Posted: Sep. 22, 2016 7:00 am Updated: Sep.
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Foye testified for a second day at the trial of Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, and Bill Baroni, once the deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, the bridge agency.
Tina Lado, head of the Port Authority’s community outreach arm, testified her office, which normally communicates with local officials if roadwork or traffic studies could potentially have an impact on traffic in their towns, wasn’t notified about the alleged traffic study at the bridge.
Foye’s testimony put the focus on the Port Authority of NY and New Jersey, which runs the bridge and New York-area airports, tunnels, transit hubs and the World Trade Center.
“I told you he was abusive and untrustworthy”. “I was petrified of further retribution”.
Governor Christie has become a central figure in the case from the opening statements. “Given what I knew about his personality it was a concern”, Foye said.
David Wildstein, expected to be the key prosecution witness in the Bridgegate trial, could testify as soon as Friday. Wildstein was handed the job as director of interstate capital projects, a position created for him even though he falsely said in an application he had a college degree that he doesn’t hold, Baroni’s attorney Michael Baldassare said in court this week.
Wildstein attended high school with Christie.
Wildstein will be the government’s star witness.
“It was complicated”, Foye said.
Foye confirmed that Wildstein, when he was sacked in December 2013, refused to turn in his Port Authority iPad and cellphone. “That was what I viewed as my primary function as mayor”. Prosecutors say the plan was meant to deliberately cause massive traffic headaches in Fort Lee, after Democratic Mayor Mark Sokolich declined to endorse Gov. Christie for re-election. Baroni was an executive at the Port Authority of NY and New Jersey.
Kelly was Christie’s deputy chief of staff at the time.
Ma said that he contacted The Record’s Road Warrior columnist, John Cichowski, on the fourth day of the crippling lane closures in Fort Lee after learning that the agency’s media office was attributing the lane reductions to a traffic study.
This story has been corrected to show that Foye testified that Wildstein being “protected” by Christie was the reason he didn’t question Wildstein, not the reason Wildstein wasn’t fired. “All we needed was further retribution that would add further to the standstill”.
Foye described ordering the reopening of the lanes on the morning of September 13, 2013, after receiving reports of massive gridlock for days in Fort Lee.
There was much testimony during the day about the such horse trading and the daily political infighting within the Port Authority of NY and New Jersey-an agency with a budget of early $7 billion and regional rivalries that in some ways play out like a modern-day “Game of Thrones”. Prosecutors say they caused the traffic jams by reducing the number of access lanes to the bridge from three to one without notifying Fort Lee officials.
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“They include the governor of the state of NJ”, he said. He said Baroni was “a little agitated” and apologized to Foye, saying “my bad, my bad”.
