Christie with Baroni and Wildstein at the 2013 September 11 memorial event. | United States Attorney’s Office Wildstein says Christie was told about Bridgegate-related traffic as it happened

NEWARK — Gov. Chris Christie’s top appointee at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey told the governor about the traffic caused by the 2013 George Washington Bridge lane closures as it happened, and he told Christie the local mayor’s calls were not being returned, according to the admitted mastermind of the political scheme.

David Wildstein, a former Christie ally who worked at the Port, said from the witness stand in U.S. District Court Tuesday that he and his boss discussed the traffic jams with Christie at a Sept. 11 memorial event in 2013, on the third day of the lane closures. The claim was supported by numerous photos submitted as evidence in the Bridgegate trial.


In what Wildstein described as a “sarcastic” conversation, he said Bill Baroni — the deputy executive director of the bistate agency — brought up the traffic problems that had emerged in Fort Lee, where the bridge is located. Wildstein previously said the lane closures were created to punish the local mayor, Democrat Mark Sokolich, for not endorsing the Republican governor’s reelection campaign.

Baroni and Bridget Anne Kelly, Christie’s former deputy chief of staff, were indicted last May on charges of conspiracy, fraud and civil rights violations. They are accused of closing local access lanes to the bridge — the world’s busiest — to punish Sokolich. Wildstein, who was the Port’s director of interstate capital projects, has already pleaded guilty and has implicated the two others.

At the 2013 memorial event in Manhattan, Baroni told Christie, “there’s a tremendous amount of traffic in Fort Lee this morning — major traffic jams,” Wildstein said Tuesday from the stand. According to Wildstein, he added: “You will be pleased to know Mayor Sokolich is very frustrated he can’t get his telephone calls returned — nobody is answering Mayor Sokolich’s questions.”

“He responded by saying, ‘I imagine he wouldn’t be getting his phone calls returned,” Wildstein said of Christie.

“Mr. Baroni said to Governor Christie that I was monitoring the traffic, I was watching over everything,” Wildstein said. “Governor Christie said, in the sarcastic tone of that conversation, ‘well I’m sure Mr. Edge wouldn’t be involved in anything that’s political.”

Then, Wildstein said, the governor laughed.

"Mr. Edge" is a reference to Wally Edge, the pen named Wildstein used when he ran a popular website about New Jersey politics.

A short time later, before the memorial event began, Wildstein said he and Baroni spoke again with the governor — this time also with David Samson, then the chairman of the Port Authority and a close friend of the governor. Samson, the former state attorney general, pleaded guilty to bribery charges earlier this year in an unrelated incident at the Port Authority.

During that conversation, Samson allegedly raised with the governor that Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop — another Democrat who had declined to endorse Christie — was seeking a meeting with Samson to discuss Port Authority issues.

Samson said to Christie, “I have to meet with him,” Wildstein recalled from the witness stand.

“Governor Christie said, ‘no; no meeting, no meetings, with Mayor Fulop. He’s not getting any responses from the administration.”

Wildstein said they discussed Sokolich in the same context, with the governor saying the same treatment applied to both mayors.

Christie, who is currently a top adviser to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, has denied any knowledge of or involvement in the Bridgegate incident. On Tuesday, at an unrelated Statehouse press conference, the governor addressed the ongoing trial, telling reporters, "I have not and will not say anything different than I’ve been saying since January 2014. No matter what is said up there. I had no knowledge prior to or during these lane realignments. I had not role in authorizing it. I had no knowledge of it. And there’s no evidence ever put forward that I did."

As a Jersey City councilman running for mayor, Fulop in 2012 began working for FAPS, a car import-related business that rents space from the Port Authority and at the time was in a lease dispute with the agency.

Emails released in the run-up to the trial showed Bill Stepien, the governor’s campaign manager and now a national field director for Trump, and Wildstein attempted to use Fulop’s position with the company and its dispute with the Port Authority to pressure him into endorsing Christie.

Fulop has refused to answer most questions about his work for FAPS, with his spokeswoman saying he had been advised by the U.S. Attorney’s Office not to talk about it. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office said last month that the office never said that.

The governor has acknowledged canceling meetings with Fulop, according to a previously released summary of an interview he gave to federal officials. Christie said during the interview that, once learning that some of his cabinet members were going to meet with Fulop, "he expressed the view ... that he did not think that the meetings needed to occur because Mayor Fulop did not merit any kind of special treatment," prosecutors have said.

But an indictment secured by U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman, whose prosecutors are bringing the case, alleges the meetings were canceled as part of a "coordinated and deliberate refusal by the Conspirators to communicate with, meet, or respond" to Fulop after he said he would not be endorsing the governor.

Wildstein said in his testimony earlier Tuesday that he was told multiple times that the order came form the governor himself, and that it applied to the entire Christie administration and all of the governor’s allies at the Port Authority.

Wildstein told jurors he was directed by the governor’s office to treat Fulop with “radio silence.” In one message, Stepien allegedly told Wildstein to “continue to ice him.”

This story has been updated with comment from the governor.