For months Governor Christie has been saying he does not know where his cell phone is that he used to exchange messages with a ranking official during testimony on the traffic jam at the George Washington Bridge.
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The judge overseeing the case denied the request from Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni.
Wigenton said that at the time she granted the subpoenas she expected them to be narrowly tailored to defense claims that Gibson Dunn had inappropriately withheld documents from prosecutors.
Critchley questioned the integrity of Gibson Dunn’s internal investigation into the role the governor’s office played in the lane closures. In a court filing this week, Gibson Dunn said the texts contained “nothing inherently damaging or suspect”.
Wigenton said the subpoena was too broad and there was no showing the items sought would be relevant at trial.
“Nothing has been provided in writing that would justify such a request”, Wigenton said in federal court in Newark, New Jersey, after a 2 1/2-hour hearing.
The aide, Regina Egea, has said she deleted the texts. Critchley said the firm failed to ask the governor about his texting with the aide, and it didn’t press her for details.
While the ruling put to rest the status of Christie’s phone before the September trial, it leaves questions unanswered.
Gibson Dunn, attorneys for Christie, argued that the defense was engaged in a fishing expedition and that everything relevant had been turned over to it.
“What we’re not clear on is exactly what Gibson Dunn did when they had the cellphone”, attorney Michael Baldassare, representing Baroni, said afterward.
“Sometimes trying to find out what’s going on here is like trying to nail jello to the wall”, Critchley said.
Christie is among the candidates that Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, is considering for his choice of vice president. The pair are accused of conspiring to create traffic jams at the Fort Lee entrance to the bridge over five mornings in September to punish the town’s mayor, a Democrat, for not endorsing Christie in his bid for reelection in 2013.
The news that Christie’s lawyer has the phone comes just after a federal judge ruled Thursday against Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of NY and New Jersey, and Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, who issued a subpoena for phone, as well as the electronic devices used by other top Christie staffers.
Gibson Dunn has called the allegations “scurrilous”, “appalling”, “egregious” and “defamatory” in court filings, and wrote this week the defendants’ tactics “reek of desperation”.
Authorizing the subpoena would “literally be unprecedented in the history of this country”, Mastro told Wigenton, comparing it to a search warrant granted without probable cause. I haven’t had it for two-plus years, but it’s in the hands of the government, as far as I know.
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Bill Baroni, left, and his attorney, Michael Baldassare, leave U.S. District Court in Newark, N.J. on Thursday, July 7, 2016.
