Chris Christie Knew About Bridge Lane Closings as They Happened, Prosecutors Say

[BM5 via Woodhaven]

Traffic approaching the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee, N.J., this month. The opening arguments started on Monday in the trial that stemmed from the closing of access lanes to the bridge in 2013.CreditDrew Angerer/Getty Images

 

NEWARK — Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey knew that his close associates were involved in a plan to shut down lanes leading to the George Washington Bridge as it was happening and that the closings were intended to punish a local mayor for declining to support him, prosecutors said on Monday.

 

It was the first time Mr. Christie, a Republican, has been accused of knowing about the scheme as it unfolded.

The prosecutors made the assertion during opening statements in the trial of two former Christie administration officials charged with closing the lanes in 2013 and then covering it up.

 

Mr. Christie has insisted that he had no knowledge of the plot to close the lanes, and said that he did not recall being told about the closings while they were happening.

 

Defense lawyers have also said that Mr. Christie knew. But the statement on Monday was striking in that it was prosecutors confirming that assertion.

 

Prosecutors from the United States attorney’s office said that two of the alleged co-conspirators in the case, David Wildstein and Bill Baroni, had bragged to the governor about the lane closings, and that they had been done to “mess” with the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee because he had declined entreaties to endorse the governor’s re-election. Mr. Christie also knew that phone calls from the mayor, Mark Sokolich, raising concerns about a public safety emergency were deliberately being ignored, prosecutors said.

 

The prosecutor, Vikas Khanna, instantly advised the jury that it should not consider the actions of “others” or wonder why they were not charged.

 

The details of the plot that Mr. Khanna laid out were largely familiar by now: that one of the defendants, Bridget Anne Kelly, sent an email in August 2013 saying “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” after confirming that the mayor of that borough would not endorse Mr. Christie. A month later, two of three access lanes to the George Washington Bridge were shut down, and the other defendant, Mr. Baroni, the highest-ranking official at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs the bridge, studiously ignored the mayor as he pleaded by text, email and a handwritten letter for the agency to reopen the lanes.

 

Mr. Khanna quickly moved to quell any curiosity the jury might have about why Mr. Christie was not charged in the plot.

“The evidence may show that others could have, should have, perhaps knew certain aspects of what was going on in Fort Lee,” he said. “Perhaps you will even wonder what happened to those people. But at the end of this case the only issue for you to decide is whether Bridget Kelly and Bill Baroni are guilty of the crimes with which they are charged beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s it.”

 

But defense lawyers quickly seized on his comments in their own opening statements.

“We know who they’re talking about. They’re talking about Governor Christie. They’re talking about Kevin O’Dowd,” the governor’s chief of staff, said Ms. Kelly’s lawyer, Michael Critchley.

 

The government, the defense lawyers asserted, was blaming their clients for actions that had been sanctioned at a higher level.

 

“They went hunting for whales,” Mr. Critchley said, then pointed to his client, a 44-year-old mother of four. “They settled for a minnow.”

 

Defense lawyers painted the government’s star witness — David Wildstein, a former political blogger hired to a position created specially for him at the Port Authority — as a crazy person, one described even by witnesses for the prosecution as “a vicious guy,” “maniacal” and “a horrible person.”

 

And it was Mr. Christie, they said, who installed Mr. Wildstein at the agency to be his enforcer. Michael Baldassare, a lawyer for Mr. Baroni, said the governor referred to Mr. Wildstein as his “fixer,” or “Mr. Wolf,” after the Harvey Keitel character in the movie “Pulp Fiction,” the guy who cleans up the dead bodies.

 

And everyone — Mr. Baroni included — feared crossing him.

“At the Port Authority at the time, when David Wildstein spoke, Governor Christie’s voice came out and everybody knew it,” Mr. Baldassare said. “It wasn’t just Bill. David Wildstein, based on this evidence, looks like a ventriloquist doll sitting on Christopher J. Christie’s lap.”

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/nyregion/bridgegate-trial.html?_r=0

[Missabassie]

Hey hey hey this is just politics as usual. Christie looks like he's in the mafia anyway, he probably figured this would go unnoticed.
 
 

He was wrong.