Carlebach did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Attorneys for Wildstein and Kelly also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Fort Lee, N.J. Mayor Mark Sokolich met Friday with federal prosecutors who wanted to talk about the George Washington Bridge lane closures, Sokolich’s attorney confirmed to TPM on Monday.
The meeting, which was first reported by The Wall Street Journal, was a voluntary one. In a statement, Sokolich’s attorney declined to discuss details of his client’s conversation with members of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the district of New Jersey.
“Since there is an ongoing criminal investigation, neither Mayor Sokolich nor I will comment on the substance of those discussions,” attorney Tim Donohue wrote. “The Mayor is grateful for the efforts of the US Attorneys Office, and the Mayor and his entire administration will continue to cooperate fully with this investigation as well as the Select Committee’s investigation.”
Sokolich has been at the center of the bridge scandal from the start. The lane closures caused a massive, multi-day traffic jam in Fort Lee. The same week they began, Sokolich told a local columnist that he had begun to wonder if the closures were intended to send him “some sort of message.” Democrats in the state have since suggested that the closures were retaliation against Sokolich’s decision not to endorse Christie’s re-election last year — an allegation that has not been proven.
A Port Authority police officer with personal ties to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie was at the George Washington Bridge when access lanes were closed last September and personally drove David Wildstein, the Christie appointee who supervised the closings, on a tour of the area as traffic brought it to a standstill.
Documents submitted to a New Jersey legislative committee by Wildstein also show that the officer, Lieutenant Thomas “Chip” Michaels, appears to have sent periodic text messages to Wildstein updating him on the effects of the lane closures and their crippling impact on the town of Fort Lee. In one message, on the first day of the lane closures, Michaels told Wildstein he might have an idea to “make this better.” It is not clear what he meant
Michaels, who joined the Port Authority Police Department in 1998 according to payroll records, grew up in Christie and Wildstein’s hometown of Livingston, N.J. In recent years, he coached Christie’s son at little league hockey. Michael’s brother, Jeffrey Michaels is among the most powerful Republicans in New Jersey politics – a lobbyist whose practice has soared in value during the Christie years and who has donated heavily to pro-Christie organizations.
Michaels’ presence at the lane closures with Wildstein is an important new detail because it places another person with long-time ties to the governor, this time in the Port Authority Police Department, at the scene witnessing the traffic surge that has since come to engulf Chrstie’s administration in legal inquires.
The revelation is also important because Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich had earlier questioned the Port Authority Police Department’s actions during the closures. In a September 12 letter, Sokolich wrote to Port Authority deputy executive director Bill Baroni, a Christie appointee who has since resigned, that residents had told him that “Port Authority Police Officers are advising commuters in response to their complaints that this recent traffic debacle is the result of a decision that I, as the Mayor, recently made.” There is no evidence that Michaels was one of these officers.
Christie emphatically denies taking part in or having any knowledge of the decision to close the lanes leading onto one of the busiest bridge in the world. He has said he doesn’t know why members of his inner circle would have ordered the lanes closed.
The problem for Christie and his “office” is not that they would be perceived to be using the office of governor as petty personal fiefdom. The problem for Christie and his “office” is this.
Emergency responders were delayed in attending to four medical situations – including one in which a 91-year-old woman lay unconscious – due to traffic gridlock caused by unannounced closures of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge, according to the head of the borough’s EMS department.
The woman later died, borough records show.
And this.
“There was a missing child that day. The police had trouble conducting that search because they were tied up directing traffic,” says Jan Goldberg, a Fort Lee councilman who works with local emergency personnel.
Endangering the public safety as “payback” for a member of the opposing party not sufficiently cowing to you would seem to be beyond what a non-sociopath would consider to be reasonable policy.
Now we know. The mystery may be solved. This video explains the possible Christie connection to the George Washington Bridge and the mysterious shutdown of many of its lanes…for days.
We use cookies to improve your experience on our site. By agreeing to this, we can analyze browsing behavior and unique IDs on this site. Declining or revoking consent may affect certain features.
Functional
Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes.The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
