Christie. | AP Photo/Mel Evans Aide said Christie 'flat out lied,' according to Bridgegate filing

Gov. Chris Christie “flat out lied” about the involvement of one of his top aides in the George Washington Bridge scandal, according to a newly uncovered text message from another aide contained in a new court filing.

During a December 2013 press conference, the Republican governor was asked if he could “say with certainty” that no one on his staff was involved in the closure of access lanes to the George Washington Bridge three months earlier.


Christie said he was certain, and specifically said top aide and campaign manager Bill Stepien had no role in the incident.

“Oh yeah. I've spoken to Mr. Stepien, who's the person in charge of the campaign, and he has assured me the same thing,” Christie said.

But as the governor was talking, two other aides were exchanging text messages that directly contradicted what the governor was saying. Christie aide Christina Renna, the top deputy to one of the defendants charged in the lane closure scandal, then texted a staffer on Christie's re-election campaign, Peter Sheridan, according to the filing by defendant Bill Baroni.

“Are you listening? He just flat out lied about senior staff and Stepien not being involved,” Renna wrote.

“I'm listening... Gov is doing fine. Holding his own up there,” Sheridan responded.

“Yes. But he lied. And if emails are found with the subpoena or [Governor Christie's re-election campaign] emails are uncovered in discovery if it comes to that it could be bad."

Christie denied the claim after appearing on a sports talk radio show in New York on Wednesday morning.

"I absolutely dispute it. It's ridiculous. It's nothing new," Christie told reporters, according to the Associated Press. "There's nothing new to talk about."

A spokesman for Christie said the texts do not contradict his earlier statements. "The Governor's statements have been clear," said the spokesman, Brian Murray, in a statement. "Nothing contained in this text message changes that in any way. He stands by those statements completely and unequivocally,”

To this day, Stepien has not been charged or directly implicated in the scandal, nor have Renna or Sheridan. But Stepien was fired by the governor a month after that press conference when it was revealed he knew about the lane closures but was not involved.

An attorney for Stepien, Kevin Marino, pointed to Renna's prior testimony and the lack of charges against Stepien to again assert his innocence. "The suggestion that Mr. Stepien was nonetheless involved in a conspiracy to close access lanes to the George Washington Bridge based on a text message exchange that has been in the Government's possession for years is categorically false and irresponsible," Marino said in a statement.

The governor has continued to deny having any prior knowledge about the closures, which involved shutting down access lanes to the bridge in order to exact political revenge against the Mayor of Fort Lee, a Democrat, for not endorsing the governor’s re-election bid. The lane closures caused days of gridlock during the first week of school that year.

View Flashback: Chris Christie responds to George Washington Bridge questions A roundup of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's past responses to questions about the George Washington Bridge closures.

Baroni, a former Republican state legislator who was appointed by Christie as the deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, resigned as the Bridgegate scandal became public. His lawyer has since argued that the governor's office has been withholding relevant information to Baroni's defense.

Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff and Renna’s direct supervisor at the time of the incident, were indicted last May on charges of conspiracy, fraud and civil rights violations. Their trial is set to begin in September.

According to Michael Baldassare, an attorney for Baroni, who filed the brief early Wednesday morning, Renna deleted the texts after the Democrat-led Legislature began issuing subpoenas in the case, and never told lawmakers about them. The filing claims she “testified under oath before the Legislature in a manner not consistent with the existence and deletion of those texts.”

“All available information strongly indicates that Ms. Renna deleted those texts and never turned them over to the Legislature or the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” Baldassare wrote in the filing. “For example, the texts produced by Ms. Renna between Mr. Sheridan and her stop on October 26, 2013 and start again on December 19, 2013. Thus, there are 54 days of texts missing from Ms. Renna’s response to the Legislature’s and federal grand jury subpoenas. Interestingly, Ms. Renna’s texts with other people are not missing between those dates.”

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, a Democrat who co-chaired the legislative inquiry into the lane closures, said Renna appeared to have “engaged in the destruction of evidence” based on his understanding of state law.

In a phone interview Wednesday, Wisniewski said he was taken aback by the revelation, saying at one point, “wow.”

“I am so disappointed, because we had these folks in front of the committee,” he said. “We gave them every opportunity to be truthful. And she out and out lied under oath.”

Henry Klingeman, Renna’s attorney, said “Ms. Renna will answer questions publicly when she testifies at the upcoming trial, not before."

Read the new filings here and here.

This story has been updated throughout.