The so-called Bridgegate trial—in which former Chris Christie aides Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly are accused of conspiring to cause massive traffic jams on the George Washington Bridge as an act of petty revenge against a local mayor—began Monday in Newark, New Jersey. The big news from Day 1 is that prosecutors in the case say that Christie (who in addition to being a top Donald Trump adviser and shill is actually also still the extremely unpopular governor of New Jersey) was made aware of the scheme as it was going on by a former Port Authority executive-turned-cooperating witness named David Wildstein. From NJ.com:
Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna said Wildstein will testify that he and defendant Bill Baroni made Christie aware of the plan while they were attending Sept. 11 commemorations in Manhattan.
“The evidence will show that … they bragged about the fact that there were traffic problems in Fort Lee and that Mayor Sokolich was not getting his calls returned,” Khanna said.
This is the first time a public official has made an allegation in a formal setting that Christie was aware of the closures as they were happening, and Christie has long denied any such knowledge. (He is not charged in the case.) What’s particularly not great for the governor, as Josh Barro of Business Insider notes, is that defense attorneys for Baroni and Kelly have also implied more than once that Christie has not told the truth about what he knew about the lane closings and when he knew it. Whatever the outcome of the case, it seems that both the prosecution and the defense concur that Chris Christie is guilty of being full of it.
