None of the six guest speakers dared mention the darkest chapter of the Chris Christie narrative shortly before his official portrait was unveiled in Princeton last week.

But Christie didn't hesitate in his turn at the microphone.

"It was Bridgegate,'' Christie said, chiding his former chief counsel, Chris Porrino, who minutes earlier made several allusions to the scandal without mentioning it by name. The audience of friends and allies laughed when he said the term is "banned in the family."

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Christie treated the topic as if it had morphed into political lore, fodder for crowd-pleasing anecdotes on the speaking circuit. In his eyes, Bridgegate is a footnote, as he once predicted it would be.

Yet on Tuesday, the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia added not a footnote but another chapter in a story that may take months, maybe years, to fully resolve. The court ruling was also a blunt reminder that Christie, a purported short-list candidate for the next United States attorney general, will never entirely shake the scandal's shadow.

The three-judge panel sitting in Philadelphia handed co-conspirators Bridget Anne Kelly and Bill Baroni a small victory by overturning their convictions on civil-rights-related charges.

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But the court upheld the core of the government's case, which was that the pair illegally used public property and funds when they closed down two approach lanes to the George Washington Bridge in Fort Lee in September 2013 under the guise of a phony "traffic study."

The real aim of Baroni, Kelly and the plot's self-proclaimed mastermind, David Wildstein, was to punish Fort Lee Mayor Mark Sokolich by paralyzing traffic on borough streets, federal authorities said. Sokolich was punished for refusing to endorse Christie's re-election, officials said.

Kelly, a former Christie deputy chief of staff, and Baroni, a top Christie Port Authority appointee and former rising star in the Republican Party, were convicted in November 2016. Kelly was sentenced to 18 months in prison and Baroni to 24 months. Both have been free on bail pending their appeal. Wildstein, the government's star witness in the case against the two, pleaded guilty and was sentenced to three years' probation. He has since re-emerged as the editor of a political website.

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In their appeal, Baroni and Kelly argued that while their conduct may have been wrong and unjustifiable, it didn't rise to the level of a federal crime. If anything, the government was trying to criminalize political hardball, they argued.

The court didn't buy it.

The decision brings prison closer to reality for the two, but the panel did order them to be resentenced, and Michael Critchley, Kelly's attorney, vowed to seek relief from the U.S. Supreme Court.

All of this points to more headlines to follow Christie as he moves into the life of the former governor, where he prefers to talk about the high points of his career: the landmark pension and health benefit reform, the near vanquishing of the cash-bail system, the realignment of the state's medical school system, and his star turn as the crisis commander of Superstorm Sandy.

Airbrushed out of that narrative is much of his second term, when the Bridgegate-haunted governor abandoned his post in pursuit of the presidency. You won't hear much about the 11 separate downgrades of the state credit under his watch or his defiant beach chair moment on Island Beach State park during the 2017 government shutdown.

It should be pointed out that no evidence emerged in Baroni's and Kelly's trial that Christie was involved in hatching the plot or carrying it out. But testimony of five witnesses belied Christie's claim that he was "blindsided" by the first reports of Kelly's and Baroni's involvement in January 2014.

And there are other unresolved mysterious issues: the whereabouts of Christie's cellphone and a flurry of missing texts Christie exchanged with a top aide during a key Bridgegate hearing. The public never bought his denials, and there is lingering suspicion that Baroni and Kelly, a single mother of four, were sacrificed to protect Christie.

Even Donald Trump shared his doubts about Christie's story.

"The George Washington Bridge. He knew about it. How do you have breakfast with people every day of your lives [and not know]?'' Trump said to a South Carolina audience in December 2015 when the two were still rivals for the Republican nomination for president.

That may have been campaign talk, and it's clear that Trump was willing to ignore his Bridgegate past to later consider Christie for vice president and make him leader of his transition team.

Still, there are potential events that could keep the Bridgegate cloud hovering over the Christie legacy.

Kelly's and Baroni's appeal to the Supreme Court is a long shot at best, but the court might take the case.

If that happens, the entire Bridgegate saga, with Christie woven throughout the bizarre narrative, will be dissected again on the national stage.

And then there is the possibility that Trump nominates Christie to succeed Jeff Sessions as attorney general. A nomination hearing could be the stage for another Bridgegate reprise.

A preview came last month when federal appeals court nominee Paul Matey, a onetime trusted Christie attorney, was grilled by the Senate Judiciary Committee on his role in a wide range of Christie administration controversies, including the lane closing flap. Matey, for example, was involved in the firing of Kelly after The Record first published the infamous email, in which she told Wildstein that it was "time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee."

Christie brushed aside questions that he would face the same kind of pointed questioning. He told reporters that his nomination hearing would turn them all into talking heads on national television as they did during the height of Bridgegate. "Spewing baloney,'' he called it.

Baroni and Kelly may ultimately go to prison. But Christie may never escape Bridgegate.