An aide to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie stated that he was lying to the press in 2013 about the Bridgegate scandal, according to text messages between staffers released Tuesday.
The messages were revealed in court filings for the coming trials against former Port Authority deputy executive director Bill Baroni and Chris Christie’s former deputy chief of staff Bridget Kelly on charges related to the politically motivated plot to close lanes of the George Washington Bridge in September 2013. The text messages took place between Peter Sheridan, a staffer for Christie’s gubernatorial re-election campaign, and Christine Renna, an intergovernmental affairs aide in the governor’s office, during a Christie press conference that December. Christie told reporters that he had “no reason to believe” that anyone on his staff and his campaign’s staff had worked to close lanes on the bridge in retaliation against Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich for declining to endorse Christie. Christie also told the press that his campaign chief, Bill Stepien, told him that he had no knowledge of a plot. (Stepien was later ousted by Christie after it was revealed that he had, in fact, known.)
At that point, Renna texted Sheridan:
Renna: Are you listening? He just flat out lied about senior staff and Stepien not being involved.
Sheridan: I’m listening
Sheridan: Gov is doing fine. Holding his own up there.
Renna: Yes. But he lied. And if emails are found with the subpoena or [Christie campaign] emails are uncovered in discovery if it comes to that it could be bad.
The accusation not only damningly suggests that people on Christie’s staff believed or knew Christie was aware of staff involvement in the plot; it also suggests that even more incriminating evidence may be found in emails from Christie’s staff or campaign team.
It was one such email that brought down Renna’s boss, Bridget Kelly, who infamously sent a message to Port Authority official David Wildstein saying, “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.” Wildstein has already pleaded guilty to conspiracy. Now Kelly and Baroni, both facing civil rights, fraud, and conspiracy charges, are hoping that the texts and perhaps other revelations to come implicate other Christie staffers and Christie himself in the closures and cover-up. In June, Kelly and Baroni’s attorneys suggested Christie’s legal team was hiding messages and emails relevant to the case and compared Christie’s inability to turn over his phone, claimed missing by his attorneys, to Richard Nixon’s refusal to turn over the Watergate tapes.
Also significant in Wednesday’s filings are motions from Baroni’s attorneys to render significant categories of evidence inadmissible in the coming trial, expected in September. According to them, evidence regarding ambulance and school bus delays that may have been caused by the closures are irrelevant and could provoke “purely emotional” reactions from the jury. Baroni’s attorneys additionally claim to have evidence that school buses were not delayed by the closures at all, but that evidence is redacted entirely in the filing.
