NEWARK (CN) — An attorney for the woman accused of plotting New Jersey's political traffic jam of 2013 maneuvered Thursday to blame the cover-up on Gov. Chris Christie and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
"If there was a cover-up, Judge, it was not because of Bridget Kelly," said Kelly's attorney Michael Critchley.
Along with Bill Baroni Jr., who had been Christie's top appointee to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Kelly is five weeks through a federal trial over politically orchestrated gridlock at the George Washington Bridge. The four-day-long lane closures in September 2013 caused unprecedented traffic for New Jersey commuters, particularly in brige-adjacent Fort Lee.
That city's Democratic mayor, Mark Sokolich, had declined to endorse Christie's re-election just before the lane closures — news of which prompted Kelly to send email implicating her in the plot. "Time for some traffic problems in Fort Lee," she wrote.
While both Baroni and convicted plotter David Wildstein were Christie appointees to the Port Authority, the public agency that runs the bridge, Kelly was a senior staffer in the governor's office at the time.
Her defense seeks to cast doubt on the government's theory that she could have participated in the Port Authority cover-up, which attributed the lane closures to a traffic study as the scandal grew.
With Kelly slated to testify herself Friday, Critchley this morning called to the stand Port Authority commissioner Scott Rechler. A Cuomo appointee, Rechler coincidentally ends his five-year tenure with the bi-state agency today.
The jury was not present in courtroom when prosecutors lodged a pre-emptive objection to a line of questioning Critchley had planned for Rechler. The sidebar was one of several between the opposing parties today, some of which played out in front of the jury.
Kelly's defense team blames the cover-up on "third-party activity," and wanted Rechler to admit that Christie and Cuomo were orchestrating this together in December 2013 communications about the lane closures.
Rechler testified this morning about a call he received from Cuomo on Dec. 4, just before a meeting of the Port Authority Board of Commissioners. Up until this past May, Rechler had been vice chair of the board, working alongside Christie-appointed chairman David Samson.
Critchley tried to pin Rechler down about the meaning of what he told his assistant: that he would call Cuomo back after the meeting, "in case Pat does anything different."
Pat is a reference to Pat Foye, the Cuomo-appointed executive director of the Port Authority. Evidence has shown that Foye was vocal about decrying the lane closures as political, yet still allowed the Port Authority to put out the initial press release that blamed the lane closures on a traffic study. It was Foye who reopened the closed Fort Lee lanes by executive order on Sept. 13.
Critchley wants the jury to deduce that Rechler would inform the governor whether Foye got off-message about the cover-up.
Rechler would admit only to the call, though, insisting that Cuomo did not give him any direction. Christie and Cuomo were conversing in December, Rechler admitted, but he did not confirm that the governors were coordinating a response to Bridgegate.
Objections from the prosecution kept Rechler from answering whether Christie shared with Cuomo his concern that Foye was meddling in New Jersey politics during an election year.