Gov. Chris Christie. | Getty/Alex Wong In first interview after Bridgegate convictions, Christie says he's not finished

In his first interview since two former allies were convicted of carrying out the George Washington Bridge lane closures, Gov. Chris Christie said the seven-week trial had cleared his name and that he still has a future in politics.

“I can’t tell you how many times my political career was over. Here I am,” a defiant Christie told Charlie Rose in an interview that ran in part on CBS “This Morning.”


The Republican governor, at times mischaracterizing the testimony in the case, said the trial in U.S. District Court in Newark had “confirmed” what he thought on Jan. 9, 2014.

“I felt there were three people responsible: David Wildstein, Bill Baroni and Bridget Kelly,” he said, referring to the mastermind of the plot and the two other former allies who were convicted on Friday. “And now here we are, three investigations later, federal grand jury investigation, an investigation by a Democratic-led legislature, and what’s the conclusion? The conclusion is that there were three people responsible.”

But jurors weren’t asked to decide what role Christie had in the scandal, and U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman said on Friday that he brought cases only against those he could prove beyond a “reasonable doubt” were guilty.

Jurors left angry on Friday, with one telling a news outlet she felt Christie should have been on trial and another saying that the governor “is a master puppeteer and was aware of everything that went on, and goes on, within his administration.”

Still, Christie suggested that Kelly, a former deputy chief of staff, was a rogue who carried out a political revenge plot that was “absolutely stupid on the face.”

He said she was one of two dozen people to serve on his senior staff since taking office, and the only one who “didn’t get it.”

“I never could figure it out,” he said. “I mean, think about it. You know me. I’m pretty good at this political game. I’m up by 25 points in a re-election in a blue state. And they decide they’re gonna create a traffic jam in a town that’s a Democrat town, that I wound up winning two months later in the election?”

The governor also made inaccurate claims about the testimony during the trial. He said no one indicated he’d been told of the punitive nature of the lane closures and that he had “24 hours to make decisions” after Kelly’s infamous “time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee” email was released.

“This is an important point,” he told Rose. “In the whole trial, no one — not even Bridget Kelly or Bill Baroni or David Wildstein — ever testified that anyone ever said to me this is an act of political retribution.”

But Kelly, who maintained that she thought the lane closures were part of a traffic study, testified under oath that she told the governor during the lane closures that Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich had called the governor's office to complain and said he thought the incident was punitive. Prosecutors had alleged the lane closures were an act of retribution against Sokolich, a Democrat who refused to endorse Christie.

Kelly also said the governor personally approved the “traffic study” a month earlier.

Kelly, Wildstein and Baroni all said on the witness stand that they discussed the lane closures were Christie on Sept. 11, 2013, though just Wildstein — a Christie appointee to the Port Authority who pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution — said the true nature of the lane closures was clear at that time.

Wildstein claimed Baroni told Christie, “there's a tremendous amount of traffic in Fort Lee this morning — major traffic jams” and that “Mayor Sokolich is very frustrated that he can't get his telephone calls returned, that nobody is answering Mayor Sokolich's questions.”

The governor responded, according to Wildstein, “Well, I would imagine that he wouldn't be getting his phone calls returned,’” before making a joke about Wildstein being involved in politics and then laughing.

Christie said in the new interview, which was recorded on Sunday, that he doesn’t recall the conversation.

“Now, Charlie, I have to tell ya’, I have absolutely no recollection of any of them saying anything like that,” he said.

“So you’re saying you have no recollection?” Rose asked. “You’re not saying, ‘I can swear to you that they never said anything like this?' You’re saying, ‘I don’t remember?'”

“I don’t remember any — but what I will tell you is this, Charlie: If they would have told me that, ‘Hey, we’re creating traffic in the George Washington Bridge in order to punish the mayor for not endorsing you,’ I would have remembered that. And they never said that.”

The testimony of half a dozen people during the federal trial — including some of Christie closest allies — contradicts the governor’s claim that he had just 24 hours to react to the news. In fact, three different staffers or advisers had told the governor by early December 2013 that Kelly was involved in the closures, and at least two said they were told Christie that campaign manager Bill Stepien also had prior knowledge.

That testimony came from Mike DuHaime, the governor’s chief political strategist, and Michael Drewniak, his former press secretary and now a top official at NJ Transit.

“It was not just Bridget Kelly we were talking about, it was Bridget Kelly and Bill Stepien,” DuHaime testified during the trial, describing a phone conversation he had with the governor on Dec. 11, 2013. “He said that he needed to meet with Bill, and he asked if I could, you know, reach out and make sure that Bill would reach out to him and set up a meeting.”

Two days after that date, Christie publicly denied that his staff and, specifically, Stepien were involved.

“I’ve made it very clear to everybody on my senior staff that if anyone had any knowledge about this that they needed to come forward to me and tell me about it, and they’ve all assured me that they don’t,” Christie said during a press conference. “I’ve spoken to Mr. Stepien, who’s the person in charge of the campaign, and he has assured me the same thing.”

DuHaime said that claim was false.

“He knew I had information different from the information he gave,” he testified.