NEWARK -- As the Bridgegate case moves along toward its Sept. 12 trial date, issues over the whereabouts of Gov. Chris Christie's cell phone, deleted text messages and the investigation leading to the charges in the case have arisen just in the past few days.

Awaiting trial in the case are William Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Bridget Anne Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff to the governor. The two were indicted in connection with the abrupt shutdown of local access lanes at the George Washington Bridge in September 2013, in what federal prosecutors say was a deliberate scheme to tie up traffic in Fort Lee to punish Mayor Mark Sokolich of Fort Lee who declined to back Gov. Chris Christie in his 2013 re-election bid.

In briefs filed this week, more questions than answers have arisen about the status of Christie's cell phone. Here are five new developments:

1. No one is claiming to know where Christie's cell phone is.

A brief filed in the case late Tuesday by the law firm representing the governor's office says that lawyers took the cell phone Christie used in 2013 and examined it for evidence it was required to turn over to defense lawyers. The law firm, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said it "returned" the phone.

But the governor has said he doesn't have it.

Prosecutors say they never had it.

It's critical to see the cell phone, defense lawyers say, because it could still contain text messages that could reveal what the governor knew while other state and Port Authority officials were testifying in late 2013 about the lane closures.

Michael Baldassarre, the attorney representing Bill Baroni, one of the defendants, said the situation is "suspicious and outrageous."

2. Prosecutors said there was no probable cause to issue a search warrant for the cell phone in the course of their investigation.

Matt Reilly, a spokesman for U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, said the office followed a practice that is "typical in grand jury investigations:" letting outside counsel review records, including those on computers and mobile phones, and then providing relevant material to the office.

"We just don't have the legal authority to go and grab every single one of their communication devices," he said, adding that the office would need a search warrant and probable cause to take a computer or cell phone.

Further, the U.S. Attorney doesn't have the resources to seize and search so many electronic devices, he said.

3. If the defense cannot examine the phone, it will ask the judge to tell jurors during the trial that they should make the assumption that deleted text messages would have been favorable to the defense.

Lawyers for Kelly are asking for an "adverse inference instruction" to jurors. An earlier investigation found that Christie exchanged a dozen texts with former Director of the Authorities Unit Regina Egea on Dec. 9, 2013, while a state investigative panel questioned Port Authority Executive Director Patrick Foye about the lane closures.

Christie said he remembers nothing about the texts, Egea has said she only recalled a single text that discussed the "professionalism" of Port Authority officials who testified that day.

Gibson Dunn's filing from Tuesday says Egea deleted the texts "in the ordinary course of maintaining storage on her personal mobile device."

If they can't recover the texts, the defense wants the judge to tell the jurors to assume the information was favorable to the defendants.

The U.S. Attorney says that should not happen, since it never had possession of the cell phones or the messages, so its case shouldn't be affected.

4. The defense actually wants an extra three years of records from Christie's office.

According to Tuesday's Gibson Dunn brief, the governor's office complied with the grand jury's subpoena by providing records from January 2013 to January 2014, even though the subpoena itself is for records going back to January 2010.

Defense lawyers want to hold Gibson Dunn to the extended time period, the brief says. The law firm argues that the request is unreasonable and that the defense has offered no evidence that the massive extra production would yield anything useful for the trial.

5. The next date for court arguments about the cell phone is set.

U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton, who will preside over the Bridgegate trial, ordered lawyers for Gibson Dunn and defendants Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly to appear July 7 to argue over Gibson Dunn's bid to quash the defendants' subpoena for a host of electronic devices and communications, including the cell phone.

Tim Darragh may be reached at tdarragh@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @timdarragh. Find NJ.com on Facebook.