It pointed to a 2014 interview with a New Jersey radio station, when Christie said he didn’t know anything about the plans to close the lanes and first learned about it through media reports. Now, prosecutors came out and said it. Prosecutors say the scheme was allegedly created as a form of “political payback”, whereby state officials closed lanes on one of the busiest bridges in the world, which led to days of gridlock of the neighboring city in Fort Lee, New Jersey beginning on September 9, 2013. He told me it was a traffic study. But in opening statements Monday, prosecutors said Wildstein will testify that he and Baroni made Christie aware of the plan during a September 11 memorial event in New York City on the third day of the four-day lane closures. “They’re with him all the time, the people that did it”.
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It’s been a few years since the brouhaha over the George Washington Bridge’s lane closures rocked the Christie administration.
Kelly’s attorney also followed suit with Michael Baldassare-attorney for defendant Bill Baroni-and mentioned Christie directly in his opening statement. “They wanted to throw her, in some sense, under the presidential bus”. According to Baroni’s defense attorney, Christie referred to Wildstein as his “fixer”.
Christie “screamed at” Baroni, who was “forced to sit there” and watch Wildstein and the governor decide “which high-ranking officials to fire”. The attorney said that Kelly was thrown “under the presidential bus” by Wildstein as he orchestrated the bridge closures in order to curry favor with then likely presidential candidate Christie. Critchley displayed a chart in the courtroom with Christie at the center, titled “Inner Circle”. This characterization directly contradicts the way Christie has characterized their relationship – as nearly non-existent. Prosecutors say Kelly and Baroni, both of whom pleaded not guilty, plotted with Port Authority executive David Wildstein. He’s set to be the government’s star witness and to serve as the principal narrator in describing the plot and the cover-up to the jury, said Lee Vartan, a former federal prosecutor not involved in the case. Or as Baroni’s attorney, Michael Baldassare, put it: “At the Port Authority, when David Wildstein spoke, Gov. Christie’s voice came out, and everybody knew it. David Wildstein looked like a ventriloquist’s puppet sitting on Christopher J. Christie’s lap”.
“The idea that Bridget Kelly is directing the affairs of the state of New Jersey is nearly laughable”, he said. But the normally responsive Port Authority officials were not returning his calls, he said. Frank Lautenberg’s suit coat before a debate – which he thought would force him into an uncomfortable, ill-fitting jacket on stage – and then kept it as a trophy. Critchley said that his client’s famously blunt email – “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” – was the product of workplace “banter”, and her credulous belief that Wildstein had a plan to study Fort Lee’s traffic patterns.
Although prosecutors were seeking more than two years in federal prison, Jesse Benton was sentenced to two years’ probation and six months of home confinement, along with community service and a $10,000 fine.
Who was charged in Bridgegate? Chris Christie and Andrew Cuomo. “They were talking to each other”.
Carroll added that even if you accept the allegations that Christie was told about the bridge closing three days into it, that merely proves that he didn’t know about it in advance, as he has claimed. “He’s a vindictive person who would destroy your life, he’s known for lying, he has a twisted mind, he’s maniacal, he’s a miserable prick”. “In a large sense, ladies and gentlemen, this case is not about traffic”, he said.
Both tried to cast Wildstein, who prosecutors said would testify on his own behalf in the trial, as a “malicious” villain, bent on manipulating those around him.
When news of the deliberate lane closings first emerged, it was widely seen as the death knell of Christie’s political career.
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“I have been investigated by three different entities, two of them led by partisan Democrats, who have all found that I had no knowledge of this incident and no involvement in it”, the New Jersey governor told Jake Tapper on CNN’s “State of the Union”.
