Paul Berger

Staff writer, @pdberger

Bill Baroni, former deputy executive director of the Port Authority, was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the Bridgegate conspiracy

Bridget Anne Kelly received an 18 month sentence

Both Baroni and Kelly are expected to appeal their convictions

Two onetime aides to Gov. Chris Christie were each sentenced to prison Wednesday for their roles in a conspiracy to shut down access lanes to the George Washington Bridge in a brazen and bizarre scheme that used the world’s busiest bridge as a means of political payback against a small-town mayor.

The sentencing capped a three-and-a-half year political drama that irreversibly damaged Christie’s reputation, undermined his presidential campaign, and made the so-called Bridgegate scandal a household name and fodder for late night talk show hosts.

For Bridget Anne Kelly, former deputy chief of staff to Christie, and Bill Baroni, Christie's former deputy executive director at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the scandal was much costlier.

Baroni was sentenced to two years in prison and Kelly 18 months, for their roles in the conspiracy, infamously and concisely captured in an eight-word email from Kelly that read “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

The pair, who were sentenced separately, maintained their innocence Wednesday while expressing remorse for their actions and the harm those actions may have done.

They are expected to appeal, continuing the saga that began with a traffic jam in Fort Lee some 3½ years ago. Christie, who appeared on television news shows Wednesday morning to discuss his new role as drug czar for the Trump Administration, deflected questions about the case during those interviews.

BRIDGEGATE FILES: What Bill Baroni said

BRIDGEGATE FILES: What Bridget Kelly said

Kelly, 44, a single mother of four, regularly dabbed at her eyes with a tissue during her almost two-hour long sentencing.

Kelly said she realized “how destructive and frustrating the lane realignment was for the residents of Fort Lee” and said she was sorry for her “insensitive and disrespectful” emails and text messages that appeared to show her reveling in the distress caused to the town’s mayor.

Baroni, 45, in his address to the judge, alluded to the other people whom prosecutors believe shouldered partial blame for the scheme, but who were never charged.

"While a number of people outside of this courtroom were involved in Fort Lee that day — some charged, some not — that does not change the fact that I failed,” Baroni said. “I made the wrong choices, took the wrong guidance, listened to the wrong people. I was wrong and I am truly sorry.”

Bill Fitzpatrick, the acting U.S. Attorney for New Jersey, called the prison sentences “very thoughtful and well-reasoned.”

The pair were each ordered to pay $14,314 in restitution to the Port Authority and to serve 500 hours of community service while on probation. In addition, Baroni was fined $7,500 and Kelly was fined $2,800.

Prosecutors had suggested that U.S. District Judge Susan D. Wigenton impose a sentence of between 24 and 30 months, slightly below the recommended guidelines for the seven counts of conspiracy, fraud and civil rights abuses.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Vikas Khanna said that although Kelly may not have come up with the lane closure scheme, she set it in motion with her infamous email.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Lee Cortes said that Baroni not only helped the conspiracy along at every opportunity, he specifically chose to reduce the lanes during the first week back to school in September because he knew it would have maximum impact.

DOBLIN: Message to Baroni and Kelly: No one to blame but yourselves

EDITORIAL: Finally justice, accountability in Bridgegate

Both prosecutors emphasized that Baroni and Kelly lied to cover up their crimes, including committing perjury when they took the stand at their trial.

Cortes added that part of the reason the lane closure case had captured the public attention was because it was “almost unfathomable.”

“The use of government power at a publicly owned bridge to create traffic in town just to mess with one person,” Cortes said.

“Those are the actions out of the playbook of some dictator of a banana republic. It’s incomprehensible such action could take place here in the United States.”

Wigenton called the case “another unfortunate chapter in New Jersey history” and a simple tale of “abuse of power.”

Wigenton said there was an environment in the Christie Administration of “you are either with us or against us” and that anyone perceived to be against the administration faced retribution.

BRIDGEGATE FILES: What the prosecutor said

BRIDGEGATE FILES: What the defense lawyers said

Although Kelly portrayed herself as a victim of this culture, Wigenton said she had been a willing participant.

She handed down a longer sentence to Baroni because, she said, it could be argued that as a top official at the agency in charge of the bridge, he was more culpable than Kelly.

The pair are expected to appeal their convictions.

Baroni declined to comment following the sentencing.

Speaking outside the Newark courthouse, Kelly said: “Today has been obviously a very difficult day for me and for my children. But I want to assure my kids and everyone else that this fight is far from over. I will not allow myself to be the scapegoat in this case and I look very much forward to the appeal.”

Asked how Kelly would fight back, her lawyer Michael Critchley said, “One day, at the appropriate time, she no doubt will give an interview and lay out all the facts as she knows them to be.”

The lane closure scandal led to an investigation that also brought down another Christie ally, the governor's friend and mentor David Samson, a former state attorney general and co-founder of a powerhouse law firm, who appeared in the same courthouse at the beginning of March.

Samson, Christie’s former top appointee at the Port Authority, was sentenced to one year’s home confinement for using his position as chairman of the agency to bribe United Airlines into running a money-losing flight between Newark and an airport close to his vacation home in South Carolina.

Both cases underlined how the Port Authority, a bi-state agency that owns and operates most of the region’s major bridges, tunnels, airports, seaports, the PATH rail system and the 16-acre World Trade Center site, can be misused to court, bribe and punish business leaders and politicians.

In particular, the bridge lane closure trial showed how Christie, who relishes his persona as a tough talker, ran a calculating and at times vindictive administration that even in its earliest years had one eye on the 2016 presidential campaign.

WHERE ARE THEY NOW: After Bridgegate, many Christie allies thrived

FORT LEE: Port Authority rejects borough's bid for Bridgegate compensation

During six weeks of testimony, prosecutors and defense attorneys described how the Christie administration showered Democratic officials with treats from the Port Authority “goody bag” in a bid to court endorsements to burnish the governor’s bi-partisan bona fides. Inducements included private tours of the World Trade Center construction site, agency grants and contracts, and pieces of burnt steel and flags from Ground Zero.

Staffers kept a spreadsheet of the favors so that they could always remind officials how generous the administration had been. Civic leaders perceived as disloyal to Christie, even those in towns that relied upon constant communication with the Port Authority because they host agency facilities, were punished with “radio silence.”

David Wildstein, Baroni’s second-in-command at the Port Authority and the man generally regarded as Christie’s eyes, ears and enforcer at the agency, testified that it was his idea to use the bridge as a weapon against the mayor of Fort Lee, who had declined to endorse the governor, so that he would “fully understand that life would be more difficult for him in the second Christie term than it had been in the first.”

Wildstein pleaded guilty to the conspiracy in 2015 and served as the government’s star witness at the trial. A date for his sentencing has not been set.

Kelly and Baroni were found guilty of conspiring with Wildstein to create gridlock in Fort Lee by shutting down two of three access lanes to the bridge to punish mayor Mark Sokolich for refusing to endorse Christie’s 2013 re-election.

They deliberately ignored Sokolich’s pleas for help during the week of the lane closures and Baroni covered up the true purpose of the scheme by insisting that it was part of a traffic study.

The closures severely delayed school buses, commuters and emergency vehicles over four mornings. The restrictions were lifted on the fifth morning on the orders of Port Authority Executive Director Pat Foye, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s top appointee at the agency.

Christie denied all knowledge of the scheme and spent millions of taxpayer money on an external report that absolved him of blame. Though Christie was never charged in the criminal case, multiple witnesses at the trial testified that Christie was told of the lane closures before, during and shortly after they took place.

At a news conference in January 2014, Christie said that he had been blindsided by the bridge lane closure scheme.

But Baroni and Wildstein testified that they joked with Christie about the traffic problems in Fort Lee — as they were occurring — at a Sept. 11 anniversary event at the World Trade Center. Kelly said she informed Christie of the lane reductions before they began and that she warned him about traffic problems in Fort Lee during the week of the closures. Several top aides testified that they warned Christie that some of his top allies were involved with the closures in December, about the same time that Wildstein and Baroni was forced to resign.

The scandal metastasized in January 2014 following the publication by The Record and NorthJersey.com of Kelly's infamous August 2013 email to Wildstein that set the scheme in motion.

That was when Christie fired Kelly and distanced himself from his 2013 campaign manager Bill Stepien, who has gone on to become President Donald Trump’s political director.

As comprehensive as the trial was, with dozens of witnesses and hundreds of excerpts from emails, text messages, documents and video recordings, it still left many unanswered questions, in particular who else knew about the scheme.

A group of media outlets fought for the release of a list compiled by prosecutors of people suspected of involvement in the plot. But one of the men on that list raised a legal challenge and succeeded in blocking its release.

In the months leading up to the trial and in its aftermath, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, who has since left his post after Trump requested his resignation, emphasized that his office only prosecuted those for whom there was “evidence beyond a reasonable doubt.”

Staff Writers Dustin Racioppi and Nick Pugliese contributed to this article.