Paul Berger

The (Bergen County, N.J.) Record

WOODLAND PARK, N.J. — After almost four weeks of testimony, prosecutors wrapped up their case against two former allies of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie by calling an FBI agent to testify that she was unable to find several crucial emails between a former aide to Christie and the admitted mastermind of the George Washington Bridge lane closures.

Special Agent Michelle Pickels testified in federal court in Newark on Thursday that she had a copy of the emails between the governor’s former deputy chief of staff, Bridget Anne Kelly, taken from bridge plotter David Wildstein’s email account.

But Pickels said that when she searched Kelly’s Yahoo! account she could not locate those same emails. The missing messages included the now infamous August 2013 email from Kelly to Wildstein, first reported by The Record: “Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee.”

Asked why she could not find those emails, Pickels responded: “I could not tell.”

Christie faces misconduct complaint over bridge closures

Jurors were presented with the evidence immediately after watching video of a combative performance by Kelly’s co-defendant, Bill Baroni, in 2013, before a legislative committee probing the lane closures.

Lawyers for Baroni, the former deputy executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, had fought to keep the video out of the trial.

The recording showed Baroni testifing that Fort Lee unfairly benefited from having three access lanes to the congested bridge and that the lane reductions, over five mornings in September 2013, were part of a legitimate traffic study.

Over the course of about one and a half hours, Baroni comes under sustained interrogation in the video from a panel of angry and deeply skeptical lawmakers led by Assemblyman John Wisniewski.

Baroni and Kelly, both 44, are accused of reducing the lanes from three to one, causing traffic jams, to punish the mayor of Fort Lee for refusing to endorse the governor’s 2013 re-election bid.

The mayor, Mark Sokolich, and his police chief, Keith Bendul, testified earlier in the trial that the closures caused gridlock in their town, severely delaying commuters, school buses and first responders. Both men said that their repeated phone calls and messages requesting relief from the Port Authority during the week of the closures went unreturned and unheeded.

During the legislative testimony, Baroni stated that the lanes from Fort Lee constituted 25% of the access to the upper level of the bridge but were used almost exclusively by Fort Lee residents, constituting less than 5% of bridge traffic. Previously, the jury heard from Port Authority traffic specialists that 25% of vehicles on the upper level used the three Fort Lee lanes, many of them originating from other North Jersey towns.

Baroni also told lawmakers that the lane reductions were requested by leaders of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association. Earlier this week, the jury heard officers Paul Nunziato and Mike DeFillipis testify that Baroni asked them to falsely state that the lane reductions were their idea and that they had refused.

Exchanges in the video between Baroni and Wisniewski were particularly tense, with both men disagreeing, talking over and making cutting comments toward each other. Wisniewski complimented Baroni several times on his “valiant” attempts to dodge questions.

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At one point Baroni offered to take Wisniewski on a field trip to look at access lanes to the Lincoln Tunnel.

“Come on. I’ll even pack your lunch,” Baroni said.

“I would want to get it tested first,” Wisniewski responded.

Prosecutors have charged that the governor’s allies used the Port Authority as a “goody bag” to court Democratic politicians and to burnish Christie’s bipartisan bona fides. Officials who snubbed the governor were punished.

They have been aided in their case by Wildstein, Baroni’s former second-in-command at the agency, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges last year.

Wildstein admitted masterminding the bridge lane closures and testified for the prosecution in the hope of a lenient sentence. He faces up to 15 years in jail.

Earlier in the trial, Wildstein told jurors that the conspirators’ plan was to blame the gridlock on a communications breakdown with Fort Lee. Baroni made that claim multiple times to lawmakers.

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Baroni and Kelly face nine counts of conspiracy, misusing publicly funded property, wire fraud and violating the civil rights of Fort Lee residents to travel freely.

Baroni’s lawyers opened their defense by calling Christie’s former general counsel Charlie McKenna.

McKenna told jurors he believed the lane closures were conducted as part of a legitimate traffic study until the release of the “time for some traffic problems” email in January 2014 when “the world changed.”

McKenna helped Baroni prepare for the legislative testimony. He told jurors that Baroni gave him facts and figures that supported there being a study and that he had no reason to disbelieve him.

Kelly’s attorney, Michael Critchley, pressed McKenna, a former prosecutor in New Jersey, on why he did not probe the closures more closely.

Critchley said that following the furor caused by the lane closures multiple news outlets were investigating and publishing stories and that Port Authority executive director Pat Foye stated publicly that there was no traffic study. Yet, Critchley pointed out, McKenna chose not to investigate.

“I believed it was a traffic study,” McKenna said. “There was nothing nefarious about a traffic study.”

The trial is expected to continue until the end of October.