Whitehouse said the court should uphold the convictions of two former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie because to rule otherwise would make it even more difficult for the public to punish corrupt government officials. | Getty Images U.S. senator: Bridgegate appeal imperils jury’s role as 'guardian against corruption'

The Supreme Court’s looming decision in the Bridgegate corruption case would “further hobble the public’s capacity in regulating political misdeeds” if the convictions were overturned, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse warned in an amicus brief filed with the high court last week.

Whitehouse, a former Rhode Island state attorney general and a member of the Judiciary Committee, said the court should uphold the convictions of two former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie because to rule otherwise would make it even more difficult for the public to punish corrupt government officials.


“To function properly, our democracy must have tools to address corruption in the political system. The Constitution provides three primary avenues for the People to punish, and thus deter, public corruption: the ballot box, impeachment, and the jury,” Whitehouse’s attorneys wrote. “Amicus respectfully urges the Court to act with due modesty and humility when addressing the rules of political engagement and, accordingly, to affirm the jury’s vital role as a guardian against corruption.”

The court is set to hear oral arguments on Jan. 14 from the two former Christie allies, convicted of orchestrating the 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closures.

In their appeal, defendants Bill Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly argued prosecutors wrongly applied federal fraud statutes that were never intended to target political conduct. The two have invoked the high court’s decision to overturn the conviction of former Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell, as well as rulings in other corruption cases, and claim what they did wasn’t fraud — just “bareknuckle New Jersey politics.”

In his 40-page brief, Whitehouse (D-R.I.) didn’t attempt to undermine that legal argument but instead painted a broad picture of what is at stake: “confidence in our public officials, in our government, and even in our democracy.”

“The jury is an essential tool, preserved in the Constitution, for regulating political power, protecting the general public, and fighting corruption,” Whitehouse’s lawyers wrote in the brief. “The Founders left that tool to the People for good reason. Defining corruption narrowly undermines the jury in this important governmental role, and by limiting the number and the types of cases that juries can hear, undercuts the People’s power to defend themselves against political corruption.”

Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and Kelly, who was a deputy chief of staff to Christie, were convicted in 2016 for their roles in the scandal. They worked with a third conspirator — David Wildstein, a former Port Authority official who pleaded guilty and testified against them — to orchestrate the political retribution scheme.

Over the course of several days in September 2013, the three closed off two local access lanes to the George Washington Bridge during the morning commute, clogging roads for hours in the densely populated Bergen County, N.J., town of Fort Lee. Wildstein, who received probation and now runs a political news site in New Jersey, said the stunt was designed to punish Fort Lee‘s Democratic mayor for refusing to endorse Christie's reelection campaign.

This appeal — which the Supreme Court agreed to hear after Baroni had already reported to federal prison, and as Kelly was preparing to do so — could lead to the revocation of yet another tool federal prosecutors use to go after perceived corruption. It follows the court’s 2016 ruling in the McDonnell case, in which the justices held that prosecutors had wrongly mixed evidence of potentially illegal acts aimed at influencing official government actions with proof of routine courtesies.

Lawyers for Kelly and Baroni claimed that one of the underpinnings of their convictions — that they misapplied public “property” in executing their plan and, in doing so, committed fraud — is not illegal. If it were, they said, then any government action that is secretly motivated by politics could be considered fraud if it costs the public any amount of money.

It’s an argument bolstered in amicus briefs filed by Michael Binday, a former insurance executive convicted of fraud under similar legal doctrine, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

The association argued that fraud statutes linked to this “money and property” prong have exceeded the scope of the law in recent years.

“In attempting to criminalize state governmental policy decisions that allegedly were justified on pre-textual grounds, the decision would substitute the criminal process for the political process,” wrote Joshua L. Dratel, the co-chair of the association’s amicus committee, in the brief. “If state decision makers deprive the electorate of the candid reasons for policy choices, the solution is at the ballot box, not the jury box.”

The U.S. government, in its own brief to the court, didn’t dispute that there are limits to how the fraud statutes can be applied. But it said the argument from Kelly and Baroni would apply only if their defense — they claimed they were under the impression the lane closures were part of a traffic study — turned out to be true. The prosecutors said that defense was rejected by “the jury, the district judge, and a unanimous panel of the court of appeals.”

“As they recognized, Kelly and Baroni lied about a traffic study in order to hijack Port Authority resources to gridlock a town, cause maximal harm to its residents, and endanger public safety,” acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall argued in the brief. “That was both outside their authority and repugnant to the goals of safe and efficient transportation to which those resources would otherwise have been committed.”