Kelly worked for Christie in the governor’s office.
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We didn’t know that the prosecution would also implicate the Governor. Wildstein will allege that he and Baroni told Christie of the reason behind the traffic snarls.
Sokolich had been growing increasingly desperate because the traffic resulting from the lane closures was creating what he termed “a public safety emergency” in which ambulances and other emergency vehicles were having trouble getting through.
They are expected to testify about the traffic chaos that paralyzed Fort Lee’s streets for a week in September 2013 when two of the three local approach lanes to the bridge were closed in an alleged scheme to retaliate against the mayor for refusing to endorse Christie’s 2013 reelection campaign.
The prosecutor’s remarks were delivered to the jury at the opening of what is expected to be a six-week trial.
Mr. Baroni and Ms. Kelly are charged with conspiring to misuse Port Authority property by fraud and conspiring to deprive people of their civil rights. He pleaded guilty past year to two federal counts of conspiracy as part of a plea agreement deal in the lane-closure scandal. Baroni, then the highest-ranking official at the Port Authority of NY and New Jersey, ignored Sokolich’s repeated entreaties to open the lanes.
Baroni was a top Christie appointee to the agency that operates the bridge, and Kelly was Christie’s deputy chief of staff.
Sokolich accepted an invitation to lunch with Christie at Drumthwacket, the governor’s official mansion in Princeton.
Chris Christie may have known about “Bridgegate” as it was happening – as prosecutors and defense attorneys in the Bridgegate trial said Monday – but that doesn’t mean the New Jersey governor broke any laws and can be prosecuted, a law enforcement source told The Post.
In opening statements of the Bridgegate trial, prosecutors insisted that Christie knew about the lane closures because two cronies “bragged” about them to him when they occurred. He then held a marathon news conference, fielding questions from reporters in which he suggested that he had been betrayed by his staff and knew nothing about the plot to punish Sokolich.
Christie has denied from the start that he had any knowledge of the lane closings.
Imagine the outcry if Hillary Clinton’s transition team was led by a scandal-plagued sleaze whose gubernatorial reign was best known for shutting traffic lanes on a major bridge, jeopardizing the public’s safety for the sole objective of punishing a local mayor who’d refused to endorse.
“This is not a Chris Christie investigation,”Assemblyman John Wisniewski had said in a statement”.
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Christie, a former USA attorney, is a prominent backer of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. The honor went instead to Mike Pence, but Christie remained enough of a suck-up to be named the chief of Trump’s transition team in May. “He told me to have the mayor call Baroni”. He is through as a possible presidential candidate. Christie declared himself to be shocked, just shocked, saying, “I was disturbed by the tone and behavior and attitude of callous indifference that was displayed in the emails by my former campaign manager, Bill Stepien”. You know who is involved at that point in time? He was not indicted, as was his paramour. Even with this admission, U.S. Department of Justice Public Affairs Officer Matthew Reilly would only say that his department never discusses whether it will file charges when asked about the likelihood that Chris Christie will face a court date of his own.
Trump’s arrival there was met by a mixture of cheers and boos.
Kelly’s “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” email to Wildstein was sent August 13, 2013, a day after she was notified Sokolich wouldn’t endorse Christie, Khanna said.
Either way, Christie exhibited a sickness of soul in 2013 equal to that long evidenced by Trump. They would amplify Donald Trump’s inevitable declaration that this episode proved the perfidy of “Crooked Hillary”.
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Christie hurried like anxious a duckling behind Trump, whose ducktail hairdo made momentary sense.
