Escape justice....

Convicted Bridgegate figure says Christie managed to ‘escape justice’

By RYAN HUTCHINS

A former top aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, sentenced Wednesday to 13 months in federal prison for her role in the George Washington Bridge lane closing scandal, walked out of the federal courthouse here and immediately blasted her former boss.

Bridget Anne Kelly — author of the now infamous email, “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” — insisted she was innocent and said Christie deserved to be punished, not her. She called him a “bully” and said he, among others, was able to “escape justice.”

“The fact that I am on these steps in place of others from the Christie administration — including the governor himself — does not prove my guilt,” Kelly said. “It only proves that justice is not blind. It has favorites. It misses the mark. It misses the truth. And it picks winners and losers that are sometimes beyond anyone’s control.”

It was Kelly’s 2013 emailed directive about traffic problems — sent to David Wildstein, the admitted mastermind of the scheme that became known as Bridgegate — that touched off one of the most brazen and bizarre political stunts in modern American history, halting the rise of one of the nation’s top Republicans and upending her own life for years to come.

Kelly, a single mother of four who spent most of her career as a low-level political operative before reaching the governor’s office, was convicted in 2016 after a dramatic six-week trial in federal court.

The sentencing Wednesday, during which Kelly sobbed openly in court and begged for leniency, was her second since the Bridgegate scandal began. Kelly and her co-defendant, former Christie ally Bill Baroni, were able to convince a federal appeals court in November to toss some of the convictions against them, opening the window for the softer punishment.

Appearing before U.S. District Court Judge Susan Wigenton, Kelly cited her children and the pain they had already faced as a reason not to be sent to prison. She asked for home confinement, as prosecutors sought a term of 13 months to 18 months in prison.

“Today marks another sad day for my children in a nightmare that has robbed our family so much,” Kelly said, tears streaming down her face and her voice cracking.

She acknowledged she had used words that were “inappropriate and clearly open to convenient interpretation.” She apologized to local residents and others. But she admitted no knowledge of the true nature of the lane closures, a move that was designed to snarl traffic and punish the local mayor for his unwillingness to support Christie.

“I do ask you today to consider what my children have been though over the past five years and consider our request for home confinement,” Kelly said. “It would give us an opportunity to rebuild what we lost.”

But Wigenton was unmoved and said little had changed since the last sentencing two years ago, when Kelly was given a term of 18 months.

“The facts haven’t changed,” Wigenton said. “The evidence hasn’t changed.”

The judge invoked Christie’s name and referenced the title of the governor’s recent book, which boasts of the “power of in-your-face politics.”

“People spent hours over days just trying to get to work, kids trying to get to school,” Wigenton said. “I guess that was the power of in-your-face politics. It wasn’t acceptable then; it’s not acceptable today. And I think a lesson needs to be learned from this.”

Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, was resentenced in February to 18 months after previously receiving a two-year term. He’s already begun serving his time.

Kelly, who is hoping the U.S. Supreme Court will hear her appeal, insists she thought the lane closures were part of a traffic study and not political retribution.

Kelly and Baroni were convicted of working with Wildstein — another Port Authority official who pleaded guilty and testified against them — to orchestrate lane realignments. Wildstein is serving a term of probation.

Wildstein, a high school classmate of Christie, told jurors during the trial the plot was designed to punish the mayor of Fort Lee, where bridge is located, for refusing to endorse Christie's reelection campaign.

Over the course of several days in September 2013, the three directed Port Authority officials to close off two local access lanes to the bridge during the morning commute, clogging roads for hours in the densely-populated Bergen County town.

Wildstein said in court in 2016 that Kelly and Baroni, a former Republican state lawmaker, were both in on it, and that Christie was aware of the effort — an allegation the governor denies.

The Democratic mayor, Mark Sokolich, pleaded for an explanation and help from the governor’s office, but Kelly ignored his messages. "Radio silence,” Wildstein wrote to Kelly when told of the mayor’s effort to reach her.

Kelly insists it was all part of the traffic study, one she thought could lead to a reduction in congestion on the main approach to the bridge and give Christie something to brag about as he headed toward for reelection. She says her email to Wildstein about traffic problems was just a poor choice of words.

“I mimicked the words David Wildstein used in describing what was going to happen with the traffic study,” she said in an interview with POLITICO on Tuesday ahead of the sentencing. “Had I used the word study, you and I wouldn’t be on the phone right now, and I wouldn’t know half the people I’ve met over the past five years down in Newark.”

Kelly said she regrets trusting others who were loyal to the governor, saying she believed she was dealing with “decent, truthful people.”

“I’m a bit of a Pollyanna, and I really thought they were good people at their core,” she said in the interview. “And this has taught me that the quality of friends is a lot more — and business associates — is a lot more important than the quantity. Some of the people I met down there, I don’t know how they put their head on the pillow at night.”

When he was sentenced two months ago in the same Newark courtroom, Baroni apologized for what he had done, and he blamed the “cult and culture” of Chris Christie, saying he simply “wanted to be on the team” and “wanted to please him.”

Kelly said she doesn’t know if there was a Christie cult — nor does she know if Christie was aware of the true purpose of the lane closures as they happened — but she says “there was definitely an environment” around the famously bombastic governor.

“People talked about the one-constituent rule, which David referred to in court,” she said in the interview, alluding to Wildstein. “Everybody knew that. Christie was a commanding leader in a sense, both of his staff and obviously of the state, to certain degrees. It was an environment where I was very surprised by how involved the chief executive was with the day-to-day functioning of the office.”

She described him as a micromanager, concerned about all the details.

“The manner in which he was involved in the minute surprised me,” she said.

Kelly testified in 2016 that she discussed the impending lane closures with the governor before they happened, though with the understanding it was a study.

Wildstein claimed to have discussed the stunt with the governor and Baroni at a Sept. 11 event in Manhattan during the week the closures occurred.

Baroni told Christie, “there’s a tremendous amount of traffic in Fort Lee this morning — major traffic jams,” Wildstein said. According to Wildstein, he added: “You will be pleased to know Mayor Sokolich is very frustrated he can’t get his telephone calls returned — nobody is answering Mayor Sokolich’s questions.”

“He responded by saying, ‘I imagine he wouldn’t be getting his phone calls returned,” Wildstein said of Christie.

While federal prosecutors endorsed Wildstein’s testimony — using him as their star witness and a tour guide to their case — Christie calls him a liar. He again denied any involvement in a statement on Wednesday.

"As I have said before, I had no knowledge of this scheme prior to or during these lane realignments, and had no role in authorizing them,” Christie stated. “No credible evidence was ever presented to contradict that fact. Anything said to the contrary is simply untrue."

While Christie was never charged in the case, the testimony painted an unflattering picture of his administration and damaged his presidential aspirations. Some testimony, beyond Wildstein’s allegations, contradicted Christie's previous statements about when he was notified of the lane closures.

In his comments to Wigenton before the sentencing, Kelly attorney Michael Critchley contrasted Kelly’s life with those of the “boys of Bridgegate” — Wildstein, Christie and two other allies of the governor who were characters at the trial.

Critchley noted several times what Wildstein had said about the Sept. 11 meeting with Christie. And he harped on the idea that Kelly, despite having a senior role in the governor’s office, was not someone in a position of power. He quoted from Christie’s book, “Let Me Finish,” calling Kelly a “functionary” and her position “temporary.”

“She was deputy chief of staff for three-and-a-half months,” Critchley said. “The idea that she would be the individual who would be the mastermind — the mastermind behind this, the one who controlled it, the one who made it go — is counterintuitive that, in my mind, it almost defies logic.”

But prosecutors said that was simply fiction. Kelly participated in the planning of the lane closures and knew full well their purpose, they argued.

“Despite whatever was said in some book, that was not under oath,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna said. He called her “a senior-level staffer in this administration and no way just a functionary.”

He said Kelly’s office was a few yards from the governor’s, that she had a sizable staff and was clearly the one who gave the order to launch Bridgegate.

“In this senior role, where Ms. Kelly was supposed to serve the public, she ordered the lane reductions,” Khanna said as Kelly shook her head in disagreement. “Without her, they don’t happen.”

“It was a flagrant and brazen abuse of power that put people in harm’s way,” he said.

Outside the courthouse, where she said her faith in the justice system had been “shaken” by her own “anguish,” Kelly argued it made no sense that she was the one in power. It was Christie, she said, who controlled everything.

“He was powerful enough to approve this act,” she said.

Circled by TV cameras and reporters as she read, nearly word-for-word, from the page-and-half prepared statement, Kelly said she had lost much of her conviction as she “stood my ground” against the governor. She said he had “mislead” people and called his actions “dishonorable,” saying he had revealed himself “for the coward he is.”

“Mr. Christie, you are a bully and the days of you calling me a liar and destroying me life are over,” Kelly said. “The truth will be heard — and for the former governor, that truth will be inescapable, regardless of lucrative television deals for even future campaigns. I plan to make sure of that.“